this is stuff you like and the youth of today well there are highs and lows
we're looking at iGen by Jean Twenge today and the books full title is iGen why
today's super connected kids are growing up less rebellious more tolerant less
happy and completely unprepared for adulthood asterisk and what that means
for the rest of us so first I have to say that this is a very American book
because Twenge is a researcher and all of the data she uses is from American
surveys and that makes it a really focused book and that's kind of nice she
doesn't talk a lot about what other countries are doing but that's because
she doesn't have the data on it iGen is about young people in the United
States today people born from about 1995 onwards how they differ from their
parents and grandparents at the same ages and how we can help them with the
problems that their parents and grandparents didn't have as a book I
like iGen because it's informative it's easy to read and it doesn't moralize it
doesn't blame it doesn't tell you that all of the problems that iGen are
having are the kids fault or the parents fault or societies fault or I don't know
somebody's fault. Twenge tells you what she sees in the generational data and
then she offers some suggestions to improve the problems and those
suggestions are not particularly controversial ones for example higher
rates of depression are bad and so here are some ways that we might fix it: get
off your phone and go to sleep no I mean it should you be asleep right
now I will still be here in the morning if you should you can put the phone down
that is what the watch later' button is for so iGen as a group are less likely
to get pregnant as teenagers they're less likely to binge drink as teenagers
they're less likely to smoke they're less likely to take drugs and all of
these things are good on the other hand their levels of anxiety and depression
as a group are very high. Twenge is a generational researcher and so she
describes the graphs which usually mark the changes between generations as you
know gentle slopes things go up things go down but generally not dramatically
iGen however is nothing if not dramatic so the bulk of the book is a series of
chapters on the main points about iGen and how they differ from their
predecessors they're less rebellious they're less religious they're more
concerned with safety particularly emotional safety (casual sex? Ooh, make
sure not to catch feelings! I'm not sure how you prevent yourself from catching
feelings but there we are. CS Lewis would have a field day.
after all to love at all is to be vulnerable) and iGen are also generally
more emotionally fragile when presented with beliefs that conflict with their
own. Hence all of those generation snowflake cracks in the media I find the chapter
on safety particularly interesting because Twenge draws on a point that she
makes earlier where iGen see childhood as safety and adulthood as scary and
dangerous and linked to campus safe spaces after all safe spaces often
involve childlike elements beanbags puppy videos coloring books and she also
explains how colleges and universities are increasingly having to take on a
more parent like role as mediator between the students iGen may leave
home to go to college but they increasingly seem to want quasi parental
oversight while they're there or even actual parental oversight actually in
March 2016 some Emery University students chalked the words Trump 2016 onto
the footpaths and some other Emery University students responded with a
protest and cries of "you are not listening. Come speak to us
we are in pain" but where can you work that people won't disagree with you
where can you live where can you go how can you be in a relationship with
someone because they're bound to disagree with you on something at some
point possibly even something very fundamental and it's also the case that
iGen are marrying and having children later than their predecessors presumably
by that point they've worked out how to constructively disagree so maybe they're
just getting to it later no I do not assume and nor does Twenge to be fair
that every single iGener is a fainting flower who can't cope with disagreement
but these individual incidents she talks about are often illustrative of the
general trend the general trends being longer childhoods and increased
preference for authority figures to mediate things. in popular imagination
your teenage years are the time your most rebellious when you throw off the
shackles of parental involvement and you do your own thing but that doesn't seem
to be the case for iGen they're dating less in their teens they're having sex
less they're getting drunk less it seems that increasingly those teenage
rebellions are being put off until their late teens or early 20s or maybe they're
just bypassing them entirely the social media stuff that Twenge talks about always
gets the most attention because people like to say that the smartphones are
going to kill us all but it is an important aspect of the book and she presents some
very compelling research that says that too much time spent on a smartphone is
very bad in a number of different ways too much time on social media doesn't
just make you feel more depressed and more anxious it also messes up your
sleep for example which is another thing that will make you more depressed and
more anxious so it's really a vicious circle as to what that means for the
US as a society it remains to be seen and the kids are gonna be alright I'm
sure but if you want to know what Jean Twenge recommends for the worrying
things about iGen well you're probably not going to be very surprised by them
because most of them are really common sense too much use of social media is
not only correlated with depression and anxiety it actively makes it worse so
get off your phone limit the time you spend on it
don't have your phone next to your bed just buy a regular alarm clock there is
no real substitute for spending time with people in person so you should do
that and if you're trying to be a good parent to iGen remember that resilience
and teaching kids independence and self-reliance are as important as
keeping them safe after all at some point they're going to have to learn to
do everything without you may as well be sooner rather than later so have you
read iGen did you agree or disagree with jane Twenge's take on your
generation or the generation below you if you're an old person like I am and if
you're outside the US like me have you seen the same general trends that she
talks about in the US. in your own country and which country is that you
can tell us in the comments and remember that whether you want to agree or
disagree or leave a comment that's entirely unrelated if I see you making
personal attacks on other people they will be deleted because we can disagree
constructively that's a thing that we can do because we're grownups or if
we're not actually all grown-ups we are at least all reasonably emotionally
mature people so thank you for watching if this was your first ever video
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show possible and regardless I will see you all very soon