Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before

by Jean M. Twenge

book data

448 ratings, 3.56 average rating, 128 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		17%
4		36%
3		31%
2		10%
1		3%

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published

March 6th 2007 by Free Press (first published 2006)

details

Paperback, 304 pages

isbn

0743276981 (isbn13: 9780743276986)

description

Called "The Entitlement Generation" or Gen Y, they are storming into schools, colleges, and businesses all over the country. In this provoca…more

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Aug 12, 2007

Babiejenks added it

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: no one

generation me has a promising start. i can dig the whole, the self-esteem education approach has developed a generation with a heightened predisposition for narcissism bit. as the daughter of a moscow conservatory-trained violist, i have been hearing my mother complaining for the past two decades about how american students (as opposed to european and asian ones) are totally incapable of dealing with criticism. with a music instrument there is no "A for Effort." you either hit the righ...more generation me has a promising start. i can dig the whole, the self-esteem education approach has developed a generation with a heightened predisposition for narcissism bit. as the daughter of a moscow conservatory-trained violist, i have been hearing my mother complaining for the past two decades about how american students (as opposed to european and asian ones) are totally incapable of dealing with criticism. with a music instrument there is no "A for Effort." you either hit the right note, or you didn't. so it would definitely seem like a valid observation that america's particular ego-insulating take on child development could yield a lot of egotistic children.

there's even a semi-astute extension of this theory into an explanation for the civic cynicism in the recent generation of once would be "rebels." all this focus on the self, i.e, "you gotta believe in yourself, and then you can achieve anything," or "you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else" could logically translate to a widespread political apathy. after all, if things are screwed up, you're supposed to be able to take care of it simply by believing in yourself more... right? not by joining with the other people who are in the same boat as you and working towards affecting larger institutional change together, certainly. while prior generations of youth were protesting, and organizing towards making an impact in social justice and civil liberties, we can't even be bothered to vote. the promotion of a rampant, definitively american style of radical individualism (hellooo, Ego, how YOU doin`?) certainly could be a suspect to bring in for questioning on that charge.

however, beyond these two points the book is a mess of contradiction, anecdotal "proof," and some mind-bogglingly trite answers to the narcissism epidemic (how did the editor okay "watch less MTV, and get your daily dose of essential fatty acids, kids" as a valid "solution".... seriously?)

the biggest disappointment of the book is that it actually fails to present any kind of sufficient analysis for the implications and applications of this elevated cultural narcissism. don't get me wrong, i think the diagnosis is dead-on. i just don't think the symptom chart is all that accurate.

perhaps the most glaring oversight in the book is the complete ignorance or denial of two very significant books on the future of life for the coming generation, resulting in statements that end up being glaring contradictions of prior trend-forecasts.

to read the full review visit: http://social-creature.com/too-narcissis...(less)

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Jun 27, 2008

Jeanne rated it:

As a fellow Gen Xer, I looked forward to reading this book. Generation Me started out with a bang and ended on a sour note. The extensive research and results that Twenge quotes in the first few chapters is impressive, albeit redundant. She makes a solid case displaying the factors behind the current sense of entitlement and subsequent depression of today's Gen Xers.

However, things begin to fall apart halfway through the book. The reader begins to get a sense that the author is work...more As a fellow Gen Xer, I looked forward to reading this book. Generation Me started out with a bang and ended on a sour note. The extensive research and results that Twenge quotes in the first few chapters is impressive, albeit redundant. She makes a solid case displaying the factors behind the current sense of entitlement and subsequent depression of today's Gen Xers.

However, things begin to fall apart halfway through the book. The reader begins to get a sense that the author is working backwards by developing a theory and finding (shaky) research to support it or ignoring facts altogether to support her theory. She quotes statistics supposing to show how housing costs, including taxes, have risen astronomically, but glosses over the fact that average house is larger. An attitude of whining quickly ensues. She illustrates over and over how much a small one-bedroom condo costs in some large city. Perhaps Gen Xers would do better to realize that location in real estate matters, and just because a condo in San Diego is half a million dollars, doesn't automatically mean that they deserve to have a job affording the condo.

The saddest and most disappointing conclusion Twenge draws is that relating to having children and working Moms. Quote from the book, "...children who attend day care centers are actually smarter [than children who do not]." This is a perfect example of formulating a theory and searching out a study to support it. The small study referenced included only 1000 children, mostly from low-income families. It has been challenged time and time again with results from larger studies stating that there is no difference in the intelligence of children who attend day care versus maternal care when mothers' education was factored into the study. Her statement is inflammatory, adds fuel to the fire in the so-called Mommy Wars, and does nothing to help women unite in caring for children.

She also vilifies the statement that the last two decades of parenting have the belief that "Only you, the individual mother, are responsible for your child's welfare." If the mother should not be responsible for the child's welfare and the one to say "the buck stops here", than whom does Twenge suggest take on this role? Even in a village, someone must step up and take responsiblity.

It's ironic that in the 30-page chapter devoted to providing solutions, Twenge, herself a self-focused Gen Xer, spends more time telling the rest of society how to adjust to Gen Xers rather than asking Gen Xers to develop and change. The list she generates for employers alone to relate to Gen Xers is ridiculous. It includes things such as including video clips and moving graphics in training seminars because without them Gen Xers will be bored and put to sleep; and teaching them how to "clean up" their language and use Mr. & Mrs. when addressing older folks. What is her first recommendation to Gen Xers? To quit watching MTV's Crib show. Only two brief paragraphs are devoted to Gen Xers learning to develop realistic expectations.

And continuing the same vein of irony, Twenge says that the Gen Xers are entitled to paid parental leave (almost all the other countries in the world have paid parental leave, why not US? - can you hear the whining?), a system of public preschools for 3- and 4- year olds (YIKES! The government and public schools are doing so well with K - 12, let's give them the 3 year olds, too), tax deductible child care expenses, and a change in school hours (to more closely match working parents' hours).

This book should be renamed Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and What Everybody Else Should Do For Them and Give Them Because the Baby Boomers Screwed Them Up.
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Aug 20, 2007

Susan rated it:

(review of isbn 0743276973)

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials and those who love/emply them

This book is not, thankfully, a "kids today!" diatribe. The author is firmly rooted in Gen-Me (anyone born post 1960, it seems) and examines her own prejudices, expectations, entitlements as she asks the reader to do. If you grew up accepting "Free to Be You and Me" as nothing new--perfectly obvious that mommies are people and can be firemen and that you shouldn't put your horse in a dress--then this book is about you.

Gen-Me is not necessarily about selfishness (t...more

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Feb 08, 2009

Aoife rated it:

This book was all over the place. Twenge makes a few good points, but mostly it seems like about halfway through she forgot what her point was. While she starts out arguing that our generation (which spans birth years from about 1970 to...the present, it seems) is selfish and needs to get over itself, somehow by the end she is arguing for mandatory government funded preschool for 3 year olds. And ranting about how at least we're more tolerant of gays. And frantically throwing out as many pop cul...more This book was all over the place. Twenge makes a few good points, but mostly it seems like about halfway through she forgot what her point was. While she starts out arguing that our generation (which spans birth years from about 1970 to...the present, it seems) is selfish and needs to get over itself, somehow by the end she is arguing for mandatory government funded preschool for 3 year olds. And ranting about how at least we're more tolerant of gays. And frantically throwing out as many pop culture references as she can pack into a paragraph, including block quotes from "Batman Begins." I don't know what to say to this. Deadlines are killer, I guess?

In general while some of her number-crunching is indeed impressive, Twenge relies too much on pop culture crap to tell her what "our generation" thinks and how we behave. While there is indeed some correlation between what we watch on TV and who we are as people, it seems ridiculous to turn to Law and Order spinoffs, The OC, and sensationalist CBS reports on teen sex as primary sources. There's a streak of intellectual laziness in this book such that I nearly expected her to start citing Wikipedia articles.

There's also an overbearing tone of snarky dismissiveness that makes Twenge's prose hard to handle even when I agree with her. Gratuitous cliched parenthetical asides like "yes Virginia, such places to exist" in referring to France's system of social safety nets are distracting, off-point, and fail to add anything to the entertainment value of the book. It simply alienates the reader by letting us know just how poorly the author thinks of us.

The entire chapters on sex and tolerance both seemed off-point and like they belonged in another book. Either one could have been tied in to the overarching theme of selfishness, individualism, and "self-esteem" without too much effort, but Twenge did not put in this rudimentary amount of effort, so the chapters just sit there, filled with shocking and stunning pop culture references and some statistics, waiting for someone to interpret them.

(I suppose she, too, expects we'll give her a trophy for trying?)

And ironically, it's hard to ignore just how often Twenge calls attention to herself, in all her individual specialness, in the pages of this book where she attempts to skewer our generational narcissism. Right off the bat, in all the bragging about her scholarly research as an undergrad and grad student, there's supposedly humorous comments about how the librarians must have seen the piles of books she left in the stacks and wondered what she was doing. Yes, your extra special and unusual habit of leaving books and journals on desks in an academic library must surely have drawn their undivided and fascinated attention!

Twenge also makes the Baby Boomers out to be selfless, altruistic, spiritual people in contrast to the shallow narcissism and selfish worrying of Gen "Me." This makes no sense. Children are raised by parents. The psychodynamic theorist in me is tempted to probe into why Twenge engages in this kind of "splitting" but honestly, I'm not that interested. "Whatever."(less)

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May 28, 2008

Dia rated it:

Before I even read this book -- just upon reading reviews of it -- I was gleefully using it to support long-pent-up rants aimed at the younger people I work with. (Behind their backs, of course. And I really do love them. But.) As I began reading it, though, the rants melted into sadness...and more sadness...and finally outright anxiety on behalf of the folks it describes, which actually (though not technically) include myself. The research is sound, and the prognostications are not pretty. ...more

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Apr 03, 2008

Wendy Jackson rated it:

bookshelves: science

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Wendy by: Karen Bullock
recommends it for: People in their 20-30's or people who work with such people.

Reading this book was, for me, like looking in a mirror. I was born in 1974 so I fit into the group the author calls Generation Me. As I read the book, I repeatedly thought, "Yes, that's exactly how I think about that issue," and usually the reasons she gave for why GenMe thinks/acts a certain way, were my reasons as well.

The book explores lots of areas in which GenMes differ from Boomers, from our view of work including what kind we want and how much of our lives they ar...more

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May 07, 2008

Rosanne rated it:

Read in June, 2008

Apparently young people today are depressed and selfish. They won't be as monetarily successful as their parents, but they don't realize that until well into their 30s because they spend their 20s pursuing their unattainable dreams and still being supported by their parents. Does this book generalize? Yes. Is some of this common sense? Yes. It is interesting? Yes, but still, she never explored any one topic in great length and the book seemed to me like a glorified list of differences bet...more

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Jun 14, 2009

SheWunders rated it:

bookshelves: 2009-11, non-fiction

Read in November, 2009

I thought this book contained a lot of good insight into the current generation, but there was not enough appliction as to how to deal with challenges (only about 10% of the book). There's loads of information as to why "Gen Me" is they way they are & how they got that way - interesting stuff. But as a "Gen Me-er" (born in 1982) I think this book painted a terribly unfair picture of my generation. In many ways I think it's too early to categorize/doom us. Most of us have...more

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May 08, 2008

Julia rated it:

Read in May, 2008

An impressive undertaking! The author dug up tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies that used the same standardized surveys on personal and cultural beliefs in order to look at changes over time. Mostly comparing Baby Boomers and what she terms 'Generation Me' (born between 1970 and 2000), she presents some amazing findings and some interesting theories.

The main reasons for my score are:

1. Redundancy in the text

2. Narrow view of the results (i.e. I fee...more

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Jan 26, 2009

Bradley rated it:

(review of isbn 0000002006)

Read in January, 2009

I found this book in a pile of stuff at my Dad's house. It was really worthwhile. As a member of Generation Me myself (the start seems to be the mid-1970s), I saw myself in many of the descriptions. This books looks at the way that people born from the mid-1970s onward, but especially from the 1980s to the present, have internalized the notion that our lives are about ourselves. While I enjoyed the chapters about narcissism, helicopter parents, the rise of the self-esteem movement, and the...more

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Jun 02, 2009

James rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I gave up reading books on generational theory in the early 90's when I discovered that they said my generation (X) was lazy and apathetic. I didn't care to hear that, so I went and took a nap, and researchers ate their words as Gen X-ers proved to be active in social issues and apt at making money.

This book avoids some of the pitfalls of typecasting generations and for that it is praiseworthy. Twenge looks at what she calls Generation Me, a group which spans thirty years(70s-90s), ...more

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Jun 12, 2009

Daniel rated it:

Read in June, 2009

Starts out interesting but descends into misplaced topics. Twenge increasingly includes her opinions as the chapters progress and facts become more and more sparse. Overall, the topics and ideas are interesting but the opinions and digressions are distracting. It's obvious halfway through the book she's a socioeconomic determinist.

I couldn't decide if it was ironic that the book discusses how our Generation over-self promotes and then Twenge constantly refers to her research that ...more

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May 04, 2009

Corey rated it:

bookshelves: psychology

Read in May, 2009

According to research by Jean Twenge and other psychologists, today's young people are highly confident and have exceptional self-esteem, but they are also more anxious, depressed, and apathetic than any other generation in history. The reason appears to be trends in education and childrearing that emphasize self esteem, permissiveness, and excessive praise. These factors work together to create unrealistically high expectations that must inevitably clash with reality. Here's a representative fa...more

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Jan 24, 2009

Chandra rated it:

Read in March, 2008

I generally despise books that make broad generalizations about a whole group of people, but this one was actually enlightening.

An explanation of how today's 20-somethings were brought up and why they act differently than previous generations, it gave me insight into myself. And, sometimes uncomfortably, I could see what they were saying.

The part that resonated with me the most was a discussion of how children are now raised to believe that they are great for no particu...more

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May 14, 2009

Tierney rated it:

bookshelves: nonfiction

Read in May, 2006

This was one of the most fascinating, eye-opening books I've read in a long time. I read it 3 years ago and still find myself referencing it all the time. Using a large sample of cross-generational research, Twenge discusses how young people today profoundly differ from their predecessors, even from the Baby Boomers who so often are derided as the "Me Generation." She argues that extended periods of economic prosperity and peacetime, combined with parenting and educational philosophies...more

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Mar 28, 2007

Yahaira rated it:

I am currently reading it and honestly it's scary the way that she breaks down our thought processes and how much of the ideals we hold are all products of our generation. Especially interesting to read if you're currently undergoing a quarterlife crisis, poses interesting theories on why.

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Mar 24, 2009

Jen rated it:

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in March, 2009

The most interesting part of this book, which is a meta-analysis of studies from the 1950s through the 1990s, is the assertion that the self-esteem movement which began in the 1970s has done nothing but create an army of narcissists. Self esteem is a product, not an influencing factor. In other words, higher self esteem has not been proven to improve grades or success, but that's what kids have been taught for the last 30 years, and Twenge sees this causing myriad problems. The studies she looks...more

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Jun 12, 2009

Shannon rated it:

bookshelves: 2009, non-fiction

Owns a copy — Read in July, 2009

"Generation Me" is the "new" name for those of us born between 1970 and 2000, so named because we "put ourselves first". Now, you might think that with all these quotation marks I'm sounding snide and feeling defensive, but actually I found it perfectly apt - with a few qualifiers. The name fills a label gap that follows the short-lived "Generation X", those born in the late 1960s to the 1970s. Generation Me, in contrast, covers a longer time period and en...more

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Nov 19, 2008

fbuser1542888940 rated it:

recommends it for: educators, politicians, people managers

Twenge is brilliant. I love her perspective on generation studies. Others seem to report hunches and anecdotal evidence to support their claims of generation characteristics. Twenge actually has decades of data to appropriately describe this current generation. I am born the same year as the author (1971), and she puts us into this same generation -- those born 1970s, 80s, and 90s. At first I was uncomfortable with the categorization, but if the shoe fits....and it does -- the evidence she shar...more

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Feb 04, 2008

Mike Bularz rated it:

(review of isbn 0743276973)

bookshelves: at-roselle-library, notes

Read in February, 2008

A well researched, but not in depth and overly simplistic book. Some chapters are repetitive of the same ideas and the writing is a swirl of bore-words, some creative writing would've made it better.

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