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

The intriguing part is why. In short, it’s because she doesn’t think those things are safe. “Going out and partying when you’re drunk, you’re in such an altered state of mind, you behave in ways that you never would sober,” she says. “There’s drunk driving—and people take advantage of you when you’re drunk. It’s not safe. You’re going to hurt yourself, or someone’s going to hurt you. It’s not my thing.”

Figure 6.2. Percentage of 12th graders who have had five or more drinks in a row on a single occasion (binge drinking) in the past two weeks and percentage who believe that binge drinking carries “no” or “slight” risk.

As we saw in chapter 1, iGen’ers are just as likely to use marijuana as Millennials were. If iGen’ers are so interested in safety, why is their marijuana use about the same? In short, because they believe it’s safe. In fact, iGen’ers see regular marijuana use as safer than binge drinking, the first generation ever to do so (see Figure 6.3). That might be why so many fewer are drinking alcohol as teens even as about the same number indulge in marijuana.

“I believe that marijuana is completely safe to use as long as you are not using machinery or a vehicle,” wrote Brianna, 20. “It is far less harmful than alcohol, which is perfectly legal, but leads to far more problems that marijuana use ever could.” Some iGen’ers embrace the idea that marijuana is not just safe but beneficial. “Weed has been proven to provide many health benefits,” wrote Ethan, 19. “It helps with pain, cancer, and many other illnesses. It can prevent people from getting addicted to other drugs that are way more harmful.” Some iGen’ers use marijuana for medical purposes themselves. “I consider marijuana to be a very safe substance. I’ve personally been using it for three years for chronic spinal pain, depression, anxiety, and psoriatic arthritis,” wrote Nellie, 21. “The withdrawal from my pain medication was among the hardest times in my life, but I was able to use marijuana to curb both the withdrawal and the heightened pain. I’ve never experienced any detrimental side effects in years of heavy use.” Unfortunately, few iGen’ers seem to be aware of the long-term risks of marijuana use, which can include reduced intelligence and higher risks of schizophrenia, especially when use begins during adolescence. Marijuana is also now much more potent than the pot Boomers smoked in the 1970s. Still, iGen’ers remain

Percentage of high school students who have gotten into a physical fight in the last 12 months. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, 1991–2015.

Rape (sexual assault) rates in the last year (1) from reports to police per 100,000 of the general population (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1960–2015) and (2) victim surveys of students and non-students ages 18 to 24, per 1,000 population (National Crime Victimization

No Risk, Please iGen’ers’ risk aversion goes beyond their behaviors toward a general attitude of avoiding risk and danger. Eighth and 10th graders are now less likely to agree that “I like to test myself every now and then by doing something a little risky” (see Figure 6.7). Nearly half of teens found that appealing in the early 1990s, but by 2015 less than 40% did.

Percentage of 8th and 10th graders who like doing dangerous things or taking risks. Monitoring the Future, 1991–2015.

iGen teens are also less likely to agree that “I get a real kick out of doing things that are a little dangerous.” As recently as 2011, the majority of teens agreed that they got a jolt out of danger, but within a few years only a minority shared this view.

The Safety of Home, Everywhere In October 2015, the administration at Yale University suggested to students that they not wear Halloween costumes that might be considered offensive. Resident master Erika Christakis then wrote to the students in her dorm suggesting they decide for themselves what costumes to wear rather than having the administration tell them what to do: “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity—in your capacity—to exercise self-censure through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?” Students called for her resignation, saying she was not creating a safe environment for minority students. A group of protestors then confronted Christakis’s husband, Nicholas, on campus, surrounding him on a walkway. One student began saying Christakis should create “a safe space here for all students,” and when he tried to respond, she barked, “Be quiet!” She went on, “It is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman . . . . By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master.” “No, I don’t agree with that,” Christakis responded. The student...

In a recent poll, 70% of adults said they thought the world had become less safe for children since they were children—even though all evidence suggests that children are actually safer now. We protect children from danger, real and imaginary, and are then surprised when they go to college and create safe spaces designed to repel the real world.

Rosin isn’t the first to make the observation that we may have protected our kids into wimpdom. In her book A Nation of Wimps, Psychology Today editor Hara Estroff Marano argued that parental overprotection and hovering have made kids vulnerable because they don’t learn to solve problems on their own. “Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees and the occasional C in history!” she wrote. “Kids need to learn that you need to feel bad sometimes. We learn through experience, and we learn especially through bad experiences.” Lenore Skenazy made the case for the opposite approach to parenting, which she dubbed Free-Range Kids in her book of the same name. As she explains on her website, she’s “fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape.” In her view, the safety obsession has meant stifling kids’ creativity and independence. “Society has forced us to always consider the worst case first and proceed as if it’s likely to happen,” she told the Guardian in 2016. “. . . Everything is framed that way and parents are scared to death. In response, they keep their kids in only supervised situations and . . . that’s not fun.” Because of iGen’s fear, caution, and love for safe spaces, one friend of mine says I should instead call this generation “Gen P”—the P, he says, stands for pussy. (I told h...

If you’ve read media portrayals of this generation, these views might surprise you; aren’t today’s young people increasingly interested in finding meaning? For example, a 2013 New York Times op-ed cited a survey finding that young adults named meaning as the most important thing they were looking for in a career. However, that survey queried only recent young people, with no comparison to previous generations when they were young—or even to older people at the moment. Data comparing the generations tell a different story.

And they are—compared to the Millennials just before them, more iGen entering college students say it’s important to “help others in difficulty” and more high school students say that “making a contribution to society” is important. More iGen high school seniors say they want jobs that help others and are worthwhile to society, bringing those values back to the levels of Boomers in the 1970s. From these data, we might conclude that iGen’ers want to make a difference in the world. They are dreaming big and including an altruistic vision in those dreams.

Except they don’t. Even with age controlled, GenX’ers born in the 1970s report having an average of 10.05 sexual partners in their lifetimes, whereas Millennials and iGen’ers born in the 1990s report having sex with 5.29 partners. So Millennials and iGen’ers, the generations known for quick, casual sex, are actually having sex with fewer people—five fewer, on average. As Figure 8.3 shows, men born in the 1990s had nine fewer partners than those born in the 1970s, and women had about two fewer.

Number of sexual partners after age 18 by decade of birth, all adults, controlled for age. General Social Survey,

When I told a group of iGen’ers that their generation was actually less sexually active than previous generations, most didn’t believe me—which isn’t surprising, as young people often overestimate how many of their peers are having sex and the number of partners they’re having it with. But they still came up with some plausible reasons that echo some of iGen’ers’ cardinal traits, especially their concern with safety and their practical outlook. “Teens are being scared into not having sex. When I was in high school the ‘no sex’ propaganda was strong. We watched videos of what diseased genitals looked like, and we heard all the stories about teen moms,” wrote Kristen, 22. “Then that show ‘Teen Mom’ came out, and nobody wanted to be those girls.

In a widely viewed TED talk, 40-something Cindy Gallop

Then there’s “ghosting.” That’s when someone you’ve been talking with, flirting with, or hooking up with suddenly stops texting you back. It’s the most passive way to break up ever invented, worse than the dreaded GenX Post-it note. Ghosting, wrote Columbia University first-year student Madison Ailts, “isn’t your run-of-the-mill rejection. This is rejection that leaves you in a state of utter confusion.” Ailts believes that ghosting is a product of the constant array of choices offered by digital media: “We are hardwired to constantly search for the best thing possible, even if it’s at the expense of someone else. This has resulted in a new social norm: to suddenly pretend like that person doesn’t exist.” It also sounds like a generation without the social skills to know how to break up with someone.

Whereas previous generations married young and figured out their economic prospects together, many iGen’ers have a long list of things they think need to be in place before getting married. “You’d better have a job that is stable and is high paying or be close to your ideal life before getting married,” wrote Harrison, 21. “Settling so young without an education and no business skills is gonna be a disaster down the road. You need to get all this right before being in a committed relationship.” The requirement of having a steady job in place is especially problematic for this generation, in which one out of four men in their early twenties is not working at all

The trends all seem to be going the same way: fewer young adults are having sex, fewer are in committed relationships, and fewer prioritize marriage and family. The high cost of housing and child care make having children, particularly more than one, economically challenging. All of these trends suggest that fewer iGen’ers will ever have children and that only children will become more common. The United States will increasingly resemble Europe, where birthrates are below replacement level and marriage is optional. The move away from relationships and children might be a permanent trend instead of just a postponement. If so, iGen will be on track to be the generation with the largest number of single people in US history and the lowest birthrate on record.

When the Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex marriage was legal nationwide, Snickers tweeted a picture of a rainbow-wrapped candy bar inscribed “Stay who you are.” AT&T turned its globe logo to rainbow hues, and American Airlines tweeted, “We’re on board. Diversity strengthens us all & today we celebrate #MarriageEquality.”

As the country singer Kacey Musgraves, 28, sings, “Make lots of noise and kiss lots of boys/Or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into”—not exactly your father’s country song. But it is iGen’s country song. “I believe people should do what they want with their own bodies,” Musgraves says. “The majority of the younger people that listen to my music don’t think twice about the things I’m singing about.”

Attitudes toward gays and lesbians, 18- to 29-year-olds (General Social Survey) and entering college students

In this graph, the differences aren’t due to age, since everyone is 18 to 29 years old, but we don’t know how much of the shift is due to a generational trend (affecting only young people and not older people) and how much to a time-period trend (with people of all ages shifting in their views). Because the General Social Survey (GSS) includes adults of all ages, we can compare the views of all ages and generations in recent years to see the current generation gaps.

When I ask her how she thinks her generation is different, she says, “People aren’t afraid to be who they are.” Even in the South, the issue is not at the forefront as it once was. At his historically black church in Georgia, 20-year-old Darnell says the pastors “never, like, bring it up—I think because the LGBT community is so big now, maybe we don’t touch that.”

In the past few years, college campuses have erupted in protests, many of them focused around equality issues. But there are other themes as well. Many protests focus on eliminating not just discrimination but offensive speech, which has drawn criticism that iGen’ers exhibit a hair-trigger sensitivity. This is where the movement for equality collides with the First Amendment. To the distress of free speech advocates, campuses have “bias reporting systems” that allow students to report incidents that offend them. Faculty members have been suspended for leading discussions about race. Controversial speakers are increasingly “disinvited” or their talks disrupted. Is this really a cultural change, or have college students always been this way? The over-time data show that things really have changed: iGen’ers are more likely to support restricting speech

Young adults in general are also more likely to agree with speech restrictions. The Pew Research Center found that 40% of Millennials and iGen’ers agreed that the government should be able to prevent people from making offensive statements about minority groups, compared to only 12% of the Silent generation, 24% of Boomers, and 27% of GenX’ers.

Blatantly racist incidents such as the one in Oklahoma clearly push the limits of free speech. What’s changed recently is that more and more statements are deemed racist or sexist and more and more speakers are deemed “extreme.” A Latino student was offended that a white friend used the Spanish word fútbol to refer to playing soccer. Students at Oberlin College complained that the undercooked rice in the cafeteria sushi was offensive to minority students. A Colorado College student was suspended for two years (later reduced to six months) for responding to a Yik Yak social media discussion of #blackwomenmatter with the anonymous post “They matter, they’re just not hot.” A faculty member at the University of Kansas was suspended after a candid classroom discussion about race on campus. As sophomore Rachel Huebner wrote in the Harvard Crimson in 2016, “This undue focus on feelings has caused the college campus to often feel like a place where one has to monitor every syllable that is uttered to ensure that it could not under any circumstance offend anyone to the slightest degree.” 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.

Figure 9.15. Number of speakers “disinvited” from speaking at US college campuses, 2000–2016. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

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. The political scientist April Kelly-Woessner found that the rejection of free speech by social justice advocates is generationally new: social justice and free speech beliefs are unrelated among those over 40, but those under 40 who support social justice are less supportive of free speech. In a 2015 survey, 35% of college students believed that the First Amendment does not protect “hate speech” (it does) and 30% of liberal students believed that the First Amendment is “outdated.” This echoes iGen’s emphasis on safety featured in chapter 6—the extension of safety to include emotional safety and the belief in words as violence.

When UC Irvine law professors Howard Gillman and Erwin Chemerinsky taught a college freshman seminar on freedom of speech, they were shocked by how often the students favored restricting speech protected by the First Amendment. It was a generational shift, they realized: the students had witnessed the harm of hateful speech but not the harm of censorship or punishment of dissent. The professors pointed out that restricting speech you dislike could easily lead to restricting speech you like. When officials have the power to regulate speech, they noted, “that power is inevitably abused. . . . Over the course of U.S. history, officials censored or punished those whose speech they disliked: abolitionists, labor activists, religious minorities, communists and socialists, cultural critics, gays and lesbians,” they wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “. . . Our students came to realize that there was no way to create a ‘safe space’ on campuses where students could be free from one set of offenses without engaging in massive censorship, and perhaps creating another kind of offense.” The culture of speech restriction has created another victim: humor. Comedians such as Chris Rock say they no longer perform on college campuses because students are too easily offended. Writing in The Atlantic about campus comedy shows, Caitlin Flanagan concluded that college students preferred “comedy that was 100 percent risk-free, comedy that could not trigger or upset or mildly trouble a single studen...

Mark doesn’t care for all of Trump’s statements, but after reading his and Hillary Clinton’s platforms he decided that “out of the two poisons . . . Donald Trump is the least worse one.” Like Trump, Mark believes that things are bad enough for Americans already without trying to help people from other countries. “With all of the immigrants coming in, not only will there be a shortage of jobs but a shortage of land to live in. The poverty level’s going to skyrocket because there’s not going to be enough resources to go around. I would much rather have a wall and keep our economy going than try to help people we can’t help,” he says, referring to Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

Donald Trump had never held political office, and he battled with the Republican establishment throughout the primaries and general election campaign. In November 2016, the Washington Post called Trump “America’s first independent president.” Both Sanders and Trump were seen as free agents who spoke their minds and refused to bow to the party power brokers.

Entering college students’ views about abortion, legalizing marijuana, the death penalty, and gun control. American Freshman Survey, 1968–2015.

Views about abortion, legalizing marijuana, the death penalty, and gun control, 18- to 29-year-olds.

Of course, this might be because iGen’ers get all of their news online. However, the decline in news consumption among teens didn’t begin with iGen; even before the Internet arrived, teens were less likely to pay attention to the news with each passing year. That suggests that Internet news consumption isn’t the only social trend afoot. In addition, the decline in watching TV news is about twice the size as the decline in watching TV in general. For iGen’ers, online news is just about the only game in town. It can be a good one, if you go to the right places. The problem, as far as I could tell in the interviews and surveys I did with teens, is that few knew about those places.

Safe but Not Unprepared Our kids are safer than ever, which is the best news imaginable. Yet, as often happens, this cultural trend has been taken to an illogical extreme. Concerns about safety might be one of the reasons teens are seeing their friends in person less, with parents afraid of car accidents and other perils.

When Bryce Maine wanted to bring his 69-year-old grandmother as his date to the prom at Eufaula High School in Alabama in spring 2017, the school principal said no, citing their rule that prom attendees must be 20 years old or younger. “Safety of students and staff is the first and most important of the many tasks of a school administrator,” he said in a statement. “We do not chance leaving any stone unturned when it comes to safety.” Bryce was told the rule was in place to prevent older people buying alcohol for underage students—an unlikely scenario in his grandmother’s case. In the current climate, not even grandmothers are safe.

iGen’ers in the Classroom iGen’ers are different, and college faculty and staff are beginning to notice. Millennials marched onto college campuses with optimism, confidence, and a strong sense of entitlement. Faculty encountered students who expected A’s just for showing up, who argued strenuously over grades, and who believed they deserved special treatment. The story is different for iGen’ers: growing up in the shadow of the Great Recession, iGen’ers expect less and display less narcissism and entitlement. iGen’ers are more pessimistic and less confident than Millennials, with students now more willing to work hard and less likely to vociferously question their grades. On the other hand, iGen’ers are more hesitant to talk in class and to ask questions—they are scared of saying the wrong thing and not as sure of their opinions. (When McGraw-Hill Education polled more than six hundred college faculty in 2017, 70% said students were less willing to ask questions and participate in class than they were five years ago.) It takes more reassurance and trust to get them to actively participate in class.

Overall, iGen is good news for managers: iGen’ers are more focused on work and more realistic about what that entails than the Millennials just before them. iGen’ers want good, stable jobs and are eager to prove themselves. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t want to be entrepreneurs—in fact, they are less likely than previous generations to want to own their own business or be self-employed. That means iGen talent is ripe for the picking for the right businesses. iGen’ers are also less entitled and narcissistic than Millennials and have more moderate expectations. They are less likely than Millennials to expect to be CEO of the company in five years and less likely to expect more pay for less work. They are not as overconfident, and they have a stronger work ethic. The downside is that more young employees are anxious and uncertain; they are eager to do a good job but are scared of making mistakes. iGen’ers are more likely to put in extra work to get a presentation finished in time but less confident that it will be successful. Whereas Millennials needed praise, iGen’ers need reassurance. Given their slow upbringing, many are also less independent. Give them careful instructions for tasks, and expect that they will need more guidance.

Jean M. Twenge,

AtriaBooks

Going Out Without Parents The decline in going out without parents appears across all groups; here are the breakdowns by race and socioeconomic status.

Going out without parents, times per week, 12th graders, by race/ethnicity. Monitoring the Future,

Dating The decline in going out on dates was more pronounced for girls than for boys. Whereas girls once went out on dates more often than boys, now there is no difference by sex.

Going on dates, times per week, by sex, 12th graders. Monitoring the Future,

Driving The decline in 12th graders getting a driver’s license appears among teens living in rural, suburban, and urban areas. This suggests that it’s not due to ride-sharing services such as Uber or to differences in the availability of public transport.

Percentage of 12th graders with a driver’s license in rural, suburban, and urban areas. Monitoring the Future,

Percentage of 12th graders who have gotten into three or more fights with their parents over the last year. Monitoring the Future,