Why hookup culture sucks
“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.” Orson Welles
Searching for a romantic partner in this day and age should be easier than ever before. With modern technological advancements in communication, our world is in a way smaller than ever before. We can communicate with a person on the other side of the globe by a mere act of pulling out our smartphone and with a few movements of our fingers. We have a whole world at our fingertips. Unfortunately, people of today are paradoxically lonelier than ever before.
It is no wonder that many people navigate to older traditions like an arranged marriage.
The reason for that loneliness is, in fact, multifactorial and cannot be explained by a single phenomenon. I would argue that there are a few important reasons explaining this rise in loneliness, but in this short post, I would like to elaborate on the most important:
Hookup culture and social media
One of the most important reasons for this loneliness is undoubtedly the rise in the popularity of hookup culture. In one of my previous blogs, I explained the detrimental effects of social media on our self-image perception and the neuroscience behind its addictive behavior. However, I haven’t talked about how social media gave a huge boost to the hookup culture that consequently left us more lonely and in desperate need of attention. While it is true that social media made communication between two people much more accessible, the simple notion that we can flirt with anyone whose online appearance we find attractive made us much more shallow in terms of searching for a deep, meaningful relationship. The clear distinction that has to be made is between being bored or horny and being truly lonely.
The hookup culture drags you into the bored/horny side of the equation and blurs the line that separates it from loneliness. But the true question is, is there really a clear line between the two?
According to a pessimistic evolutionary hypothesis, there isn’t. Some evolutionary biologists would argue that the love and connection you feel towards someone is merely a byproduct of your sexual desire towards your partner. Evolution gave us one single goal- to produce offspring and prolong our genetic line. The love and connection we feel towards someone is an evolutionary attempt to protect them and our offspring from potential threats. We are now certain that that is not the case since we are infinitely more complex than our “monkey predecessors”.
While we crave sex and the dopamine rush of an orgasm, we incomparably more crave the deep connection with that one special person. Whether we are closely similar to our ancestors or infinitely more complex, the hookup culture is a bad idea in both scenarios. If we think of ourselves as purely desire-driven creatures, a simple one-night stand might sound like exactly what we need. But as I mentioned already, evolution took care of that, since no pleasure is without a cause (and long-term consequences) in the evolutionary context.
In other words, you were gifted the power of the orgasm in order to connect with and protect the person you inevitably fall in love with. Some would say that hookup culture takes us back and primitivizes the act of sexual desire. I would argue that it is much worse than that since our primitive ancestors took care of their partners and offspring. In contrast to you, after a one-night stand, you pack your shit in the morning while your partner (whose name you forgot) still lies in bed. Add all those into the equation, and you are left emotionally scarred, lonely, and with no one to talk to.
Summary:
Despite hyper-connectedness through social media, people today are lonelier than ever, partly due to hookup culture. While it promises quick pleasure, it blurs the line between lust and genuine loneliness, leaving people emotionally unfulfilled. Evolution may have wired us for connection, not just sex, making casual encounters feel empty over time. Hookup culture doesn’t liberate us; it isolates us, leaving us more detached, disoriented, and starved for real intimacy.