Homelessness, Thorin Stryker…………………………………………………………………146 Hookup List, Serena Ierullo

Hookup List Serena Ierullo

When trying to better understand the behaviours of youth, it is essential that all aspects of their lives are taken into consideration. As teachers, our goal should not only to educate them, but to offer them guidance through some of the most overwhelming and challenging years of their lives. Today, the norms that have been created by the youth have drastically shifted in comparison to what they were known as 15 years ago. Young adolescents are eager to make the transition from being perceived as a child to a ‘cool teen’, and to achieve this status, they are experimenting through activities that in the past one would not partake in until they were in their late teenage years. One of these activities has been given the term ‘hooking up’ by today’s youth. In fact, this generation has moved away from the dating culture and gravitated towards adopting a culture of casual relationships (Aubrey and Smith, 2013). Hooking up has evolved from being recognized as a behaviour to a culture, it is a term that encompasses a variety of actions and is not limited to intercourse despite popular belief (Aubrey and Smith, 2013). As someone who is currently living in a generation where people are deeply invested in discovering who is hooking up with who, I thought this would be an interesting topic to try and understand how this has impacted my generation. The term I have chosen for my keyword assignment is ‘hookup list.’ Once hooking up became a norm, so did keeping track of one’s hookups, this is where the hookup lists come from. In my own experiences, I have even witnessed people who go as far as writing a number out of 10 next to the names of the people on their list in efforts to evaluate and label their interactions with them. It has been proven that youth believe that one’s status can be enhanced based on who they have hooked up with (Aubrey and Smith, 2013). A large element of hookup culture is the stories that are told to others; therefore, someone’s hookup list can be used as something to gloat about, or to degrade the people they have on there. To some, it may be

difficult for them to understand the actual purpose behind a hookup list, as all it truly is a compilation of names. Researchers have stated that these hookups are linked to self-expression and self-exploration, two concepts that are essential to the developmental period of young adulthood (Aubrey and Smith, 2013). In essence, these casual relationships serve as an outlet for them to express their newfound independence and sexual identity (Aubrey and Smith, 2013). Although some teachers may not see the importance of understanding hookup culture to better understand their students, it can be quite useful. The concept of keeping track of one’s hookups shows us how adolescents have taken the notion of evaluating others and themselves to a whole other level. Their lives have become centred around worrying about what type of person they want to project onto their peers, and how they will be able to maintain this image. This is something that can so easily consume them daily, as well as negatively impact their social and emotional well-being. Although it may appear as small and meaningless to some, a hookup list in our world today carries the power to entirely dictate someone’s life through their adolescent

years. Two sources that can be used to better understand the purpose of keeping track of one’s hookups include the film The To Do List and the article Development and Validation of the Endorsement

of the Hookup Culture Index.

Works Cited

Aubrey, J. S., & Smith, S. E. (2013). Development and Validation of the Endorsement of the Hookup Culture Index. The Journal of Sex Research, 50(5), 435–448. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42002072