60% of Adults Will Have a Holiday Hook-up?!? Clickbait for a Lonely Planet.
The distressed decrease in human connection, particularly among youth.
This is the Frontier Psychiatrists. It’s a newsletter, and it’s…health-themed.
I woke up this morning and checked my phone like I do every morning. Checking your phone is now like breathing. You don't forget to breathe. You don't forget to check your phone. Your phone doesn't just have phone things. It has become an all-consuming connection to the entire outside world. Like everyone, I have been successfully conditioned to look at that goddamn thing…All. The. Time.
This morning, while going about my morning routine1, I read a story that was bizarre. The fact that it was a story said a lot more than the content of the story.
It was purported to be a media article. The article reported on the fact that 60% of adults plan to have a casual sexual encounter during the holidays. This is Clickbait. I get it. No mystery there.
To be clear, this was sponsored content. It's not a real story. I also get that. It was sponsored content from an STI testing company. The sponsored content was reported on a survey about “Hometown hookups.” I clicked!
The headline:
Revealed: Surprising Insights From the EverlyWell Hometown Holiday Hook-Up Survey
I'm 44 years old. I came of age before the ubiquitousness of “hookups” as the nomenclature for casual sexual encounters. I went to high school at a boarding school in Connecticut. It's called the Taft school. I have written about it before. When I was young, what we now refer to as hook-ups? We referred to this as “scamming.” I'm not kidding. That was the term. I’m that old.
The sponsored content based on a sponsored survey reported their findings, vis a vi hook-ups. 60% of adults were likely to have a casual sexual encounter while home for the holidays. This is excellent content marketing if you're selling STI testing. What you are reading is not an article about salacious casual sex. It's an article about desperate loneliness.
I know I ruined the surprise for you. Some of the content marketing gold includes graphics, such as the following:
Yahoo’s new story quoted some experts. This is really what this article is about: the things the experts were asked as questions were both baffling and a little bit dark even to contemplate.
They took this sponsored content survey—designed to get us nervous enough to order STI testing2— and then added some expert information for the general public as follows:
“People hook up for all kinds of reasons: loneliness, nostalgia, boredom, horniness,” Sarah E. Wright, clinical psychologist and certified sex therapy supervisor with Choosing Therapy, tells Yahoo Life.
We have now reached peak disconnected. Data about “why people crave physical affection” is no longer a given. We are so disconnected that it counts as Clickbait for a Yahoo Life article— paid STI testing content— to explain that sometimes people are…wait for it:
lonely
bored
Even… horny
In those contexts, humans might choose to have…a sexual encounter…if they can look up from their phones long enough.
In related news, water is wet. The story doesn't stop there: it goes on to explain other basic features of the human condition in terms that suggest some people are so lonely, so disconnected, and so desperately in need of being touched that they are unfamiliar with the concepts involved:
“For those who find family get-togethers particularly stressful, they may want to find other sources of interpersonal comfort, such as a casual hookup,” Betsy Chung, [a] clinical psychologist.
Other people may be feeling the holiday spirit, she says, and want to expand on that pleasure. “Let’s face it: Most people have sex because it feels good,” Wright says.
Having experts explain that sex feels good is an article. Which, to me, suggested there are people to whom that particular piece of information is news. Which is, again, to this audience of one, the actual news. The gems from experts continue down the rabbit hole of despair:
“People usually have more time off and may want to seek some level of romantic connection in order to take advantage of the holiday spirit and enhance their experience of this special time of year by spending it with somebody,” Chung says.
The article provides the additional public service of gaming out the pluses and minuses of having sex with someone in a car—data brought to you by Zipcar— versus finding a hotel room.
There are almost 500 comments on this story.
We have gotten to the point, as a society, that it counts as reporting and content marketing, sort of, to remind us that sex feels good. Some humans have it with other humans to whom we are attracted.
The pandemic, I contend, did something very strange to all of us. The pervasive disconnection of a year or more on Zoom, avoiding gatherings with other humans, filled with fear, loneliness, sickness, and death, have left a generation— particularly young people—unfamiliar with the idea that intimacy is healthy.
This is a little horrifying. It's perhaps a lot horrifying. Romantic connection is something that's more and more rare among young people, particularly. The most robust data comes from the CDC. They have an excitingly titled every-other-year Youth Risk Behavior Survey. In 2021, only 30% of high school students have ever been sexually active. About 20% were currently sexually active. High school students are not known for having the best judgment about sexual behavior, which is why this is part of the youth risk behavior survey.
However, if we rewind to 2009, the percentage that had ever been sexually active was 46%. A whopping 34% were currently sexually active.
Back in the year punk broke, 1991, 54% of high school students had ever been sexually active. More goes into “sexual activity” than just the sex and activity parts. There is sometimes dating. There is time spent together. Often, there's a conversation. Sometimes, there are bad decisions. Sometimes, there are good decisions. Sometimes, there are decisions you'll remember forever. Sometimes, every once in a while, there is love. Connection. Intimacy. These are supposed to be the good things in life.
The data demonstrates that young people's ability to connect has fallen off a goddamn cliff. This is a new kind of youth risk behavior. There is a risk of never having the kind of social life that might lead to a sexual encounter, awkwardly, in the back of a car, perhaps rented from Zipcar.
We spent a long time worrying about the kind of inadvisable sex young people were having that we forgot they were having to build skills and relationships to take those risks in the first place. We didn't spend much time wondering what would happen if they stopped bothering.
We are disconnected. Our ability to connect, not just online but physically, has fallen off a cliff, statistically. We can't count on young people to have ill-advised, impulsive sex, which statistically, we see dramatically less of in 2023 than at any time in the measured past.
This is a different type of risk— more dire than all the bad decisions the kids have historically made that at least required a set of social and relationship skills to achieve. There are risks to less risky behavior.
which is checking my phone and then some associated medication adherence, dental hygiene, showering, and more phone checking.
which is a good idea from a public health perspective, anyway!