iGen: Why 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

by Jean M. Twenge

Maybe today’s teens and young adults have an underdeveloped frontal cortex because they have not been given adult responsibilities. If brain scanners existed in 1950, I wonder what they would have shown of a generation that usually started work at 18, married at 21, and had children soon after. That interpretation of such studies is never offered, however, leaving parents believing that their teen and young adult children are biologically programmed to make poor choices. So, they think, it’s better to protect them as long as possible.

The loneliest teens are those who spend more time on social media and less time with their friends in person.

This is the dark side of tolerance; it begins with the good intentions of including everyone and not offending anyone but ends (at best) with a reluctance to explore deep issues and (at worst) with careers destroyed by a comment someone found offensive and the silencing of all alternative viewpoints.

President Obama weighed in on the disinvitation issue by saying “I think it’s a healthy thing for young people to be engaged and to question authority and to ask why this instead of that, to ask tough questions about social justice. . . . Feel free to disagree with somebody, but don’t try to just shut them up . . . What I don’t want is a situation in which particular points of view that are presented respectfully and reasonably are shut down.” In other words, protest, but let the other side speak, too.