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

Instead of longing to be older as many previous generations did—remember Tom Hanks in the movie Big in the 1980s?—kids like being kids. In a 2013 poll, 85% of 8- to-14-year-olds agreed “I like being my age,” up from 75% in 2003. When 7-year-old Hannah was asked, “Do you want to be older?” she replied, “No. I like being a kid. You get to do more things.” When I asked twenty iGen’ers why being a child was better than being an adult, almost all said that being an adult involved too much responsibility. When they were children, they said, their parents had taken care of everything and they’d just gotten to have fun. “I could take care of my own desires, more or less, without ever having to worry about the logistics or practicality of making them real,” wrote Elizabeth, 22. “Nor was I ever really forced to encounter the consequences of having fun or taking a day off. It was just something I would do.” In other words, as children they could live in a cocoon, with all of the fun but little of the work. Their parents made childhood a wonderful place with lots of praise, an emphasis on fun, and few responsibilities. No wonder they don’t want to grow up.