Text to sex: The impact of cell phones on hooking up and sexuality on campus

Abstract

By centering attention on how students feel after casual sex, studies of the college social scene miss an extremely important phenomenon—namely, how hookups get started. This article argues that it is in the negotiation of contact during hookups that college students creatively navigate their sexual identity. Using a mixed methodology, this research reveals that the cell phone, as both an object of communication and consumption, is essential to the formation of self, and, as such, it provides the means by which men and women can play with gender boundaries. And yet, the male dominated fraternity system at college restricts the ability of women to realize full agency within the hookup scene.