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Are “hookup” apps leading, ironically, to a revival of dating culture on college campuses? In our forthcoming book with Ken-Hou Lin on online dating, Through a Screen Darkly: American Interracial Intimacy Then and Now, we find that dating apps are providing a way to bypass the romantic gatekeeping that campus party culture has long dominated. Many students are now leveraging these apps to circumvent the worst of the college hookup scene. Yet, online platforms also introduce new challenges. Women and racial and ethnic minorities, in particular, resent how the disinhibitory effect of cyber-communications can expose them to a wide range of racialized and sexist online interactions. However, dating apps give these students greater control over partner choice empowering them to set the context of a first meeting, which is a unique advantage of online dating that tempers the negatives for many of those we interviewed. Despite their drawbacks, these new technologies have the potential to make college intimacy not only safer but also more fulfilling for a larger cross-section of students than traditional hookup culture.
