Dating in the Digital Age

Abstract

My dissertation examines the broader social context of hookup culture and dating in this current digital age. Data comes from a mixed-methods study that draws on original self-administered surveys (N=196) and focus groups with undergraduate women (N=21) at a university in Ontario, Canada. In this dissertation, I show that hooking up and dating coexist on campus and I examine the broader social context of hookup culture as constituted by women’s friendship groups and new technology to date and hookup. Through this research, my findings reveal how the pursuit of pleasure comes alongside many non-consensual encounters for undergraduate women. Taken as a whole, my research reveals the pleasures and perils of partying, dating, swiping, Snapchatting, and hooking up for undergraduate women. In Chapter Three, I draw on the descriptive statistics from my self-administered online survey and focus groups with undergraduate women to investigate whether hookup culture has emerged in a different social context without a dominating Greek culture and the role of new dating/hookup technology in this culture. In Chapter Four, I draw on the focus groups to show that hookup culture should not be understood as only about a set of expectations around sexual partners, but rather, hookup culture is heavily organized around women’s friendships with other women who support each other as they navigate the hookup scene and attempt to mitigate risks to their safety. In Chapter Five, I examine the potential of new dating apps to improve women’s dating/hookup experiences, revealing that they often fail to achieve their promises and, in other cases, they introduce new unforeseen risks to women’s safety.