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

Juan, 19, said he didn’t get his license right away “because my parents didn’t ‘push’ me to get my license.” As a GenX’er, that sentence makes my jaw drop every time I read it. It used to be the other way around: you wanted to get your license, and your parents wanted you to wait. In the 1988 Corey Haim and Corey Feldman vehicle License to Drive, Haim’s character fails his driving test but takes his dad’s car out for the night anyway (his parents don’t notice because his mother is just about to give birth to their fourth child—a nice manifestation of life history theory). Feldman’s character delivers a rousing speech about the greater meaning of getting a driver’s license and what it means for one’s dating life and independence. “You’ve had to stand and watch as all of the pretty girls drove off in some older jerk’s car. Humiliation—I know, I’ve been through it,” he says. “But that’s all over now. That thing in your wallet—that’s no ordinary piece of paper. That is a driver’s license! . . . It’s a license to live, a license to be free, to go wherever, whenever, and with whomever you choose!” As he talks, patriotic music plays in the background, and he stands tall with pride. iGen’ers, on the other hand, think about getting their license and say, “Meh.”