Hooking up has become a more common way to date than the traditional, old-fashioned way of going on a date. According to studies conducted recently, 75% of all students currently in college hook up rather than date, but what exactly is this?

Kathleen Bogle, an assistant sociology professor at La Salle University and who wrote Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, discussed the good and bad of hooking up on The Early Show, a morning show in the Untied States. When asked what hooking up means, Kathleen said that defining what exactly it is, is a tricky part of the whole thing. Hooking up can mean anything from kissing to sleeping with somebody, she continued, so this makes it one of the vaguest terms that students, both high school and college, are using.

When asked why this is happening, Bogle replied that many things have happened and converged at the same time. A big issue is that people are now getting married a lot later than before, she continued. Students before would use their time in high school or college to decide who they would end up marrying, Bogle said, kind of like shopping for a spouse. Now, Bogle says, they aren’t getting married for many years later, making their time in school a more casual atmosphere for relationships.

On the show she was also asked what all of this leads to after college, not dating and participating in hooking up instead. Kathleen said that of those between the ages of 23 and 30 that hooked up throughout college and she interviewed, they said that they went back to dating more traditionally when they graduated.