iGen by Jean Twenge | The Kids Are Probably Gonna Be All Right | Stuff You Like

Or: iGen: How Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy, and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood*
*and What That Means for the Rest of Us

[MagusMirificus]

I feel like the "Longer childhoods, hesitance towards being independent" thing is partially economic in nature: it's harder than it ever has been to become financially independent enough to move out, and there's less guarantee than ever that you'll be able to remain stable if you do. There's less money, less opportunity, and less real estate going around, and lots of young people who do move out before 25 end up moving back in at some point. It's obviously going to breed a culture of dependence when independence seems so initially unattainable for the lower classes.

[Wincenworks]

I think there's kind of an irony that a video citing the need for self-reliance and dealing with people but also needing to stress that venomous comments etc will be deleted. I have a friend who works in a college (in Australia) and an ongoing problem they have (that leads to protests and complaints etc) is that a lot of the administration there likes to lean on the idea of "learn self-reliance and to deal with people" as a means to excuse themselves from that kind of responsibility. A lot of what previous generations refer to as being babied and wanting supervision is often simply demanding that the people with authority (who are pretty much always previous generations... unsurprisingly) actually meet their responsibilities in terms of providing the kind of environment they get paid to or are otherwise obligated to provide.

It kind of reminds me of how in pre-revolution Cuba one of the ongoing disputes between cigar rollers and their bosses was their having readers who would sit on the factory floor and simply read whatever they were asked to: novels, newspapers, books of poetry, etc. The reason the factory owners were opposed to this was not a belief the workers should be bored or would be distracted, but because these readers allowed the illiterate cigar rollers to have access to vast information such as news from around the world and discussions of workers rights happening in courts, etc.

Similarly, a lot of people from previous generations seem to resent the most recent generation's access to information about rights, expectations, etc. A lot of well off people in the same generation are also upset that their ability to bully and exploit is being impeded by their peers being aware of rights and expectations.

[CT-pvgu]

The older generations always hate the younger generations. This is how it’s always been through history. She makes some good points in the book but it’s like - what are you going to do about it? Social media and smartphones aren’t going anywhere, it’s too late. We should be thankful that we still have a choice, one day in the future we probably won’t have a choice. This is the best time in history to be alive!

[midnightfox]

I am familiar with Twenge. My last research project initially relied on her data, but we found that her research methods were flawed. There are some interesting published critiques of her research on narcissism that you can look up. And I generally agree that she makes parallels that don't work and seems to exaggerates her findings. I'm not saying everything she has done is not valid: just that the research of hers that we examined had flaws.

[lstndamned]

On the issue of rebellion, I wonder if people are just rebelling in different ways rather than not rebelling. When I was younger, I remember not doing the whole booze and drugs thing because it seemed like all the masses did that and I wanted to be separate from them.

[juliamavroidi]

Bingedrinking has actually been on the rise in Germany, since a few factors like changes in the school system, changes in the job market and the pressure to succeed that comes with them leaves teenahers with less free time, so the free time they do have, becomes more intense.

[gcd]

I feel like 9/11 did more to influence my generation than anything else. Everyone was scarred by it except those who were too young/ weren’t even born yet( like me). Then the response to that bubble wrapped the world, everyone was concerned about terror attacks and when you grow up under that influence...
I’ve never been on an airplane without going through TSA and I’m turning 19 Monday!!

[roadsforman]

Dang it, Jill, you called me out. It's 2 am and I'm watching on my phone. Haha.

[jetpage]

People are understandably trying to find a reason for the elevated rates of depression, but I think they miss a very simple part of that equation. These kids are smarter. The American delusion that everyone gets to be Prom Queen has finally broken down under astute observation. Very few people get to be Prom Queen, and the deck is stacked in favor of certain individuals. Kids with impossible dreams and a future in standard retail are becoming aware of that very early on. For generations, America has dangled the hope of greatness in front of everyday workers, lest they stop bolstering the Prom Queens. But kids see the puppet show of American life now, and yearn for Sesame Street.

[HallowqueenCrafting]

I am a parent of two children, one of whom turns eleven next month, and I'm forever getting surprised comments about things that I teach them to do. Normal, run of the mill things like stripping and remaking their beds, and doing laundry and basic cooking, or at least cooking prep. I'm sorry, but if my kids can work their tablets, a washing machine and a dryer should not be difficult for them. And the sex stuff, my god. My four year old saw one of my pads with blood on it and asked me about it so I told her in a very simplified, and what I considered age appropriate way how periods work. She is a girl, this is how her body will work eventually, it shouldn't be a mystery, but OMG the pearl clutching I got from other parents when I mentioned it. There was still more pearl clutching when my daughter at six came home and asked me if girls could marry girls, to which I told her yes, they could, since in Canada same sex marriage had at that point been legal for nearly 10 years. She then proceeded to tell me that she wasn't going to marry the boy she had been talking about but a female friend instead. I told her that would be lovely because she's six, in another week she'll have changed her mind at least once. They're kids, but one day they will be grown ups. It may be tempting to keep them thinking in childish heteronormative ways for a long period of time, but it ultimately stunts them. They want to learn, and they'll have to eventually. As much as we want to cherish their childhoods and want them to, we also have to prepare them for the adult world they will have to take their place in eventually, and if we do it gradually, it won't be a huge shock to them later.

[iluzonik]

The Watch Later button seems as a very nice feature. Until I look at my Watch Later playlist and see I have more than 4000 videos that I want to Watch Later. And there are new videos coming up all the time...

[minski]

I am NOT going to call them iGen! The generation is not produced by Apple...

[TheMuseSappho]

I'm glad you decided to cover this book! I have to say I disagree with Twenge's take on the politics of my generation. I think ours is a time of more extreme politics and dog whistles. At least one of the questions she asks in her survey uses a dog whistle without realizing it (I think it was something about IQ differences in races which is a common race realism talking point). Often I find when people talk about how kids today cannot handle other opinions they fail to acknowledge that hey we're not getting angry about Romney getting elected it's Donald "Grab them by the Pussy/They're not sending their best/Sh#thole Countries" Trump. We were told that we lived in post racial America only to come of age to Nazis marching in the streets chanting "The Jews will not replace us!"

[fatfared]

It may be that I am a Brit, as well, and so cannot comment much on the US, but I did not agree with Twenge.

First, I find she takes much of the data at face value, without stress testing some of its assumptions. For example, the statement there is more depression now is actually a presumptive reading of that data that is not necessarily correct. What is correct is that we are more aware of depression and mental health in general, and so are much better at identifying and recording people's mental health, but that does not mean mental health problems did not previously exist. To put it in perspective, we recently discovered the hepegivirus. Before we discovered this virus, no one was recorded as having it. That meant when we discovered the first case of it, we had a 100% increase in hepegivirus cases over night. I know this example is somewhat crude, but I do feel it illustrates a very important point about data and mental health. It would have been good to see a little more appreciation of this in the book.

Secondly, she seems to take a snap shot view of a generation, as opposed to taking a more long-term view (ironic considering her research is on generations). This is why she seems to see the move towards longer childhoods quite negatively and comes to the somewhat erroneous conclusion that 'all these youngens are not ready to be adults'. Actually, all we are currently seeing is what has been happening for over a century now. In the Victorian era, one was basically an adult once they hit their teenage years. As wealth has grown, life expectancy has increased and the requirements of adulthood have expanded, so too has the length of childhood been stretched as a necessary consequence.

Thirdly, on polarised politics. There certainly has been some collapsing of the 'middle vote' in democracies (though often massively overstated), but not in a way that is completely out of whack with history (though we will need another decade to start really reviewing it) and often the more extreme voting trends tend not to be by younger voters. There is something to be said about the effects of current 'key issues' on how many democratic systems are operating (i.e. more government shut downs), but again I would not say I see young people as the drivers there. When people talk of polarised politics in relation to young, I guess what they mean is the 'snowflake' myth, but beyond anecdotal evidence on things such as 'safe spaces' (which Twenge misrepresents in my opinion), there is little evidence this generation is any more or less easily offended than any other generation. It is just their values and what they care about which seems to have changed. I find it interesting that the moral panics of the 90s about mini-skirts never got people talking of snowflakes, but young people complaining about sexist jokes about the female body get shouted down as needing to toughen up.

That all being said, much of the advice is pretty non-controversial; I just do not feel like any of it really comes from the book itself. it is instead just good sense. Still, sleep is important, so off to bed with me. :)

[animanya]

That awkward feeling that you can’t answer about your iGens in your country because you’re so iGen that you didn’t contact with another human being in years...

[Loremastrful]

Old person here. Well if 40-something is old to you. While i haven't read this book, its refrain is depressingly familiar. The youth of a nation are being corrupted by ***. If not social media today, then the smartphones of yesterday or the cellphones before that, and chat rooms before that and you get the idea. I find it a bit presumptuous. Similar pieces to Igen presume there is some idea setting for childhood and since we aren't there technology in some form or another is to blame. Additionally, these think pieces only last as long as the technology in question is novel. Not to many studies of the lasting effects of landlines in homes or desktop computers in the 20-teens. Mostly, people figure out how to negotiate the technology available. Maybe IGen is different, but the pieces I've read just feed a decades long narrative of technology anxiety. In a few years time, it will someone else saying the same thing about some new bit of tech.

[pillmuncher]

As I always expected: less drugs lead to more depression.

On a more sober note, since I'm 50yo now (still Punk, BTW), I also miss the rebellious youth putting an old fart like me in his place, like we did with our elders, when i was a teenager. Speaking for Germany, I have to add.

OTOH, youth is about learning how to become a person in this world. With more and more persons and a world becoming more complex everyday, there is obviously more to learn and it takes more and more time to do it. We should probably send the kids to school longer and to college later in life, maybe not before they're 21. Then they'll maybe don't need safe spaces anymore. Please note, I'm not mocking them. I sincerely believe many of them need safe spaces, because in relation to the complexities they are confronted with, they aren't as mature as we were, in relation to the complexities we faced.

[Shadowqueer]

This is an older video, so I doubt anyone is going to see this, but there was one point that found me fascinating and troubled: the point about rebelliousness. I can give you a simple reason my generation are drinking less, smoking less, having sex less, doing drugs less, etc., in their teens. And this is something you sorta have to be American to know:
It's illegal. And can have lifelong impacts. And though, for white people, that rarely comes into play, POC are arrested at high rates, and these types of things can get you put on lists that will haunt you for the rest of your life. 
To quote you, probably paraphrasing Twenge: "it seems increasingly that those teenage rebellions are being put off to their late teens and early twenties (4:10)" Yeah, they are, because in general people can get in serious legal trouble if you don't. here's a list of legal ages to do stuff in the US (averages, to be clear)
Drinking Age: 21;
Smoking Age: 21;
Age of Consent: 16 in many states, but you have to be having sex with someone of similar age, up to 18. Anything else is Statutory Rape and will put you on sex offender lists, not to mention possibly prison.
Other Drugs: Illegal, plain and simple, and cracked down on HARD for many years.
Basically, the lack of teenage "rebellion" is generally because it carries short and long-term legal consequences, and the police are getting better and better at tracking many of these. No wonder we're scared.

[fatcoyote]

One of the most subtle, and dangerous, aspects of the inter connectivity allowed by being online all the time is the ability to associate with people who ONLY believe the same things that you do, to sign off and go to another site when you do meet opposition, or even to block or mute people who aggressively disagree with you, aggressively in this case meaning that they wan to sway you opinion, and won't drop it, but not necessarily in a "mean" or spiteful.

After all, aggression isn't a bad thing. To be passionate is to be aggressive. However, too often, and without the context of personal interaction, personal judgments can't be made as effectively. There's a lot of difference between, "Listen to me, " and "I will MAKE YOU listen to me."

[larrycurtis]

😮need to read Neil Howe's books he'd compare to Silent/protected generation 1925 to 42