Posted on 04/21/2006 11:54:15 AM PDT by Incorrigible
BY EVELYN THEISS
They are brash and cynical. They believe they're entitled to quick financial and professional success. They're also lonely and anxious.
That's the picture that psychologist Jean Twenge draws in her new book about the young men and women she dubs "Generation Me."
On the plus side, these young people are confident and also extremely tolerant of those who are different from them. Born in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, they are the children of baby boomers, who she says were incorrectly considered the most self-focused generation.
Not even close, says Twenge, an associate professor at San Diego State University.
She's 34, and therefore part of "GenMe," as she calls it. She has spent more than a decade gathering data on what makes this group different from generations that came before. The results are the subject of her new book, "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before."
Two trends are at the core of the book, says Twenge. They emerged in her comparison of personality tests given by researchers to thousands of boomers when they were young and to those in Generation Me in recent years.
"One is that there has been an incredible rise in self-esteem and belief in the individual; and on the flip side, there's been a large rise in anxiety and depression," she says.
Twenge suggests that the two biggest influences in increasing self-esteem were schools and the proliferation of self-help media -- though parents also played a part.
While students in earlier generations felt good about themselves when they accomplished something, now their self-esteem is high even if their performance is poor and they didn't put any effort into doing better, she says.
Twenge isn't the first researcher who has come down on the self-esteem movement. Former Hoover Institution research fellow Charles Sykes in the mid-1990s published a book called "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add."
And Twenge has her critics, including psychotherapist and author Belleruth Naparstek, who disagrees with Twenge's theory that increasing self-esteem has done such damage.
"I haven't read the study, but I think it's a matter of definition," says Naparstek. "I believe that any young adult who has cultivated his or her self-esteem has also cultivated a sense of compassion and responsibility to others, and I don't think that is missing in any way with this generation."
According to Twenge, her research shows that young people 30 and 40 years ago cared what other people thought of them, while the philosophy of today's youth is that what others think doesn't matter.
She says GenMe has been taught by parents and teachers that "you can be anything you want to be." So when young people see celebrity singers, actors and athletes on television shows and in magazines that celebrate their wealth, they develop unrealistic, even grandiose, ideas about what they will have and be able to afford.
With college, health care and housing costs skyrocketing, and jobs being exported to other countries, it's no surprise that young people get anxious and depressed when they slam up against economic and competitive realities, Twenge says.
Unrealistically high expectations might have been fueled by grade inflation in high school, Twenge says. Nearly half of students who were college freshman in 2004 had an A average, compared with 18 percent in 1968, according to a report by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. That occurred even as SAT scores declined over the years, and far fewer students reported studying six hours a week.
Many young people learned they didn't have to work all that hard in school to be rewarded, she says. So who can blame them for thinking those easy rewards will carry over to the work world.
Sykes says he isn't surprised at what Twenge's work shows.
"If you spend your life in a bubble-wrap of feel-good self-esteem, the real world is going to come as a rude shock," he says. "The self-esteem movement wasn't designed to prepare children for adulthood or adversity; it didn't prepare them for the bumps and bruises of life."
But Naparstek says it isn't just young people who have been negatively affected by the emphasis on celebrities.
"This whole business of translating success into strictly material terms leaves everyone addicted to goodies and starving for them," she says. "It makes people want to fill their emptiness with stuff, but I don't think that's strictly an issue for young people -- it makes everyone crazy."
Twenge says studies show that twice as many young people reported symptoms of panic attacks in 1995 compared with 1980. While the suicide rate for middle-aged people has declined steeply since 1950, the suicide rate for young people has more than doubled.
Twenge theorizes that besides dashed expectations about life, other factors contributing to depression and anxiety are the loneliness and isolation that many young people face as they are likelier to live alone, postpone marriage and hook up sexually rather than having dating relationships.
April 20, 2006
(Evelyn Theiss is a staff writer for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at etheiss@plaind.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Take out the "brash" and "financial" part and I guess that's me.
Wait a minute, now "GenX" is only from the '70s up? What happened to the late '60s?
And I think it's funny she uses the epithet "Gen Me" when it was the sainted Hippies (some of the Baby Boomers) who came up with the epithet "the Me Generation" for those immediately after them coming of age in the '70s.
Proves to me the Hippies always get away with everything - including calling everyone else "Gen ME" while they themselves ironicaly ARE exactly that (despite this woman's claims).
And 1 other thing....I'm sick of this.....
....WE GEN X WEREN'T ALL RAISED BY HIPPIES!!!!! (Proud daughter of "Silent Gen".)
ping
My two gen X kids are doing very well, and I am proud of them.
Parents play a huge role in the development of a generation. I don't blame all boomers as my parents were boomers. They instilled in me a strong work ethic which has served me well. However, I saw lots of my peers being spoiled rotten and being handed everything on a silver platter. Now may of these spoiled children are moving back home since they can't achieve instant career success and buy a 3,000 sf home in a trendy area.
I made peanuts for my first 7 years out of college. My wife and I lived in cracker-box apartments for a time, and then finally purchased a very modest home. However, I gained great experience, and have reached a point in my career when I can now afford some of the things my parents have. It took me over 10 years, but that's made it all the more satisfying.
Give up those dreams of using the equity in your home to afford a nice assisted living facility. Junior's gonna have other plans for you, starting with a search for Judge Greer, Jr., all the while muttering about your deteriorated quality of life. Think that "we're here for your liver" Monty Python skit was cute? How about if it played out "your quality of life has sunk below acceptable levels" "no, it hasn't! I'm perfectly happy" "no, sorry, that's it for you! Now where did you put that life insurance policy?"
Generation X
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For other uses, see Generation X (disambiguation).
Generation X is a term for the generation of people born in the Western world (especially people born in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom) following the post-World War II baby boom generation. While the exact dates bounding this age demographic are highly debated, those born from the 1960s to the early 1980s are generally agreed-upon as possible members of this group. The term is used in demography, the social sciences, and marketing, though it is most often used in pojklkpular culture. The generation's influence over pop culture began in the 1980s and has only grown in the 1990s and 2000s.
Although the origins of the term "Generation X" go back at least as far as the early 1960s, it was popularized by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, in which Coupland describes the angst of those born between roughly 1960 and 1965, who, while technically part of the Baby Boom Generation, feel no connection to its cultural icons. In Coupland's usage, the "X" of Generation X referred to the namelessness of a generation that was coming into an awareness of its existence as a separate group while at the same time feeling completely dwarfed and culturally overshadowed by the Baby Boomer generation of which it was ostensibly a part. The term Generation X has come to mean something else in popular usage (see below), having been appropriated by the generation following the Baby Boomers -- leaving Coupland's Generation X once again nameless. Generation X has also been described as a generation consisting of those people whose teen years were touched by the 1980s, although many who are considered part of this generation had their teenage years stretching into the 1990s.
Another common description of Generation X includes within it those people who grew up in a period of transition (1945–1990) beginning with the end of World War II and the decline of colonial imperialism and ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Thus, the transition between colonialism and globalization is thought to separate the Baby Boomers from the Baby Busters, a sub-generation of Generation X made up of the earliest born members.
Of course -- it is always somebody else's fault.
As a university professor, I found the following excerpts from the article to be especially interesting:
While students in earlier generations felt good about themselves when they accomplished something, now their self-esteem is high even if their performance is poor and they didn't put any effort into doing better, she says. . . .
Unrealistically high expectations might have been fueled by grade inflation in high school, Twenge says. Nearly half of students who were college freshman in 2004 had an A average, compared with 18 percent in 1968, according to a report by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. That occurred even as SAT scores declined over the years, and far fewer students reported studying six hours a week.
The self-esteem movement certainly has a lot to answer for. So do the colleges and universities, which have let standards fall so far.
Many good things in this article. First, I am considered a generation X because I was born in 1969, but the article says that the complainers started in 1970 so I guess I am safe from that...
Second, my parents are boomers (born in 1946) and I think they did a splendid job on us three. I am 37, my brother will be 35 and my sister is 33. I have three kids, my sister has three kids and my brother has not had any children yet because I don't think his wife can have them. I have been married for 12 years, my sister 10 years, and my brother for 7 years. My parents are going to be married 39 years this year. So don't worry about what they say about baby boomers. You guys did a great job.
Stop being so nice to Baby Boomers! I love the smell of Boomer bashing in the morning!
How that can be left out of the study is beyond me.
Also, the first generation where God was kicked out of the schools, abortion was legal and glorified, among other things.
What?
What you did was "delay gratification" and well, that just isn't going to work now.
Today, I can take a pill to be happy. I can sue someone to be rich. I can eat what I want and have surgery to clean up the mess. I can sleep with who ever I want. I can wear my pants around my knees and complain about being judged. I don't need to work. After 12 years of school I can't speak English or balance a check book. I don't want to be responsible. Did I mention I have to take a pill to be happy?
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Exactly. Would we "need" 20 million illegal alians working in the USA if 40 million of GenX hadn't been aborted?
Give up those dreams of using the equity in your home to afford a nice assisted living facility. Junior's gonna have other plans for you, starting with a search for Judge Greer,
Dearest Junior,
All of our finances are locked up tighter than a drum and you have access to none of it. You never made it into the will and a power-of-attorney has taken away any diabolical decisions you thought were going to be yours to make. Kiss it goodbye, Junior.
Love & kisses,
Mom and Dad
P.S. We always did like your sister better than you.
Bingo.
I know. It hurts my heart to think about it. So many children who never even got a chance in this great country of ours.
Stop being so nice to Baby Boomers! I love the smell of Boomer bashing in the morning!
LMAOROTF.
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