Jean M. Twenge (Simon & Schuster)
ZOOMERS are anxious and attuned to injustice. Millennials are self-obsessed and bad with money. Baby boomers broke the world. As for Generation X, who even remembers them?
These labels are as familiar as an old pair of jeans – regardless of whether they fit. Even though we are continually cautioned against such thinking, reminded that it is reductive, divisive and often based on patchy evidence, generational traits seem too convenient a shorthand to give up. Yet there are far more established measures that unite or divide us than our date of birth: skin colour and socioeconomic status, say. Why does “generationalism” appeal? And how much is based on fact?
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In Generations, Jean Twenge sets out to clarify and quantify the real differences, starting with “the Silents”, born between 1925 and 1945, up to the “Polars”, born from 2013 on. Where most hypotheses focus on the influence of major events such as wars, recessions or pandemics, she argues technology in particular is driving generational differences. Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University in California, also singles out the rise in individualism, hastened by social media. This builds on her earlier book, iGen, which argued that dependence on technology was making younger people more depressed, less resilient and unprepared for adulthood.
In Generations, too, Twenge’s argument is persuasive, even common sense. After all, the development of domestic appliances in the 20th century had as much impact on the daily lives of younger boomers as the Vietnam war, increasing leisure time and freeing women to pursue careers. That we are living in an individualistic, technocentric society today is undeniable.
At the same time, it can be challenging to separate Twenge’s feelings about generations from what we have been primed to hear. Millennials, born between 1980 and 1994, have proved a bottomless source of clickbait, most of it critical. Twenge acknowledges this sweeping, often silly commentary by referencing the often-repeated claims that they “killed off” doorbells and struggle with “adulting”. Her own analysis, however, isn’t always more nuanced or insightful.
Sometimes, Twenge’s use of statistics can seem like she set out to prove the stereotype that, for example, millennials are scared of commitment or are self-obsessed. Even when this is suggested by the data, Twenge’s qualitative analysis can seem perfunctory, pointing to song titles or social media posts to prove her point.
Twenge’s most unexpected finding has a clickbait quality, too: millennials aren’t as hard done by as they claim. Figures show their income and rates of home ownership and poverty are much the same as those of boomers and Generation X at the same age, says Twenge. Millennials may even be relatively well-off: instead, they “feel poor, even if they aren’t”.
Certainly, there is nuance in reports of millennial disadvantage that is often overlooked – it benefits no one to pretend we are all the same. But Twenge’s view often seems just as selective. Crucially, she omits points about purchasing power and housing affordability (as measured by prices divided by incomes).
Her assessment of millennial home ownership, meanwhile, is based on the experiences of those born in the US in the early 1980s, who benefited from a favourable housing market. “The story is different for Millennials born in the early 1990s,” writes Twenge. With housing affordability said to be at its lowest ever in the US, UK and many of the higher-income countries in the West, emphasising that many millennials do own their homes seems by the by, if not deliberately provocative.
The reason generational thinking persists, despite the arguments against it, is that it helps us to articulate our own experience so that we might be understood by others. In striving to prove those differences with data, occasionally at the expense of curiosity and compassion, Generations makes them seem more intractable and entrenched. Given the challenges facing us as a species, you can’t help but think our energies might be better spent identifying where we are the same.
Elle Hunt is a writer based in Norfolk, UK
