The Art of Manliness - Generations — The Surprising Truths and Persistent Myths

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.680 different generations love to cast dispersions on each other boomers think millennials and

00:00:15.340 gen zers are fragile narcissists those younger generations think that boomers are selfish

00:00:19.860 closed-minded pinheads who help themselves to economic success and then pull the ladder out

00:00:24.460 for everyone else but are these and other generational stereotypes true here to unpack

00:00:28.500 that question for us is gene twangy professor of psychology and the author of generations

00:00:32.640 the real differences between gen z millennials gen x boomers and silence and what they mean for

00:00:38.740 america's future we begin our conversation with some background on the study of generations

00:00:42.660 and why gene thinks the strauss howe theory of generational cycles has been disrupted

00:00:46.800 we then work our way through the generations from the silent generation to the present

00:00:50.940 and talk about the characteristics and particular challenges of each cohort we dig into the myths

00:00:55.640 and truths of the generations such as whether boomers are doing financially well and millennials

00:00:59.520 are doing financially poorly we talk about why gen x gets overlooked why there's such a sharp break

00:01:04.320 between millennials and gen z why gen zers are taking longer to get their driver's licenses and feel

00:01:09.220 darkly pessimistic and much more after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is

00:01:13.880 slash generations all right dr gene twangy welcome to the show thank you so you are a psychologist

00:01:38.220 and you've spent your career researching writing and speaking about generational differences

00:01:43.860 and you've published several books for your latest book generations you've published a book about

00:01:47.640 generation x about millennials and then your latest was about generation z and what's great about your

00:01:53.740 work is that it's not based on antidotes it's all data driven you have all these charts and you have

00:01:58.820 access to data that a lot of lay people don't have access to where you're backing up these claims

00:02:03.860 you're making about the traits of these generational cohorts cohorts that's really what it's all about i mean

00:02:09.440 of course it's great to have stories and interviews with real people as well and i i rely on that too

00:02:15.780 but really the bread and butter is that we have these huge surveys often going back decades

00:02:24.600 of millions and millions people these are amazing resources and we can compare the generations when

00:02:31.680 they were the same age and because we have big numbers we can look at the average differences and be

00:02:36.820 pretty confident we know what we're seeing some of these also have data on behaviors as well as

00:02:42.140 attitudes and the way people spend their time and what's important to them and political beliefs and

00:02:47.780 all kinds of things so each project the universe of data just keeps getting bigger and for my previous

00:02:57.940 book for i gen about gen z it's about 11 million people four data sets and this one is 25 data sets

00:03:08.780 on 39 million people wow okay so let's talk about generations i think it's a topic that that fascinates

00:03:14.280 a lot of people they're interested in the topic definitions first how do you define a generation

00:03:19.140 so generations at one point meant generations in a family and now we use them much more

00:03:26.520 to mean social generations they're about how when you grow up how that influences your life choices

00:03:35.960 your time use your family patterns just everything and historically people grouped generations based on

00:03:46.380 birth year and there's reasonable agreement on birth year cutoffs so i've used those birth year cutoffs

00:03:53.160 in the book there's a chapter on each generation and it just allows us to compare people very similar to

00:04:01.560 the way that another researcher might look at age differences and group people who are in their 20s

00:04:07.760 versus those who are in their 30s or in their 40s how we compare people who live in different countries

00:04:14.140 countries that there's lots of variation within these groups as well as between them but if you're

00:04:20.600 going to do research and really try to wrap your mind around the differences are you have to group

00:04:24.500 people somehow what do you say to the criticism i've heard this when i because i get i really get

00:04:29.060 into this topic i've had this conversation with friends and they're like oh this whole generational

00:04:32.560 like there's generations i guess like certain personality trait or blah blah like that's not a thing

00:04:37.440 it's sort of like horoscopes and it's you're painting with too broad a brush to actually be useful

00:04:41.860 what's your response to that criticism well if they're getting this from a lot of the stuff that

00:04:48.080 has you know it is out there on generations i could understand why people a lot of people have that

00:04:53.760 that viewpoint because there is a lot of stuff out there on generations that will make statements that

00:04:57.940 are not you know really backed up but when you look at this universe of survey data that's available

00:05:08.320 now you don't have to guess you can really look at what the differences actually are and it is

00:05:14.460 absolutely true that generations group people born in these 15 to 20 year periods and there's lots of

00:05:19.940 differences between them but that's true of any study of group differences and i don't think anybody

00:05:26.400 disputes that living now is completely different from what it was like to live 50 years ago or 100 years

00:05:32.440 ago that's usually not what people are arguing over we know that and given that there are generational

00:05:39.280 differences period no matter how you cut the data there are differences based on when you were born i

00:05:45.700 don't think people dispute that i think which basically means we're pretty much in agreement we're

00:05:50.980 just quibbling over the details right and what do you do about i think the other thing people get

00:05:56.460 nitpicky about is the cutoff dates right it's like well you know i was born in 1982 so am i a millennial

00:06:03.220 or gen x or like what do you do with those borderline cases basically you draw a line and acknowledge that

00:06:11.180 it's somewhat fuzzy so i've certainly drawn lines in this book i had to to be able to just group the

00:06:17.920 generations into chapters and and do data analyses and so on but one way i tried to get around that in the

00:06:24.640 book is a lot of the figures show all of the years so certainly some of them i have are grouped in

00:06:32.620 bigger chunks of people but a lot of them are year by year and then you can see that yes there was

00:06:38.780 change between people born at the beginning of the millennial generation to the end of the millennial

00:06:44.000 generation for example that's absolutely true and i've tried to document that okay so yeah depending

00:06:50.360 on where you're born in that generation you could have more or less of certain traits for example

00:06:54.680 yeah on average you can definitely see those trends often build on themselves from one year to the next

00:07:01.660 do you find people who are born on those borderline areas do they end up being a hybrid of both

00:07:06.120 generational traits like there's like a you know guy who's born on the cusp of baby boomer gen x i think

00:07:13.120 there are people who are born on those cusps who just based on where they grew up or experiences they

00:07:20.500 had or their own personal characteristics feel more like they belong in one generation versus the other

00:07:27.000 and i think that's absolutely valid how can generational trends influence you as an individual even if you're

00:07:34.780 an outlier to those generational trends so for example you know some guy reads an article about

00:07:40.120 millennials and millennials are like well i'm not like that how are they still influenced by the

00:07:45.380 larger trends amongst their generational cohort yeah so there's a couple things here first there's a

00:07:51.700 common idea that if you can find one exception then the rule isn't true and of course that isn't how it

00:07:57.780 works these are differences based on averages there's going to be plenty of variation there's going to be

00:08:02.800 plenty of people who do not necessarily fit the average for their group even those people though

00:08:09.340 are influenced by being born at a certain time in the experiences that they have you know particularly

00:08:17.240 around technology is the argument that i make in the book but in other ways too you know some of the

00:08:22.680 downstream effects of technology like that people take longer to grow up so i use the example in the

00:08:28.420 book of say a gen z or today who's a young man who's 22 just graduated from college and he's decided

00:08:36.780 or he decided last year you know i really want to get married like right after college so that would

00:08:41.540 be an unusual choice for someone of his generation so he has to find another young woman who is willing

00:08:47.460 to get married at 21 or 22 there's gonna be a lot fewer of those than there would have been had he been

00:08:52.520 a boomer or a member of the silent generation and then let's say he finds that young woman they do get

00:08:57.680 married at age 22 they're going to be the only ones in their peer group who are married probably

00:09:02.760 especially if they're college graduates they decide to have kids a couple years later they're

00:09:07.700 going to be the only ones who are parents you know their experience is going to be very different

00:09:12.040 from a member of the silent generation who married at that age where all of their friends and peers

00:09:16.620 were doing the same thing no yeah you gave another example too about the kids thing how the generational

00:09:22.880 cohort you belong to can influence that so let's say you you're a gen z-er and you want kids

00:09:28.060 well the trend show we'll talk about this here later on the trend show gen z's not really interested

00:09:33.140 in having kids like the silent generation or boomers and so there's going to be less services

00:09:37.900 for your kids less products for your kids people on airplanes you know they might not like having kids

00:09:43.740 on airplanes they're not used to it so if you bring your toddler on airplane people like why bring your

00:09:47.560 toddler on the airplane has all these downstream effects you don't think about exactly yeah if you are the

00:09:53.560 exception especially when it comes to some of these things around careers or marriage or having kids

00:09:59.440 then what your generation does what the average does is still going to have an impact on you

00:10:05.400 so we've had neil howe on the podcast talk about his theory of the generational turnings

00:10:10.220 how is his theory of generations different from your theory so their theory strauss and howe their theory

00:10:19.240 is the generations come in cycles of four different types and their 1991 book makes a really amazing

00:10:27.740 case for this but i think that the acceleration in technological change has thrown a wrench into

00:10:37.660 those cycles it's really thrown them off and you i think you can see that especially in the more

00:10:43.360 recent generations gen z is a good example so by their theory of generational cycles gen z is supposed

00:10:51.900 to be like the silent generation well silent generation has some political activism there might

00:10:56.940 be some similarity there that's about as far as it goes silent generation married young had a lot of

00:11:02.840 children and that is not what's happening with gen z the old and the oldest of gen z i have to point out

00:11:08.960 are 28 so we do know it's not happening and we know from surveys that they say this is not what they

00:11:15.140 want at least they want children less than previous generations so clearly something is off so the theory

00:11:22.940 that i rely on in this book is that cultural change and thus generational change primarily comes from

00:11:30.820 changes in technology that has the biggest impact on how we live and how we spend our time

00:11:36.420 and it also has two really big downstream effects which explain why the generational cycle is broken

00:11:42.840 down one is individualism which is very linear change more focus on the self and less on others

00:11:50.140 probably explains why millennials didn't turn out the way they were supposed to they were supposed

00:11:54.940 to be like the greatest generation very civically oriented and communal yeah very little data back set up

00:12:00.620 didn't happen in fact it's the opposite news basically didn't happen and millennials have lots of

00:12:04.560 strengths i'm not suggesting they're you know bad or any of that it's not not what i'm communicating

00:12:09.100 it's just they didn't fit the theory and then the other piece is the slow life strategy as technology

00:12:15.560 advances people live longer education takes longer to finish and so the entire developmental trajectory

00:12:21.640 from infancy to old age slows down and so that's one reason why gen z for example is not getting married

00:12:29.120 young and having kids young so individualism means that's not as attractive and then the slow life

00:12:34.080 strategy means that when it does happen it's going to happen later and we certainly saw that with

00:12:39.520 millennials as well that they got married later and had kids later than previous generations because of

00:12:45.460 this overall trend of the slow life strategy okay so the strauss howe theory says that there are four

00:12:50.680 basic generation types and that each generation has their own like particular set of values and

00:12:55.980 characteristics and that these generational archetypes they cycle through like every 80 years or so

00:13:02.460 in strauss howe they argue that the characteristics of a generation are created or developed by big

00:13:09.060 historical events so things like world wars economic depressions things like that what you're arguing is

00:13:14.900 that technology and the individualism that has grown out of technology and also that things are just

00:13:21.440 it's taking longer to reach certain milestones in life those things have disrupted the pattern that

00:13:27.360 strauss and howe found and i think also in just in general what you're seeing is that because each

00:13:34.020 generation is experiencing these milestones at different times like when they get married graduate

00:13:37.680 college have kids all those things have shifted so each generation is going to be different because

00:13:44.740 they've experienced they experience those things at different points in their life exactly yeah the time of

00:13:49.800 life when you do those things just reverberates it means how old are you as a parent how old are you

00:13:55.120 when you're an empty nester and your kids are out of the house there's all of these things that just

00:14:02.420 it's just different it's completely different and this is where there's a lot of generation gaps and i

00:14:06.920 think a lot of misunderstanding too and this is really my goal in the book is more understanding

00:14:11.420 that we can understand each other better that grandparents who look at their millennial kids and

00:14:15.760 go what do you mean you're 28 and not married what's wrong with you well that's the way it is now and

00:14:19.980 there's good reasons why it's that way now yeah that's something you do throughout the book i think

00:14:23.940 you did very good with you never like uh casting aspersions at generations like well look what is

00:14:28.120 wrong with these kids but you're trying to explain like well here's why they make the decisions they

00:14:32.040 do on average and here are the factors that influence that i mean that's kind of the most important

00:14:38.380 thing you know to me in doing this work you know is is to get it right and in getting it right is to

00:14:44.000 at least try you know to step back from your own bias because everybody has biases right

00:14:50.060 and to try to see what the data is telling you and i think that's really key because it's so common

00:14:57.120 in work on generations first for it to be very observational a manager saying this is how young

00:15:02.240 employees are now well why don't we serve the young employees that might be more informative

00:15:05.760 plus there's so much language that's so negative around generational differences like you know whose fault

00:15:12.920 is this and which generation can we blame and my view is these are big cultural changes that's what

00:15:20.220 leads to these generational differences we're all in this together it might be better to step away from

00:15:25.160 that kind of charged language and instead think about what can we do to solve this problem if it is a

00:15:31.060 problem and let's look at the positives because there's also an enormous number of positives to living

00:15:36.120 right now and with younger generations there's so many good things and that often gets left out of the

00:15:41.920 conversation all right so let's talk about how increasing technology this is your main theory

00:15:46.260 that increasing technology has increased individualism and has slowed down our life

00:15:51.060 strategies slowed down how much we you know grow up basically um and delay it's even i mean it even

00:15:56.460 this carries on into your elder years like people are living longer right exactly so let's talk about

00:16:01.480 how this is affected the generations right now we've got six main generations in the united states

00:16:06.280 and we had a few greatest generation left they're not really a big cohort anymore so you focus

00:16:11.720 on the silent generation the baby boomers generation x millennials gen z and then gen alpha they've been

00:16:18.180 called different things let's talk about the silent generation this consists of people born between

00:16:22.260 1925 and 1945 and they're called the silent generation because a time magazine article in 1951

00:16:28.940 pointed out how there were no young people from that generation stepping into leadership roles and they

00:16:34.460 just you know kept their heads down and started families and got to work but what's interesting the data you

00:16:39.280 highlight suggest that that description isn't very fitting for them so what are the common traits of the

00:16:45.960 silent generation and some of the misconceptions we have about them yeah you know so that that portrait from

00:16:51.540 the early 50s did have some accuracy to it it is true that the silence got married younger than the greatest

00:17:01.280 generation right before them and a lot younger than gen xers and millennials would later in the century you

00:17:08.860 talk about the baby boom they were the ones who were having a lot of those children and during the baby boom

00:17:15.020 they did you know settle down into careers and families at a relatively young age in that post-war era

00:17:22.180 that's where the label somewhat fits where it doesn't fit is when you look at equality movements

00:17:31.160 civil rights movement feminist movement movement for gay rights it was silence who were leading those

00:17:37.580 movements they were anything but silent you know these these are moments we often associate with baby

00:17:42.500 boomers but in fact were really led by silence one way to illustrate that arguably the two most famous

00:17:49.820 members of the silent generation martin luther king jr ruth bader ginsburg right there kind of shows you

00:17:57.200 some of the change that they affected in society and then also there's the idea they weren't very

00:18:04.420 politically active because everyone's kind of talked about oh there hasn't been a member of the

00:18:08.380 silent generation got skipped in the election of president until joe biden you know snuck in there

00:18:12.540 the very end you know the last of the silent generation but you point out data that while they might not

00:18:18.120 have been president during that time the silent generation they were filling other roles political

00:18:21.880 office roles as well and the the legislative the state level etc yeah exactly so yeah there has been

00:18:29.080 that and it is it is true the presidency did skip the silent generation for a long time it went straight

00:18:33.940 from george hw bush a member of the greatest generation although barely by a year to bill clinton

00:18:39.900 1946 at the beginning wedge of the baby boomers yet if you look at state governors if you look at

00:18:48.020 senators you can see that silence were absolutely politically represented very well they did almost

00:18:55.300 as well as the greatest generation right before them which is really stunning because the greatest

00:18:59.500 generation did very well in politics given that a lot of them were war heroes from world war ii

00:19:04.520 any other traits that make the silent generation stand out from the other ones well you know they

00:19:10.740 they are very resilient their mental health by a lot of measures was better than the greatest generation

00:19:20.080 before them and the boomers after them even during covid silent generation they had the worst time

00:19:27.400 during covid they were the most likely to die from the disease they get hospitalized so thus you know a lot

00:19:33.460 of people of people of that age were in much stricter lockdown than younger people yet if you look at their

00:19:40.700 mental health during covid from a big census survey they did pretty well compared to younger people they kept a

00:19:49.720 more positive attitude they had less anxiety and it might be that in their younger years that the country was

00:19:58.580 relatively stable fewer of them were drafted some were drafted to korea but a lot less than for world war

00:20:04.520 ii and vietnam and some people have referred to silent generation as the good times generation because

00:20:11.320 of their adolescence and young adulthood in a time of stability in the post-war period and that

00:20:18.720 may have served them well even when they faced this enormous challenge as older adults let's talk about

00:20:27.360 the boomers so the baby boomers they get a lot of flack these days in the popular press and on social

00:20:32.060 media you get the whole okay boomer and all these books written about how terrible boomers are what are

00:20:37.560 some common misconceptions that people have about boomers based on the data that you've looked at

00:20:42.500 i think the biggest misperception is that boomers have it made economically even more so that all boomers or

00:20:51.460 most boomers have it made economically and i think that that misperception comes for you know

00:20:57.340 somewhat understandable reason social psychology we call it the availability heuristic that that's what

00:21:03.980 you see you see the rich boomers and the ones who are in congress and so on and yeah they're probably

00:21:11.440 doing pretty well but if you look at the way the economy shifted in this country it really disadvantaged a

00:21:21.700 lot of boomers who didn't have college degrees at a time when that was shifting under their feet so by

00:21:28.320 the time gen xers came along there was much more of the accepted idea that you know you want to do well

00:21:36.020 you should probably go to college with boomers there was still when they were young the idea that

00:21:41.640 nope you can go into these working class jobs and make a good living and then that changed and that

00:21:46.640 changed just late enough that it was harder for them to readjust you know if for many of them say

00:21:52.240 in their in their 20s and so there are a lot of boomers who are economically disadvantaged you know

00:22:01.500 who didn't get a college degree some of them did fine if they didn't get a college degree but a lot of

00:22:06.700 them found themselves stuck and there's downstream effects of this too so this is one of the things that

00:22:12.820 i looked into you know as a psychologist of course very interested in happiness and mental health

00:22:16.940 and the trends are really really stunning that here's one example for the silent generation

00:22:24.160 very little difference in the percentage who fit clinical criteria for depression

00:22:30.220 from higher income versus lower income and if you look at it by birth year those lines just

00:22:36.020 diverge and by the time you get to the boomers born in the 50s and early 60s there's this enormous

00:22:44.540 gulf that the boomers with lower incomes are much much more likely to be depressed like three or four

00:22:52.840 times as likely to be depressed as those who have higher incomes so we have a big segment of the

00:23:00.220 generation who's unhappy who's depressed that has a lot of overlap with the groups that are dying of

00:23:08.140 opioid overdoses and it really defies this idea that boomers you had this economic success and then

00:23:16.300 pulled the ladder up so nobody else could come and that they just ruined everything for everybody

00:23:20.580 there's a lot of them who are not doing very well well that's an interesting so the okay the silent

00:23:26.740 generation what you're saying is there was really no difference between happiness and mental health

00:23:31.620 whether you made a lot of money or less money it's kind of even with the boomers mental health got tied

00:23:37.440 to income is that what happened much more so yeah there's there is a little you know a little bit

00:23:42.320 of variation and out of some measures there's there was still certainly a gap even among silence but

00:23:47.160 that gap really really grew when you transition from silence to boomers what's behind that is it

00:23:52.500 technology is it increasing individualism what do you think is going on there yeah

00:23:56.560 it's hard to say i think some of it is due to growing income inequality that there was kind of a

00:24:02.820 bigger difference you know and that difference was felt much more strongly over this time period

00:24:10.040 and it is that's a little bit of a mystery i think this is something we need a lot more research to try to

00:24:15.060 figure out what is it that led to these diverging paths if you point out the data shows that a lot of the

00:24:23.660 deaths of despair people have been talking about opioid overdoses suicides if you look at it's like

00:24:27.800 guys in their 60s and 70s it's that's happening too which is crazy you typically think of overdoses as

00:24:34.200 being a young person's thing but it's older people it is and and you know to be fair this has been

00:24:41.360 something that the boomer generation has struggled with their whole lives so drug use is just much much

00:24:47.880 higher among boomers than it was among silence it's one of the biggest generational differences

00:24:53.520 now a lot of that is marijuana which of course is not going to be behind those deaths of despair for

00:25:00.920 the most part but it shows up in hard drugs as well and then these days that's what you get you get

00:25:07.260 those overdoses and also alcohol much more binge drinking and problems with alcohol as the generations

00:25:15.520 of older people turn over from silence to boomers another trait that people kind of pin on boomers is

00:25:23.380 that there's a lot of self-focus what's going on with the boomers and self-focus you know the self-focus

00:25:30.280 piece does certainly show up for boomers you know if you look in the culture in terms of some of the

00:25:35.480 things that as they were young adults there's certainly you know a lot more focus in the culture

00:25:43.020 on being true to yourself and self-expression and you know a lot of this individualism there's also

00:25:49.940 a lot more emphasis on equality all of this appears but we don't see as much evidence for that having an

00:25:58.940 impact on individuals until we get to gen x that makes sense yeah i mean i can see anecdotally my own

00:26:05.720 life like my wife and i think it's interesting our parents they're boomers and they'll say something

00:26:11.100 like oh hey you're you know your third cousin's in town you should go see your third cousin because

00:26:15.420 they're like very family oriented and i think people in our age is like my third cousin like

00:26:20.120 what i i saw them when i was four at a family reunion or like boomers are more likely to do

00:26:24.720 family reunions than say like me a millennial it seems like you know it seems like the boomers are

00:26:29.300 more family oriented than my generation yeah i mean and i think that's something that's

00:26:33.940 often misunderstood there's sometimes this idea of like oh in the 60s and 70s there was all this

00:26:38.700 self-focused and then that stopped with boomers and it didn't stop with boomers it kept going and

00:26:44.520 building generation after generation right because the technology allowed for that the technology allows

00:26:49.400 for more individualism right basically technology allows people to be more independent of their family

00:26:57.260 and it allows people to have the time to focus on themselves more as opposed to just surviving

00:27:03.280 oh another thing about the boomers kind of chameleons in a lot of way they started off

00:27:07.220 maybe idealistic right sort of the woodstock thing but then the 80s they came like these yuppies

00:27:13.060 that's sort of the popular idea is is there anything to that backed by the data

00:27:16.380 there there is some and you know i think some of that is that with the hippies you were seeing one

00:27:23.060 portion of the generation and with the yuppies you were seeing another that that's often happens

00:27:27.420 with generations maybe in particular with boomers who are because they were such a big group there were

00:27:31.920 so many of them you know the variations in them even a small portion of boomers could have a big

00:27:37.100 impact because there were so many of them but there is some truth to that when you look at political

00:27:43.560 ideology and party affiliation among boomers there's this just amazing enormous shift in boomers political

00:27:52.540 party affiliation that in the early 70s 70 of them identified as democrats and that had gone down to

00:28:01.060 about 55 by the 80s and then was below 50 in more recent years what do demographers attribute that to

00:28:08.820 well there's a couple schools of thought about political affiliation and how it works so one is the people

00:28:18.960 get more conservative as they get older and that's part of it then there's also generational differences

00:28:26.160 just even apart from age the idea is that your politics will be somewhat influenced by the people

00:28:34.380 who were in office particularly the president who is in office when you were an adolescent and young

00:28:40.020 adult so that shows up later with gen xers as well in terms of influencing their political views but

00:28:48.200 boomers somewhat defy this because their views changed and their affiliation changed so much over the

00:28:53.840 decades we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:28:57.300 and now back to the show well let's talk about gen x this is your generation i remember i was i was

00:29:08.840 like in elementary school middle school when you heard a lot about generation x but generation x often

00:29:14.360 gets overlooked in fact this is a kind of like a trope you see in social media oh people forgot about

00:29:19.140 generation x again why does generation x get overlooked well gen x is a much smaller generation

00:29:25.580 population wise than the boomers before them and the millennials afterward they're a generation that

00:29:32.100 is caught in the middle they are almost literally the middle child of generations right now you know

00:29:37.700 they're in between the boomers and the millennials and they're the middle child in that the middle child

00:29:41.940 always gets neglected that's the trope and i think part of it is gen x just kind of like being

00:29:48.000 neglected they're like flying under the radar and some of it too is that the cultural changes that

00:29:54.820 define gen x are more linear there's not as many sudden changes for them say you know individualism is

00:30:04.780 a great example that that was building with the boomers continued to build with gen x and then

00:30:09.240 continued to build with millennials as opposed to say the break between millennials and gen z where did you

00:30:15.020 have a smartphone when you were in high school or not you know and that had so many effects and we'll

00:30:19.140 get to that right so i think that's part of it as well that gen x is kind of slippery they're hard to

00:30:25.680 define i found that in writing this book i mean i am a gen xer and this was in many ways the hardest

00:30:31.100 chapter to write so they are slippery but what are some of the defining traits that you found in your

00:30:36.020 research based on the data so one that people love to talk about is our love of shared pop culture

00:30:42.220 because millennials had some of that particularly older millennials we were in a lot of ways the last

00:30:46.640 generation to have a really truly shared pop culture in terms of there were only three channels

00:30:50.980 and you watched what was on them so you know a lot of us watched the same saturday morning cartoons

00:30:56.900 many of which were just terrible but you know there's nothing else on so you watched it

00:31:01.240 and that theme comes up a lot in pop culture generated by gen xers and in that realm gen xers

00:31:11.280 were at the forefront of a lot of the changes around the internet a lot of the companies that are still

00:31:18.640 around like google and youtube were founded by gen xers so other traits if you look at trust so trust

00:31:28.740 in other people this is something that again is linear this kept building but gen xers were the first

00:31:35.340 young adults where pollsters started to notice wait there's some cynicism here there's some distrust here

00:31:42.240 in a way that they were not used to seeing among young people that young people are supposed to be

00:31:46.660 idealistic and they're supposed to be more trusting and that really shifted with gen x so one of the big

00:31:54.060 surveys of high school seniors so 18 year olds and questions like would you say that most of the time

00:32:00.100 people try to be helpful or mostly just looking out for themselves would you say most people can be

00:32:05.240 trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people so there's a huge decline in people

00:32:11.640 saying other people be helpful i could trust other people between the boomers and through the course of

00:32:18.460 gen x so this is you know the 80s and 90s all those went way down and then trust in institutions

00:32:24.800 same types of things you start to see that the trust in government in the press even in medicine just

00:32:32.280 plummets what was driving that do we think so some of it is individualism you know i'm not going to trust

00:32:41.720 anybody else other than myself and just the idea of do experts really know more than me and that's a

00:32:50.260 good amount is that kind of everyone for themselves attitude and some of this is also rooted in the

00:32:57.160 internet and in tv and just responding to those mediums just responding to some of the natural incentives

00:33:06.840 that i mean gosh think about how news changed over the course of the 80s and 90s and 2000s as it moved

00:33:15.240 from the three channels to cable to the internet just much more driven by what gets viewers what gets

00:33:22.120 clicks and that's the lowest common denominator and then you know so it gets the clicks but then

00:33:27.780 trust starts to erode did this cynicism and this eroding trust in government did this influence the

00:33:34.400 level of political involvement of gen x it may have and that is what you see is gen xers as young

00:33:41.940 adults were not voting at anywhere near the rate that boomers were when they were young adults so a lot

00:33:48.820 of political apathy now that turned around as gen xers got older and as we transition more especially

00:33:54.880 after the great recession voter participation went up among all groups people started to become more

00:34:00.080 interested in politics after that time but admittedly the picture for political involvement

00:34:05.400 for gen x as young adults is a pretty dismal one okay so gen x they just continued the individualism

00:34:11.500 that you really start seeing a lot with the baby boomers and the things that go along with that

00:34:16.780 oh and the other thing you think about gen x you pointed out a lot of times when we talk about the

00:34:20.560 self-esteem movement we typically just talk about millennials but you highlight this started with

00:34:25.480 gen x this is where it started and just got ramped up even more with the millennials it did yeah and i i

00:34:32.240 think that is definitely worth emphasizing that a lot of these things around having high self-esteem

00:34:38.480 and having high expectations thinking you're above average all of this got going with gen x and

00:34:47.080 millennials continued it but you can really start to see it happen with gen x and i i have to say too

00:34:56.260 that that is consistent with my own experience as a gen xer when i was a child i can absolutely remember

00:35:02.180 the beginnings of a lot of that emphasis on just be yourself and self-expression and feeling good

00:35:09.660 about yourself being important and so on that would continue into the 90s and 2000s all right let's

00:35:17.060 talk about millennials this is people born between 1980 and 1994 i'm a millennial i was born in 1982

00:35:24.400 i know a lot of our listeners are millennials too and they're going to be interested in this so going

00:35:29.840 along with what you said about the self-esteem movement starting with gen x and growing out from

00:35:35.160 there one of the defining traits of millennials is that they report high self-confidence what do you see

00:35:41.260 in the data that points to that yeah so it's just all kinds of things so thinking that you're above

00:35:46.920 average in your school ability or intellectual ability in your leadership ability in your drive

00:35:54.060 to achieve there's been this consistent trend from boomers to gen xers to millennials of college students

00:36:01.060 and high school students having more self-confidence and it's it's important to know that that's how the

00:36:06.660 data is if we're not looking at people at one time where of course maybe you know 22 year olds might

00:36:11.500 have outside self-confidence compared to older people we're looking at 18 year olds across time

00:36:16.780 or 19 year olds across time with these measures and that it's a pretty consistent trend and you can see

00:36:22.940 it culturally too the google books database allows you to look at words and phrases and how much they've

00:36:28.880 been used in books back to the 1800s and there's a big rise in words like identity and unique and

00:36:36.780 personalize and in phrases like i love me or you are special all of these things became much much more

00:36:44.900 common over the childhood of gen x and especially of millennials is there anything to the idea that

00:36:51.860 millennials are more narcissistic than other generations so yes and then no uh is the answer

00:36:59.620 because it's a curve you don't see this that often especially with these things around self-confidence

00:37:05.420 but it is what happened here so if you look at college students and i i did this back in the

00:37:12.440 mid-2000s if you look up to then there's a consistent increase in scores on the most commonly used measure

00:37:20.100 of narcissistic personality traits and just to be clear narcissism is a very misunderstood trait

00:37:26.420 it's about that oversized self-confidence it's also about just being very focused on the self

00:37:33.220 about thinking that you're special if you ruled the world it would be a better place

00:37:38.100 some people argue about how you measure it but well pretty much 80 90 percent of the studies that

00:37:44.640 have looked at narcissism in the field have used the same measures so pretty much the two are

00:37:49.340 synonymous at this point and if you look at that measure there was a an increase between college

00:37:54.360 students in the early 80s so that's going to be late boomers early gen xers and then it rises up until

00:38:02.340 about 2007 so it's gonna be like the first half of the millennial generation so it builds then it goes

00:38:07.860 down then narcissism scores go down as we get to the second half of the millennial generation and then

00:38:15.760 into gen z so like say our college students now more narcissistic than they were in the 80s no were they in the late

00:38:24.660 2000s yes is that because just what's happened in between that time so maybe late millennials like they

00:38:31.900 experienced a bad economy so maybe they're less narcissistic yeah so here's my theory so between that you know early

00:38:38.580 80s to 2007 period all of this emphasis on the self and the culture it was everywhere so that's

00:38:45.340 clearly going to increase those scores it's very consistent with the other data that we have on

00:38:49.240 thinking you're above average and self-confidence and so on so self-confidence didn't really go down

00:38:54.280 much with the great recession but narcissism did not exactly sure why i think though the recession was

00:39:00.320 a reality check that maybe we're still going to believe some of this stuff about self-confidence but

00:39:05.960 maybe we're not actually going to believe we're special anymore so it kind of cut off the top

00:39:09.740 portion of that which might have been consistent with narcissism then the economy improved though

00:39:15.180 so why didn't narcissism go up that's how we'll get to this later i'm sure but that's when the story

00:39:21.180 becomes more about gen z because that's who's transitioning into college after 2011 2012 and then

00:39:28.560 there's all kinds of other influences that are going to keep narcissism low or keep it going down

00:39:34.100 well let's talk another thing about millennials you hit on with the data is how they're doing

00:39:38.180 economically and there's a lot of talk on social media there's all these memes about millennials are

00:39:42.380 worse off economically than boomers at similar age right so there's a meme like here's my dad at

00:39:47.100 age 25 he's got a house and a car and then here's me millennial i'm doing terrible what does the data

00:39:53.260 say are millennials actually doing worse than boomers at a similar age yeah so and i have to emphasize

00:39:59.240 just how pervasive this narrative is it's everywhere online in books last night cnn had an entire hour

00:40:09.380 on how millennials are not doing well economically so when i was writing this book one of the first

00:40:15.720 things that i did is to just say okay let's go look at median incomes is this true and it's not and

00:40:24.760 not only is it not true that millennials are doing badly they're actually doing better than gen xers and

00:40:30.960 boomers at the same age and these are not obscure statistics these are the standard statistics from

00:40:35.880 the census bureau on median household income in the united states you could find this in 10 minutes

00:40:41.460 and it's you graph it it's extremely clear yes there's some ups and downs with the recession and yeah

00:40:47.600 the great recession was bad but since about 2016 2017 25 to 34 year olds 35 to 44 year olds so these

00:40:56.540 are millennials in these periods have higher median incomes than gen xers and boomers did at the same

00:41:03.420 age so and it holds up across everything that's household income personal income looks the same

00:41:08.940 wages look the same the percentage of people under the poverty line is less for millennials in this age

00:41:16.380 group than it used to be the saint louis fed who got all kinds of press for saying that millennials

00:41:22.760 were falling behind in wealth building they updated their data that's no longer true millennials are neck

00:41:28.540 and neck with gen x now in terms of their wealth building um owning a home that's a very very common

00:41:35.060 meme online is millennials are so poor none of them can buy houses if you look at the percentage of 25 to

00:41:41.320 39 year olds in the us who owned a home and you group it by generation the difference between boomers and

00:41:48.640 millennials is about two percentage points that's it and then the other piece of it with homeownership most people

00:41:56.100 buy their first house when they're in their early 30s for older millennials in particular they were in that age range

00:42:01.680 when houses were a relative bargain historically speaking say the late 2000s and early 2010s right

00:42:10.300 after the housing crash so gen xers buying their first house at that age were buying at the peak right

00:42:16.440 before the housing crash and the millennials five years later were buying at the low point and if they

00:42:23.320 still own those houses they're worth a lot more than what they paid for them in 2011 are these income numbers

00:42:30.080 have these been adjusted for inflation yes okay so why is the common perception out there that

00:42:36.960 millennials are struggling i mean this is if you're a millennial listening to this you might be

00:42:40.660 struggling like i'm struggling okay yes you could be struggling but you're talking about averages here

00:42:44.860 exactly these are averages very important to point out right so what's going on why why is there this

00:42:50.020 idea that all you know millennials as a whole are struggling so you know i think there's a there's a couple

00:42:54.240 of reasons i mean there's some theories that don't really hold up but there's others that do there are

00:42:59.680 some good explanations so one obviously is college loan debt that probably i mean as first we can tell

00:43:06.940 i think the primary reason why millennials are doing so well economically is because more went to college

00:43:11.520 it makes sense college graduates make more money and that's probably why incomes are so much higher

00:43:17.880 but that comes with a cost and that's often college loans so that's one piece another piece

00:43:24.960 is based on gender so men's salaries are actually slightly worse than they used to be in this age group

00:43:35.980 say it peaked you know in the 70s women's salaries are just astronomically higher so you average it out

00:43:44.560 you don't see that gender difference so you know this is overall just amazing news that young women are

00:43:51.700 making a lot more money like quadruple as much almost than they used to say in the 50s

00:43:59.580 but here's the problem if you're part of a heterosexual couple you have kids who's going to

00:44:07.060 stay home with the kids well men still make more than women so if it's the guy you're going to lose

00:44:10.800 out on a lot of money if it's the woman you're going to lose out on a bigger proportion of your

00:44:15.240 household income than you would have in 1985 or 1965 or even 1995 so i think that's one reason

00:44:24.160 is then you have to pay for child care you have to make these tough choices you know when it comes to

00:44:29.660 taking care of children so that's i think clearly another reason why millennials even if they are doing

00:44:36.760 well may feel more strapped because of some of these expenses even if the overall idea you know about

00:44:44.640 income is is not true okay so they're making more money but might be paying more on their student

00:44:50.080 loan debt or if they have kids they're spending a lot of money on child care although it is important

00:44:55.720 to point out that there are other things that are cheaper than they used to be when you adjust them

00:45:00.080 for overall inflation so a lot of things like consumer electronics furniture toys all that stuff we now

00:45:08.200 buy on amazon that's actually kind of surprisingly cheap used to be much more expensive and i think the

00:45:13.720 tough thing for young people now is that the essentials college education you know to do

00:45:20.960 really well housing are more expensive and these other things are cheaper but they're not quite as

00:45:27.040 essential so that is one of the big economic challenges these days for people of all ages

00:45:31.840 frankly right health and like health care is also health care is another great example of something that

00:45:36.380 is an essential and is a lot more more expensive okay so overall some things are cheaper some things are

00:45:43.060 more expensive but overall millennials they're not struggling as much financially as people commonly

00:45:49.400 think their median income is higher than previous generations at the same age that's adjusting for

00:45:54.480 inflation they're similar to gen x in terms of wealth building and i think it's important to point out on

00:45:59.580 that point that that even takes into account college debt so yeah they're doing they're doing better than

00:46:04.680 we think so moving on to family life what does family life look like for millennials so it starts later

00:46:11.500 you know so the slow life strategy means that you get married and have kids later so you know it leads to

00:46:20.100 some it leads to some really striking statistics so like if you look at men in their late 20s

00:46:29.960 in 1970 almost 80 percent of them were married in 2020 27 that's about as big of a generational change

00:46:40.680 as you ever see that that age of marriage has gone up so much and then in terms of fertility people

00:46:49.300 having their kids a lot later so if you look at the birth rate by age for women for those in their early

00:46:56.480 20s it's gone way down also teen births as well have gone way down even births for people in their

00:47:03.840 late 20s have gone down but where you get increases as people in their early 30s and especially those in

00:47:10.680 their late 30s having children in general are fewer millennials getting married and having kids

00:47:16.120 yeah so marriage yeah down by a little bit but having babies is way down so the story there has

00:47:25.800 been discussed quite a bit that the birth rate started to slide pretty significantly in 2007 you

00:47:33.580 know it was a recession the theory was that that birth rate is going to come back up after the economy

00:47:38.360 improved and it didn't not only did it not come back up it kept going down and now with millennials

00:47:45.460 aging into their 40s it's looking likely that there's going to be a lot more millennials who

00:47:50.980 do not have children compared to the previous generations what about religious life what does

00:47:55.820 that look like for millennials so i cover the changes in religion in the millennial chapter just

00:48:00.420 because that's where a lot of the change happened and this is another example of something that's

00:48:05.140 linear and it's affected a lot of generations but really really big decline so let's take say

00:48:12.080 eighth graders 10th graders 12th graders and college students the percentage who ever ever attend religious

00:48:19.800 services so that used to be pretty high 90 percent in the 70s and 80s and when millennials were in that

00:48:29.000 age group that's when it really starts to slide so the late 90s to the 2000s and it just starts to

00:48:35.600 plummet so that 90 percent in the early 80s for the high school seniors ever attending services goes to

00:48:42.900 about 72 percent now that's still a pretty high number most are attending religious services at some

00:48:49.820 point but if you see it also in those you say they go once a week you see it in the percentage who

00:48:56.600 believe in god or pray all of these are much much lower than they were say in the 80s and the early 90s

00:49:05.440 gotcha so declining religiosity we've seen that affect other generations as well it may be older

00:49:10.540 generations like are baby boomers dropping out of religion you can see declines among older people

00:49:16.680 as well they do show up but if you look say i don't know i have this one graph from 2018 and there's a

00:49:24.480 pretty big generation gap say let's take prayer for boomers it's almost 90 percent who ever pray and then

00:49:34.300 it's about 75 to 80 for millennials not enormous but still there's you can see the the the gap

00:49:42.820 appearing and i think the other thing that's important to point out is a couple things so one

00:49:47.820 there was a theory for a while that okay millennials moved away from religion when they were young but

00:49:52.960 they'll come back right when they're older and they have kids and they didn't the decline in attending

00:49:59.260 religious services also shows up among 26 to 40 year olds and it looks very similar so that

00:50:06.380 non-affiliation with religion that was happening during the teen years is persisting as they grow

00:50:11.820 up get married and have kids so family life religion that that's been a big source of meaning for people

00:50:17.400 for millennia what are millennials replacing family and religion with defined meaning

00:50:22.420 that's a good question i don't think we have the answer to it i have the answer okay um are they

00:50:28.020 working more are they consuming i guess there's no data yet well i mean i think it's more it's almost

00:50:33.480 more of a philosophical question right i mean if you look at i mean because you know where they find

00:50:38.120 meaning you can say well where are they spending more time yeah that's yeah i guess you could say

00:50:41.360 like where you spend your time and money right yeah um online i mean that's true for all generations

00:50:48.180 but there have been people who have argued the internet is the new religion and maybe that's

00:50:55.100 true yeah okay let's talk about gen z so i got a son born in 2010 so the gen z is 1995 to 2012 so he's

00:51:02.980 at the tail end of gen z what are the defining traits of gen z so the generational break between

00:51:10.980 millennials and gen z was the most sudden and stark i've ever seen because i got used to working

00:51:19.600 with these big data sets i you know looked at them a lot and got used to seeing generational changes that

00:51:24.720 were big but they take a decade or two to get there then in the data on teens around 2012 things started

00:51:31.460 to change much more suddenly more teens started to say that they felt lonely and left out that they felt

00:51:38.220 like they couldn't do anything right that their life wasn't useful that they didn't enjoy life

00:51:42.920 so these are symptoms of loneliness and depression and at first i thought okay maybe a blip but it kept

00:51:49.440 going and then it kept going and kept going and that's what made me and many other people realize

00:51:54.920 okay there's a generational break here we thought millennials were going to last until those born in

00:51:58.860 1999 nope that cutoff is more mid-90s so the pew research center uses 1997 i use 1995 i've stuck

00:52:07.100 with 1995 because those breaks especially in mental health and time use show up for teens around 2012

00:52:15.200 and so that fits a little bit more clearly in that era plus 1995 is the year the internet was

00:52:21.140 commercialized so it's really shows that technological break as well so the biggest break between

00:52:28.440 millennials and gen z is around mental health it's around expectations around optimism and self-confidence

00:52:34.640 so millennials were reaching the peak of that mountain of individualism and self-confidence and high

00:52:42.480 expectations and optimism and then top of the roller coaster almost what goes up must come down and it

00:52:51.660 came down spectacularly for gen z happiness went down depression went up optimism started to fade pessimism

00:53:02.580 started to become more prominent things like do you have hope for the situation of the world

00:53:08.360 went down you know what are your expectations for your future life those went down so optimism to pessimism

00:53:16.500 so what's what's behind that what changed so for the loneliness and depression i think it's pretty clear

00:53:22.640 that what changed was smartphones and social media and their subsequent effects so 2012 the end of 2012

00:53:31.400 was the first time the majority of americans owned a smartphone this is also the period when facebook

00:53:37.700 bought instagram when social media use went from relatively optional to virtually mandatory among teens

00:53:46.280 it's when teens started sleeping less probably because technology interfered with that they also started

00:53:54.300 spending less time with each other face to face so pretty much every measure we have in these big surveys

00:53:59.360 of teens spending time with each other in person had been going down slowly since about 2000 at the

00:54:06.080 beginning of the internet and then just plummeted after 2010 so the way teens spent their time outside

00:54:14.000 of school fundamentally changed they started spending more time online less time sleeping and less time with

00:54:20.980 their friends face to face and that is not a good formula for mental health or for feeling like you belong

00:54:27.680 because social media communication is a poor substitute for actually being with people face to face

00:54:34.920 and if it interferes with sleep not sleeping enough is a huge risk factor for depression and self-harm

00:54:42.980 so i think it's pretty clear that that's was at least especially for teens the instigating factor

00:54:49.260 it may also explain the pessimism as well because depression isn't just about feelings and emotions

00:54:55.800 it's about how you view the world it's about cognition it's about thinking by definition depression means

00:55:01.940 seeing things in a negative light and i think that's why expectations started to fall and why

00:55:07.660 more teens started to be so pessimistic about so many different things so how is that pessimism like

00:55:14.720 what are the downstream effects of that like how is it affecting other things like work political

00:55:18.360 involvement family life what's the data showing yeah well you know it's hard to tell if this is a

00:55:23.920 direct line of causation but for political activism there's actually some upsides if that's what we got

00:55:31.260 from it because gen z young adults are voting at a higher rate than young adults before them

00:55:39.000 anecdotally a lot of people talked about this generation being very political and politically

00:55:43.740 involved and we could definitely see it in the voting statistics so if that's the case then you know

00:55:49.780 pessimism means you want things to change there can be some positives to that where there are potential

00:55:56.000 downsides is when it's taken more to extremes and i think the issue is for pretty much everybody of

00:56:05.000 all generations but particularly for gen z in this current cultural moment that we're in there's just

00:56:11.220 so much negativity and it is relatively extreme so there was this one poll that i came across it was

00:56:17.920 done a couple of years ago and it asked things like this thinking about the fundamental design and

00:56:24.260 structure of american government which comes closer to your view significant changes to the design and

00:56:29.880 structure are needed to make it work for current times versus the design and structure serves the

00:56:34.400 country well it does not need significant changes 75 of gen z agreed that we needed significant changes to

00:56:42.200 the design and structure of american government about 45 of boomers said the same so there's a fair amount

00:56:50.160 of negativity among the older generations too but it's a lot higher among gen z and another question

00:56:55.880 they were asked do you agree america is a fair society where everyone can get ahead 65 of gen z said no

00:57:02.440 it's not a fair society then the last one is do you believe the founders of the united states

00:57:09.620 are better described as villains or as heroes 40 of gen z said villains only 10 of boomers said villains

00:57:19.980 so they're not just negative about times right now they're negative about things 250 years in the

00:57:25.700 past and what are the consequences of those views do you think so i mean i think there's a number of

00:57:30.820 ways this could go you know the positive is as i mentioned like political activism from the viewpoint

00:57:36.320 of older generations that may not be the best if political activism becomes a revolution and it also

00:57:43.220 may not be the best if you combine these attitudes with depression and nihilism and then there's the idea of

00:57:48.800 everything is so messed up and we can't do anything about it which i think observationally is very

00:57:54.420 very common on social media you know it's the um the meme of the dog sitting in the burning house

00:58:00.760 saying this is fine it's the dumpster fire idea it's that we're living in a modern hellscape it's like

00:58:06.700 this everything is bad all the time which again i think is affecting everybody but is having a particular

00:58:12.600 impact on gen z teens and young adults it's like learned helplessness they have an external locus

00:58:18.540 of control and they do we do see that in the data so there's a question on one of the big surveys

00:58:24.900 do you agree every time i try to get ahead somebody or something stops me and gen z teens are more likely

00:58:31.900 to say yes to that than millennial teens were is this pessimism is this affecting relationship and family

00:58:38.420 formation amongst gen z it very well might because when you look at birth rates and you look at

00:58:44.140 fertility intentions the theme that comes up over and over is that people who are optimistic about

00:58:49.340 the future have children gen z is not optimistic about the future and that might be why when they're

00:58:56.100 asked are you likely to have kids they're less likely to say yes then the majority still say yes

00:59:01.020 but this statistic and the percentage of teens who say they want to have children had been consistent

00:59:07.680 since 1976 it had barely changed and then in the transition between millennials and gen z it suddenly

00:59:14.820 started to go down interesting so there could be the pessimism but also going back to the idea of

00:59:19.340 technology increases individualism maybe people are just feeling more individualistic and they think

00:59:23.060 well kids they've kind of put a hamper on my myself so i don't want to do that you know if that were

00:59:29.100 true though i would have expected that fertility intentions at 18 would have started to go down

00:59:35.180 with gen xers and especially with millennials but it didn't they stayed pretty constant until we got to

00:59:40.340 gen z interesting what about so the idea of the slow life strategy this really peaked with gen z i've

00:59:48.020 noticed this this is anecdotal but i noticed a lot of my friends who have kids who are 16 years old 17 18

00:59:54.120 they don't have their driver's license and i asked me what's going on with that like yeah i'm bugging

00:59:59.040 him to go get his driver but he won't do it is there any data to back up my anecdotal observation

01:00:03.340 there is indeed so yes in that high school senior survey they're asked if they have their driver's

01:00:11.040 license and there has been a big big decline in the number of 18 year olds so but ready to graduate

01:00:18.380 from high school who have a driver's license we have to put this in context though but first of

01:00:24.940 all no it's not uber because you can't take uber when you're under 18 and it doesn't exist in rural

01:00:29.960 areas and we see the exact same decline in rural areas and urban areas when it comes to driver's

01:00:34.660 licenses it's also part of a bigger picture so there's a decline in teens getting their driver's

01:00:40.240 license there's also a decline in the number of teens who drink alcohol who have a paid job

01:00:46.560 who go out on dates and who have sex so these are adult activities these are things that

01:00:52.100 adults do and children don't and 18 year olds 17 year olds are less likely to do these things

01:00:58.820 than they were for millennials gen xers and and boomers and yeah the technology is driving that

01:01:05.200 because i mean if you're 18 years old today you don't need to go cruise with your friends or cruise

01:01:11.420 over to go see your friends you just get on snapchat or whatever to talk with your friends

01:01:14.920 and that that explains the getting together with friends piece a little bit more and maybe the

01:01:20.600 dating piece a little bit more it doesn't really explain when there's also been a decline in getting

01:01:25.560 a driver's license well a little bit maybe but it definitely doesn't explain why there's a decline in

01:01:30.220 getting a job yeah yeah why wouldn't you get i needed a job if i wanted to do anything when i was a

01:01:36.720 kid i was a kid um but i mean maybe you don't need a job because like a lot of stuff online it's free

01:01:42.680 right you can just you can play video games like it doesn't cost as much free entertainment that i

01:01:48.460 might be part of it yeah i think it's it's certainly an interaction between technology and the slave but

01:01:53.260 a lot of it is the slow life strategy just people taking longer to grow up okay so then the final

01:01:58.760 generation is gen alpha we don't know much about them yet they're like still little kids so we don't

01:02:03.000 know much about them but i imagine it's more of the same with of gen z so these are the kids who

01:02:08.280 will barely remember a time before covid the oldest were in the lower grades you know first

01:02:15.200 grade kindergarten when the pandemic hit they were the those poor kindergartners who were squirming

01:02:20.900 through the zoom lessons their early days in the pandemic they're going to have some consequences

01:02:25.980 but kids are resilient it doesn't have to doom them the silent generation was another generation

01:02:31.260 born during difficult times the great depression and world war ii and they actually have the best

01:02:37.320 mental health of any other generation well gene this has been a great conversation where can people

01:02:41.560 go to learn more about the book and your work yeah so the book is generations my website is

01:02:47.860 gene twangy.com so j-e-a-n-t-w-e-n-g-e and i have a lot of um like kind of faqs about generations and

01:02:58.120 academic publications and all kinds of other stuff on the website fantastic well gene twangy thanks for

01:03:03.580 your time it's been a pleasure my pleasure as well my guest is dr gene twangy she's the author of the

01:03:08.720 book generations it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more

01:03:12.380 information about her work at our website gene twangy.com and twangy is spelled t-w-e-n-g-e.com

01:03:17.880 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash generations where you find links to resources

01:03:22.120 we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure

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01:03:37.600 of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and you'd

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The Art of Manliness - April 26, 2023

Generations — The Surprising Truths and Persistent Myths

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