![]() ![]() ![]() Twenge wonders, “Is the upswing in minority kids’ self-esteem an unmitigated good?” and then observes, “Raising children’s self-esteem is not going to solve the problems of poverty and crime.” It’s possible to reach such moralizing conclusions even if one begins with the opposite economic premise. This argument has a conservative appeal, given its focus on the individual rather than on the structures and the conditions that govern one’s life. They “believe that every job will be fulfilling and then can’t even find a boring one.” They must lower their expectations and dim their glittering self-images in order to become functional adults. As a result, millennials have become irresponsible and fundamentally maladjusted. Parents overemphasized self-esteem and happiness, while kids took their cues from an era of diversity initiatives, decentralized authority, online avatars, and reality TV. (A revised edition, published in 2014, mentions the HBO show “Girls” six times.) Twenge acknowledges that the generation has come of age inside an “economic squeeze created by underemployment and rising costs,” but she mostly explains millennial traits in terms of culture and choice. (An article adapted from her most recent book, “iGen,” about the cohort after millennials, was published in the September issue of The Atlantic with the headline “ Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” It went viral.) In 2006, Twenge published “ Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled-and More Miserable Than Ever Before.” The book’s cover emblazoned the title across a bare midriff, a flamboyant illustration of millennial self-importance, sandwiched between a navel piercing and a pair of low-rise jeans.Īccording to Twenge, millennials are “tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious, but also disengaged, narcissistic, distrustful, and anxious.” She presents a barrage of statistics in support of this assessment, along with anecdotal testimonials and pop-cultural examples that neatly confirm the trends she identifies. Over the past decade, that connection has been codified by Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, who writes about those younger than herself with an air of pragmatic evenhandedness and an undercurrent of moral alarm. But the popular image of this generation-given its name, in 1987, by William Strauss and Neil Howe-has long been connected with the notion of disruptive self-interest. Born in the nineteen-eighties and nineties, millennials are now in their twenties and thirties. ![]() The idea that millennials are capriciously wrecking the landscape of American consumption grants quite a bit of power to a group that is still on the younger side. Millennials, according to recent headlines, are killing hotels, department stores, chain restaurants, the car industry, the diamond industry, the napkin industry, homeownership, marriage, doorbells, motorcycles, fabric softener, hotel-loyalty programs, casinos, Goldman Sachs, serendipity, and the McDonald’s McWrap. A composite image would emerge, of a twitchy and phone-addicted pest who eats away at beloved American institutions the way boll weevils feed on crops. If they persevered past the coverage of our President, they would soon identify the curious figure of the millennial as a suspect. Imagine, as I often do, that our world were to end tomorrow, and that alien researchers many years in the future were tasked with reconstructing the demise of civilization from the news. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone. ![]()
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