“Is love outdated?”
I asked this question to my friends during one of our many conversations about dating at Penn. I grew up listening to stories about college love lives. I had a picture in my head of what love looked like on a college campus: the excitement of sitting next to your class crush, stolen glances, finally running into each other at a party, exchanging numbers, et cetera. College feels, in many ways, like the place where you could find love. In any case, you won’t find another time in life when you’re surrounded by so many diverse, single people your age.
Yet what I have found since coming to Penn could not be more different from the stories I heard from my mom and aunts about college love life. Instead of stolen glances and dancing the night away, I’ve witnessed a sea of “situationships” and aversion to simple eye contact. My guy friends tell me that they would never approach a girl even if they thought she was pretty. I often find Sidechat posts from people asking where they can meet their “soulmate” or how they can find someone who is emotionally available on this campus.
Whether we want it or not, it is a scientifically proven fact that love and belonging are basic human needs, and our attempts at finding a place within Penn’s dating culture reflects this: the 2024 Penn Marriage Pact had about 5000 participants, representing more than 45% of Penn’s undergraduate population. But in spite of these new initiatives to engage in the dating culture, it is rare to hear about people going on actual dates or establishing real relationships. It’s far more common to hear stories about how people’s matches never reached out.
Maybe the love I grew up hearing about is outdated. Our generation has largely changed the meaning of modern love, where instant gratification and risk aversion have characterized how people approach romantic partnership. And, as a generation that grew up with smartphones and the instantaneousness of the internet, it makes sense that we would approach love in a way that prioritizes immediacy rather than vulnerability.
We can scroll on TikTok and immediately see the exact type of content we want and swipe scroll through Hinge until we find our exact ideal partner. We sign up for Penn Date Drop with the expectation of a perfect match that will be promptly delivered to our inbox. According to several studies, the expectation of instant gratification causes Gen Z to face more frustration in different aspects of their lives, including dating. It creates a paradox where we try to get as much satisfaction as quickly as possible, only to end up disappointed because we prioritized immediacy over developing a connection.
Hookup culture is the perfect example of this phenomenon. A somewhat recent Tinder ad reads “Meet the love of your night,” encouraging people to reach for what they want almost immediately. In essence, hookup culture shows how eager we are to get the benefits of a relationship in an immediate matter and without the “risk” of commitment. What it doesn’t account for is how detrimental hookup culture and “situationships” can be. There are nearly always emotional stakes involved in a “situationship,” even if you refuse to put a label on it.
Penn Marriage Pact and Penn Date Drop are just two more examples of how our need for immediacy and risk aversion manifests itself. We want to be assured that the person we are getting is 100% compatible with us, as if that would somehow ensure the future of a relationship. One may then think that if we got an email to our inbox that claimed our 97.7% compatibility with someone, we would reach out. And yet there is only silence. We often never reach out, because why would we put ourselves in a position with the possibility of rejection? Gen Z has grown accustomed to avoiding risk.
SEE MORE FROM MARIANA MARTINEZ:
The path to obtaining the college love life experience is not in hookup culture or endless online platforms asking for your preferences. We must embrace risk and vulnerability. It is time we stop going around in circles before admitting what we want.
MARIANA MARTINEZ is a College junior from Bogotá, Colombia studying international relations and classical studies. Her email is marmari@sas.upenn.edu.
