iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids are Growing up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, and Less Happy... / Jean M. Twenge. 3.5 stars

[LibraryCin]

3.5 stars

The author is a psychologist who studies and compares generations. She calls the youngest generation “iGen”: this generation was born in 1995 and later, and they have only ever known a life with the Internet, and for many, smartphones. In this book, she looks at how the internet and social media (“new media” vs “old media” (tv, radio)) have affected them and their mental health. She also looks at communication, religion, politics, sex and dating, work and college, racism, and more. She believes that iGen is taking a much longer time to grow up; they have extended their childhoods.

Her previous book, Generation Me, looked at Millenials and I found it very interesting. Ditto for this one. I don’t have kids, but I still found this fascinating (and in some cases, horrifying – those “safe spaces” on college campuses? For anything that might offend anyone!). She includes a lot of statistics in the book; I like that she is able to compare the generations, but when all the generations were teens and young adults, due to surveys that have been done since the 1970s.

She also includes a lot of graphs, which are hard to read on my small Kobo screen, so print might be a better way to go if you want to look at the graphs. In addition to the statistics, though, she has done a lot of interviews, so she can take some of the stories from the interviews to highlight some of the findings from the stats (or show other perspectives) – the stats are averages. Overall, it’s a very interesting book.

[Karin]

Thanks for the review. Once again, it makes me happy that despite my shortcomings as a parent (and all parents have them!!) I am one of the few who have not yet bought any of my kids smart phones (but one has her own now) and to have been so strict with all of this stuff.

That said, both of my daughters will spend far too much time with that stuff when they have access unless they have something more fun to do, so I'm hoping that this new smart phone won't interfere with my daughter's last two years of college.

[Jgrace]

I find this very interesting since I have one child who is a millennial, 1988, and one in the iGen, group, 1995. Never were two siblings more different from each other. I'm sure there are many factors making them different that have nothing to do with their birthdates.
However, I think their financial situations and possibly some of their life goals have been formed by exposure to political climate and access to the internet. Interestingly, it's the younger one, my son, who rejects social media. He is disgusted with facebook and cancelled his account.