“Hooking up” is no longer a secret activity. It’s becoming rapidly encouraged by young people everywhere.

When work, school and personal dilemmas are the normal lifestyle, mainting a serious relationship can be hard.

In recent years, uncommitted sexual encounters, or “hookups,” are becoming progressively embedded into popular culture. This is especially true for many college students.

This massive population distinctly marks a shift towards openness and acceptance of uncommitted sex, and even more so encourages the transition from traditional standards of long-term relationships, without remorse.

However, an important question arises as to why the hookup culture is so heavily stimulated among young people.

One major indicator is that sexually-accelerated media plays a significant role of influence.

From television, magazines, and social media to film, apps, and music; the coaxing is ubiquitous.

Hooking up is clearly here to stay.

Songs such as Kid Ink’s “Show Me” (feat. Chris Brown), specifically portrays this “sex now, talk later” attitude and behavior.

Its lyrics, “Baby let me put your panties to the side, I’mma make you feel alright, ‘cause I’mma give you what you need, yeah,” and the chorus, “You remind me of something, but I don’t know what it is right now, cause you remind me of something girl, you gotta show me” explicitly detail the types of courting glamorized in hooking up.

Comparable to sexually-explicit tunes, dating apps such as Tinder or Grindr, also accompany the growing trend.

When asked for reasons on why young people are so intrigued to “hookup” rather than commit to a serious long-term relationship, Tinder user and Sac State junior, Eliot Watson had answers.

“Honestly, there are too many options,” Watson explains. “Think about it in terms of a job search. You want to find that perfect job. You have these choices of 100 jobs. But if you pick just one, without trying the other options, and you work at that one job for the rest of your life, you’ll never know if those other 99 jobs were phenomenal because you didn’t test them out.”

Tinder is popular because it allows young people to “test out” choices of other singles rather than force one specific match onto each individual.

“I think that being in a committed relationship is great, however I know it’s not for everyone. I guess it really depends on who feels ready for them or not,” said Arlin Duran, a married Sac State junior. “I just felt more prepared for the commitment early, rather than ‘hooking up’ frequently, like most people my age. I have no problem with it, and I see why people ‘hookup,’ but that life is just not for me.”

Duran went on to clarify and suggest that everyone has their own clock, and that every individual’s pace of finding a relationship that works for them happens in vastly different methods, even if that means hooking up before that happens.

Sac State sociology professor Todd Migliaccio defined why “hooking up” is more popular now than ever before and why young people would rather participate in this culture rather than settling for long-term commitments.

“Young kids are still looking at [long-term relationships such as marriage] as an institution,” said Migliaccio. “However, they see marriage as something tangible when emotionally and financially stable. So they still see [long-term relationships such as marriage] as a goal in life or something they’d like to do. But they see it as, ‘I’ll do it when I’m ready.’”

Long-term relationships may not be for everyone.

However, the idea of marriage in the future is hoped for by many young people even if this means hooking up first, and considering the possibilities of the relationship second.