Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before,   ISBN:9780743276986

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As is the case with many books, the best chapters are the ones in the beginning, where the author makes her main points and sums up her research and its implications. After making many sharp observations about the devastating emotional fallout from the dating scene and the wounds of severed live-in relationships, she returns to the same theme in the chapter "Generation Crude Versus Generation Prude". Here she describes the casual attitude toward sex, called "hooking up" these days, yet she poses the question "Is this a good thing or a bad?" -only to answer it "It depends on your point of view." Of course it does -as does every other issue- but what conclusion does she draw about it in terms of psychological health and social well-being? The implication seems clear enough: it is destructive narcissism manifesting itself again in a cheapened outlook on privacy and physical intimacy. It seems to me that this is a moral cop-out for a writer who had not hesitated to criticize the same phenomenon in another context. She continues on with the same PC conventional wisdom in the next chapter on equality (meaning feminism and gay rights, mainly). Much of her research confirms conservative critiques of the permissive, multi-cultural, relativistic society, yet she inconsistently clings to the same discredited social liberalism that gave birth to the problem she addresses in her book. This makes the book uneven. However, it deserves a lot of points for bringing some interesting evidence forward to show the great changes in the outlook on oneself that have occurred in the last 30-40 years, along with clear evidence of the great harm that the educational world's and pop-psychology's promotion self-esteem has done.

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With GREAT interest I picked up a copy of Twenge's book. It is clearly a work for a mass audience, not academics, though the author employs a research procedure documented in her appendix and cites a range of sources. Though it seemed a "popular" work, I wanted to read a different perspective of these youngsters I've been teaching for several years.

Sadly, the title of the book is a giveaway of authorial bias: Twenge spends too much time on the narcissism of these young people (as if all generations of teens since the 1920s, at least, have not been that way). In the process, she neglects research that corroborates the more optimistic picture painted by Strauss and Howe in their book released in 2000, Millennnials Rising. Twenge notes carefully, and quite effectively, why she disagrees with those authors' portrayal of Millennials (those born since 1982, and hence becoming adults with the turn of the Millennium).

Her evidence does not convince. My campus and my colleagues' campuses may not be representative, but we find that Post-Gen-X students are more deferential to authority, close (perhaps too close) to their parents, less likely than students a decade ago to "lawyer" grades as long as clear standards and clear instructions are provided. I'm seeing more of a sense of self-responsibility, not less, than I did a few years back. I rarely hear "It's not my fault," a term common with students in the 90s.

As Strauss and Howe point out, Millennials crave authenticity and honesty above all. They tend to be optimistic--perhaps too much so, given the economy and planetary environment we old folks are leaving them. Yet for an old geezer like me, who came along in the Punk era of the late 70s and early 80s, the Millennials' idealism, ethos of community service, collaborative work, and comfort with diversity of race, gender, and sexuality are rather heart-warming.

If these kids seem a bit conformist (and that is at odds with some of Twenge's claims), too tethered to their social network, and too timid about sticking out in a crowd, that may be a small price to pay for a generation with a sense of mission. They will, as Strauss and Howe claim, have to change our nation once again.

In short, my bias shows: I like these young people. Twenge paints a darker picture, one that may appeal to the doom-sayers and aging cultural extremists (left and right) who think American children are all wrecks.

And while Twenge does capture very well the anxieties, depression, and penchant for too many piercings in this demographic, she misses other areas.

There are, for instance, few references to HOW Millennials work online (collaboratively but not very adventurously). The author also overgeneralizes about the teaching of courses in college that employ technology: in fact, students tend, on my campus, to very much depend on faculty expertise and, while they work in teams well to solve problems, still regard the faculty member as the source of final answers.

They may not have WWII ahead of them, but they'll be a Great Generation.

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I've taught high school students for 15 years and was hoping for some insights that could help me better understand my kids' motivations, reactions, etc. (I'll freely admit that I've had to bite my tongue on MANY occasions when listening to teenagers tell me why everything should go their way all the time.) While Twenge's book has an engaging voice, I found myself thinking she leaped to unsubstantiated conclusions a large portion of the time.

One example is an instance in which Twenge presents data proving that "childless married couples were, on average, more satisfied with their marriages than those with children." Okay, no surprise there. Then she states that recent generations "experience a 42% greater drop in marital satisfaction after having children" than previous generations. She comes to the smooth conclusion that this is a result of too much focus on the self. But I couldn't help wondering how she could ignore gender issues here. Previous generations lived according to longstanding "rules" about gender roles and child rearing, so even if things were totally inequitable, couples lived with it. Now, no one knows exactly where he or she stands; it's no surprise that the demands of child-rearing added to the uncertainty of who has to do/gets to do what causes friction and dissatisfaction. Too much focus on the self? That's just too simplistic for me.

Okay, enough on that...this is only one example of the way Twenge manipulates data. Discriminating readers will be frustrated with this book--maybe so much so that (like me) they'll look for a more credible source.

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As many of other reviewers have pointed out, this is an interesting book with a good premise, but ultimately frustrating and full of shortcomings. The basic premise of the book, that the recent generation of people is more self-centered and self-confident, is well argued in the first few chapters of the book, with plenty of empirical evidence and detailed statistical analysis. If book had focused on those claims and chapters, it would have been very convincing and interesting. Unfortunately, Twenge takes off after that in all sorts of directions, talking about all the ways that the culture and society have changed in the past couple of decades. Some of that stuff is interesting, some of it is rather trite and familiar to anyone who has not been living under a rock over that time period. The book loses focus, and never recovers to the quality of the earlier chapters. This could have been a much better book had the author focused on a much narrower set of issues. This way, it still makes for an interesting read, but not something I would necessarily go out of my way to recommend others.

Customer Rating: 

It was okay. The information in the book was good, there was just too much information. Author had a tendency to go on and on for an entire chapter what could have been summed up in a few paragraphs. I really didn't care to read about conclusions of this study conducted here or that study conducted there. If I wanted to read a text book, I would have purchased a text book. Again, it had some good information though.