“Dating” is a word that is becoming a lot more complicated. Because of media, technology, etc., this generation is communicating less and less in person. Thus dating, in the conventional sense, is something of the past. The older I get, the weirder it is when a guy asks me out, which, if that does happen, is usually online. I have no idea what the word means anymore. Instead it has become a confusing roller-coaster. The new question is, “Do you want to hang out?” Or, “Netflix and chill?” What does that even mean? Is this a hook-up? Are we just “chilling” as friends? Tinder and Bumble are the go-to apps to meet other singles. These apps are the only place I and many of my friends have been asked out on a date since we started college. Even then, you still have to be careful considering how dangerous meeting someone online can be. Which inevitably leads me to thinking how weird it is and deleting the app… again.
I’m 25 years old and expected that college would be a great place to meet new people. What I’ve discovered is people aren’t as open. Most the time I walk by someone on campus, they act like they don’t even see me. There’s no smile or “Hi.” My friends have said the same things. So why is this happening? If a person can’t say hi then there’s no way they are going to ask another person on a date. Dating has become something that is almost mocked by the media. There are shows about marrying someone you meet for the first time at the altar, and kissing a random person to decide if you’re in love — skipping the dating part altogether. But these are almost acts of desperation. People are so desperate to figure out a way to meet someone, they will marry someone they’ve never met in order to not end up alone.
I asked my 18-year-old sister who is coming to the U this semester what her definition of dating was. “Dating is when a guy has the guts to come up to you or text you, and asks if you want to hang out alone,” she replied. I wish I could say this surprised me, but it made me giggle. There’s that phase “hang out” again. Which raises my question again: “What does that even mean?” Texting replaces conversations with someone face-to-face, and it’s the main source of communication for college-age people. The millennial generation has been termed “the hook-up generation” for a reason.
During a conversations with a 47-year-old woman about how dating was when she was young, she said, “It was simple. Guy asked girl out in person, or on the phone, if they wanted to go out to a movie, and there was no phone to distract us on the date. So we had to talk the entire date, and yes it was awkward sometimes. But I loved dating.” I asked her if she would ever want to date in this generation. She immediately laughed and said, “Hell no, I wouldn’t even know what to do with all the texting and hooking up. Do people even go on dates anymore?”
Clearly there is a big dating “definition-gap” in the last 20-30 years.
Do people still go on dates? Sure. But now there are so many different definitions of dating that it almost seems impossible. “Hanging out” is easier, texting is easier, and swiping left or right is easier. Dating requires less of an effort than it did in the past. Updating a status about “bae” instead of planning a surprise romantic date is the new norm. It leads me to ask the question: what should the definition of dating be?