Generation Me--Revised and Updated Read online

  Praise for Generation Me

  “Those vague hunches we have about this generation—Twenge does a huge, decidedly un-GenX amount of research and replaces them with actual data. Her writing is lucid and entertaining, and she’s unafraid to draw bold conclusions when necessary. It’s nothing new for a generation to be misunderstood by popular and commercial culture, but the one she describes has been misdrawn to the point of absurdity; refreshing, then, to have someone swap those persistent old myths for thoughtful, careful observations.”

  —Chris Colin, author of What Really Happened to the Class of ’93: Start-Ups, Dropouts, and Other Navigations through an Untidy Decade

  “Jean Twenge is not only dedicated as a researcher and social scientist, but she is clearly passionate about it. In this forward-thinking and clear-eyed book, she immediately stands out as a social critic of substance, in a world of dogmatic and chattering media pundits who are only guessing when they are “covering” major social trends and generational changes.”

  —Paula Kamen, author of Feminist Fatale and Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution

  “Everyone knows that American society is changing, but no one until now has documented how the people themselves are changing. In this startling, witty, and refreshing book, a pioneering researcher explains how the very personality of the average American is different. An upbringing that featured forming rather than meeting high expectations, and feeling good before doing good, has resulted in a generation with the highest self-esteem on record—and the highest rates of depression. Based on careful, groundbreaking research but filled with touching and amusing stories, this book explains exactly how the American character is changing and evolving, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Americans should read this book and ponder whether we should raise the next generation on unrealistic hopes, undisciplined self-assertion, and endless, baseless self-congratulation.”

  —Roy F. Baumeister, author of The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life, and Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology, Florida State University

  “Dr. Jean Twenge provides an insightful analysis of the young adults she labels ‘GenMe’—their supreme self-confidence in their own worth, their concern with doing things ‘their way,’ and the benefits and costs that come from their focus on themselves. Twenge draws upon her outstanding research to describe generational differences and their sources, lending an authority to her analysis that few previous commentators on GenMe have enjoyed.”

  —Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, PhD, Yale University professor and author of Women Who Think Too Much

  “Jean Twenge has the intelligence and courage to voice a concern that is in the minds of all today’s parents. If you want your child to succeed in today’s world, read this book.”

  —Mona Lisa Schulz, MD, PhD, author of The New Feminine Brain

  “Twenge’s book is comprehensive . . . filled with statistics and thoughtful observations about the group she’s dubbed Generation Me . . . accessible and a must-read.”

  —Booklist

  “[The] book is livened with analysis of films, magazines and TV shows, and with anecdotal stories from her life and others’. The real basis of her argument, however, lies in her 14 years of research comparing the results of personality tests given to boomers when they were under 30 and those given to GenMe’ers today. . . . Many of her findings are fascinating. And her call to “ditch the self-esteem movement” in favor of education programs that encourage empathy and real accomplishment could spare some Me’ers from the depression that often occurs when they hit the realities of today’s increasingly competitive workplace.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Twenge tells an engaging story, fueled and supported by a solid base of data, illustrative quotes from her and others’ research, and barometric examples from TV shows, movies, comics, and advertisements. . . . Throughout the book, her analyses of myriad topics articulated a number of ideas on the tip of my mind’s tongue.”

  —AARP the Magazine

  “This book should be required reading for parents-to-be.”

  —The Washington Post

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  Contents

  * * *

  Preface to the Revised Edition

  Introduction

  1. You Don’t Need Their Approval: The Decline of Social Rules

  2. An Army of One: Me

  3. You Can Be Anything You Want to Be

  4. The Age of Anxiety (and Depression, and Loneliness): Generation Stressed

  5. Yeah, Right: The Belief That There’s No Point in Trying

  6. Sex: Generation Prude Meets Generation Crude

  7. The Equality Revolution: Minorities, Women, and Gays and Lesbians

  8. Generation Me at Work

  9. What Do We Do Now?

  Appendix

  Acknowledgments

  About Jean M. Twenge

  Notes

  Index

  To Craig, for my family

  Preface to the Revised Edition

  * * *

  Young people are angry.

  Told they could be anything they wanted to be, they face widespread unemployment. Raised on dreams of material wealth, more than a third live with their parents well into their 20s. No one told them it would be this hard, they say, and older generations don’t understand how difficult it is to find a job, cover the rent, and pay off their huge student loans. Young people are told to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” observed Tiffany Vang, 23, in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. “But we’re not even wearing the same shoes anymore; we’re given high heels to race in this catch-22 marathon. It’s become a rite of passage for people my age to work for free even after college.” It bothers her, she says, when someone tells a young person, “You will be fine.” Because what if she’s not?

  “We are said to be entitled,” writes cartoonist Matt Bors, 30, on cnn.com. “We think we deserve something, that the world should hand us something for being here. We do. Like jobs . . . because student loans can’t be paid off with air.” He concludes, “Stop hating on Millennials. We didn’t create this mess. We came late to the banquet and were served up crumbs. Which we will Instagram before we eat. #YUM.”

  A lot has changed since the first edition of Generation Me was published in April 2006. At the time, the economy was doing well. Even so, I predicted that this generation would find the transition to adulthood difficult: After a childhood of optimism and high expectations, reality hit them like a smack in the face. That became even more true when the Great Recession hit in 2007. Technology has also fundamentally changed our world and this generation in particular. Back in 2006, only college students could get a Facebook account. YouTube had premiered just a year before, Twitter went online a few months later, and the iPhone debuted soon after. The generational conversation is also very different. In 2006, the generation born after 1980—variously called GenY or Millennials—was rarely discussed, outside of a book declaring them “the next Greatest Generation,” a few articles praising their high school community service, and—paradoxically—other articles describing them as “brash” and “entitled.”

  Things are different now. We take smartphones, social networking, and streaming video for granted. Gay marriage is legal and a black man has been elected president—twice. Millennials—the common label for the group I call Generation
Me—are now endlessly dissected. At least 10 books advise managers on how to work with them. HBO’s Girls depicts their struggles to reach independent adulthood, and Glee highlights their yearning for fame and tolerance for diversity. Time magazine, which featured Baby Boomers and Generation X on covers when their inaugural members were still in their 20s, finally published a cover article on Millennials in May 2013 when its oldest members were 31—seven years after Generation Me appeared. It was titled “The Me Me Me Generation.”

  The article spawned a huge reaction, from parody covers to opinion pieces. In the comments, the blog posts, and the videos, the emotion nearly leaps off the computer screen. One video featured a group of GenMe’ers mock-apologizing, saying, “You raised us to believe that we were special—so special we didn’t have to do anything to earn it. . . . We’re really sorry we suck so much.” But, they say, it’s the Boomers’ fault, not theirs: “It’s not like we jacked up college tuition prices, destroyed the manufacturing industry, started two quagmire wars, gutted the unions, destroyed the global economy, or left our offspring with an environmentally devastated planet. . . . It would be crazy if there were a generation that recklessly awful, huh?” GenMe’s other responses to the article varied from “Yes, but we actually are awesome” to “But older generations have always said younger generations were more self-centered.”

  But is this generation more self-centered than previous generations were at the same age? And what other characteristics define them? We now know. The first edition of Generation Me featured 14 studies on generational differences, based on data from 1.2 million people. In the years since, my coauthors and I have published 19 additional studies based on the responses of 11 million people. Most of these new studies draw from large, nationally representative surveys (including of high school students), providing a view of the entire generation, not just one selected segment. These findings, along with those from other researchers, are featured here for the first time. This is the main difference you will notice in this revised edition: much more data. These data capture the opinions and self-views of young people—not what older generations are saying about them, but what they say about themselves. The trends demonstrate the impact of recent cultural change on a new generation of Americans.

  These new studies confirm the conclusions of the first edition of Generation Me: this generation is more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable. They also add some new twists: exploring trends in religious belief, tolerance, trust in others, attitudes toward work, and even the names given to babies. Overall, the results suggest that GenMe’s anger is somewhat justified: everyone told them they were special and didn’t need anyone else, and then adulthood shows them, sometimes quite harshly, that these things just aren’t true.

  Because the studies described in this book survey people at the same age at different points in time, the differences cannot be due to age: they must reflect the changing times. This is a crucial point, as many people have argued that of course GenMe is self-focused—every generation is when young. But the studies show that GenMe is more self-focused than previous generations were when they were young.

  But haven’t older generations “always” criticized the younger generation? Perhaps, but the generational studies don’t measure older people’s criticisms—they measure how young people describe themselves. And if culture has become progressively more individualistic over the last century, each generation may actually be more self-focused than the last. Some, such as Elspeth Reeve in Atlantic Wire, have argued that “every generation” is the “me generation” because magazine articles have often described the next generation this way. However, that observation isn’t particularly relevant to the research finding that GenMe—by their own description—is more self-focused than Boomers were at the same age. Perhaps Boomers were also more self-focused than the previous generation, but that has little to do with GenMe. At base, Reeve is arguing that because something has been said before, it must be wrong. That seems nonsensical at best.

  But aren’t this generation’s characteristics the fault of their Boomer parents instead? Why blame GenMe for a world they didn’t create? In my view, it is not necessary to assign fault or blame for generational differences. Cultures change, and generations reflect those changes. It’s not a matter of blame. Focusing on whose “fault” it is also assumes that all cultural change is negative, yet of course it is not. For example, individualism—a now-prominent cultural influence—has advantages such as equality and tolerance, but disadvantages if it veers toward narcissism and overconfidence. GenMe reflects both trends.

  All of these trends have had an impact in the workplace, and sure enough, generations at work has become a hot topic over the last decade. Many books, business-magazine articles, and consulting firms seek to explain GenMe to managers trying to figure out their young employees. Unfortunately, few of these sources rely on empirical data. Fewer still rely on data collected over time—the type necessary to conclude that generational differences have occurred. A few years ago, I coauthored the first paper on generational differences in work attitudes based on a nationally representative, over-time dataset. This edition of Generation Me thus features a completely new chapter (“Generation Me at Work,” chapter 8) reviewing the evidence for generational differences in the workplace from this study and others. It also covers how managers can best recruit, retain, and motivate GenMe employees, and some tips for GenMe employees themselves.

  Do these findings “stereotype” the generations? No, because these studies compare empirical data on generational differences, not the perceptions of others. However, these comparisons do rely on averages. Not everyone in a generation will fit the average. It’s important to realize, though, that generational studies are far from unique in this respect: every scientific study looking at group differences uses averages. Sex differences are a good example. Some men cry more than some women, but those exceptions do not undermine the finding that, on average, women cry more often than men. Some in GenMe are extraordinarily humble, but that does not negate the finding that the average GenMe’er, compared to previous generations at the same age, is less humble.

  These findings do not seek to “label” everyone in this generation; they instead aim to discover how, on average, cultural change has affected young people. People differ based on many factors; generation is just one of them. However, the generational trends are remarkably similar across race, gender, and class. The idea that generational trends only appear among the “rich, white kids,” as some have asserted, is simply not true. However, almost all of the data on generational differences is based on US samples, so it is not clear whether the same trends appear in other cultures as well. Emerging research suggests that they do, but there’s much more work to be done.

  Along with the research results in this book, you’ll find quotes from real young people, pop-culture examples, and anecdotes. These have been updated as well, to reflect the pop culture influencing GenMe now—including the new technology that shapes their lives. Generations are about culture, and about real people, so the book would not be complete without this material. It’s also now possible to analyze pop culture more objectively. The Google Books Ngram Viewer can trace the use of any word or any phrase up to five words as far back as the 1800s. I’ve added many analyses from that database here. In the first edition of Generation Me, I guessed that the now-ubiquitous phrase believe in yourself was uncommon the 1950s. Now the Google Ngram Viewer can prove it.

  Some have pointed out that pop culture examples and anecdotes are not data. I agree. The examples are meant to illustrate, not replace, the data. The data always come first in structuring a chapter and its conclusions. The data already paints a specific picture—the examples are the individual brushstrokes in that portrait. Yes, counterexamples could be found, but it would be confusing to include them when the examples are meant to illustrate the general trends in the data. So no, the examples are not data, but they are not meant to be.

&
nbsp; Can the data be interpreted in different ways? Of course. To some people, a change from 47% to 52% sounds significant; to others, that might seem small. In most cases I will present the numbers so you can judge for yourself whether the change is small or big. Keep in mind, though, that a small change at the average can lead to larger changes at the extremes. A shift of a few points on the narcissism scale seems small, for example, until you realize that at least 50% more college students now score problematically high in narcissism. This is also a case where it’s best to consider all of the data. Some may question a specific measure or a particular sample, but when similar results appear across many measures and samples, the overall picture becomes clear. In some cases, the data are contradictory, and I’ve included those too.

  Along with the world’s changing, I have also changed. When I began writing Generation Me, I was 32 years old and had just gotten married. I’m now 42 and have three children, all born after the book was published. So I’m not the representative of the young generation that I used to be. Thus I’ve taken out some of the examples from my own life and those of my friends and family born in the 1970s. Other examples, such as my experiences with self-focused projects in school, remain as illustrations of the nascent movement experienced full blown by those born after me.

  I’ve also gained valuable perspective from others in the last decade, through talks at businesses, universities, nonprofit organizations, student-affairs groups, human-resource conferences, and military bases. During these visits, I was privileged to hear the perspectives of many people—both in GenMe and older—on how generational trends have affected them.

  I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the readers who made the first edition of Generation Me a success. I was pleased when people told me it was a fun read, and even more pleased when young GenMe’ers told me they recognized the culture that shaped them. But we know so much more now about Generation Me, and I’m excited to be able to share it with you in this new edition. I hope you enjoy it.