For years, conservative Christians have decried the “hookup culture” among young people that they believe is eroding the foundation of our nation. America’s youth, they claim, is having sex more frequently and with more partners. But according to new data, these Christians are wrong.
A sweeping new study conducted by sociologist Martin A. Monto of the University of Portland demonstrates that today’s young people are having no more sex than did their parents and they aren’t having sex with more partners, either. In a paper presented at the American Sociological Association, Monto stated there is “no evidence of substantial changes in sexual behavior that would support the proposition that there is a new or pervasive ”˜hookup culture’ among contemporary college students.”
How did so many Christians get this one so wrong? The answer seems to be a little thing called confirmation bias, which is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their preconceived notions or beliefs.
I think Jonathan Merritt might be guilty of confirmation bias in this blog post. It’s hard to know whether that is the reason for his grasping this survey and making his claims – but then he didn’t offer any evidence that confirmation bias was at work among ‘conservative Christians’ either.
There’s four basic problems with his argument:
1. It’s *one* survey. You usually need a few to get a better sense of where the reality lies. Grabbing one that tells you what you want to hear and running with it sounds like the very thing he’s decrying among conservatives.
2. The survey compares students in the late 80s to those in the noughties. While that is a generational shift from Gen X to Millenial, it is a generational change *within* the same basic framework to sex and relationships. More interesting would have been a comparison with the 1960 as the sexual revolution was getting underway and with one or two periods before the sexual revolution.
3. The survey does indicate some significant changes:
[blockquote]However, Monto said it is true that sexually active college students from the contemporary era were more likely than those from the earlier era to report that one of their sexual partners during the past year was a casual date/pickup (44.4 percent compared to 34.5 percent) or a friend (68.6 percent compared to 55.7 percent), and less likely to report having a spouse or regular sexual partner (77.1 percent compared to 84.5 percent).
―Contemporary college students are coping with a new set of norms in which marriage occurs later, Monto said. ―This means the idea of waiting until marriage to begin sexual behavior is a less tenable narrative. Courtship and relationship practices are changing, and the implications of these changes present a new unique set of challenges, but this study demonstrates that we are not in the midst of a new – more –era of no rules attached sexuality. In fact, we found that, overall, sexual behavior among college students has remained fairly consistent over the past 25 years.[/blockquote]
Courtship and relationship practices are changing, marriage is occurring later and hence waiting until marriage for sexual behavior to begin is a less tenable narrative. This shows itself in a greater number of people having sex in a casual or friendship context than even twenty years ago.
Ladies and Gentlemen, lo and behold I give you….the hook-up culture – apparently not quite so much a figment of conservative Christians’ desire for political power as Jonathan Merritt (and the survey’s authors) would have you believe.
4. It would be interesting to know how much the prevalence of pornography had on this survey. Given that pornography seems to have the effect of reducing desire for actual sex among a substantial swathe of those who get addicted to it, it is *possible* that the numbers are repressed in the contemporary survey by a swathe of people who are not engaging in sexual behavior due to their involvement with pornography – and this compensates for the rest who are engaging in more, and so the numbers are lower overall. This could indicate both a stronger hook up culture among those sexually active, and a sexually dissolute kind of celibacy in another segment, averaging out to numbers roughly similar to the 80s. The 31.6 percent who report having more than one sexual partner in the last year is somewhat suppressed by the segment of college age students who prefer pixels to the real thing, but would most likely be seeking multiple sexual partners if they were involved *at all*.
I’m not saying that *is* the case, but from the news release that Jonathan Merritt links there’s no reason to eliminate this as a possibility either – this kind of aspect of the change of the last twenty years isn’t discussed as to its effect on the results.
And if it is the case, then that would also suggest a somewhat different picture as well – towards a sexual culture that does not even esteem the idea of sex-in-a-committed-relationship let alone sex-in-a-covenantal-relationship. Sex is either virtual and hyper promiscuous or real yet as a way of marking time in a moderately promiscuous fashion without commitments until the parties are ready for something more long term i.e. a hook-up culture.