Generation Me--Revised and Updated

by Jean M. Twenge

  The Two-Income Trap, by former Harvard professor and US senator Elizabeth Warren, provides a summary of the balance sheet. Fixed costs such as housing, health insurance, and child care have doubled for the average family since the early 1970s, while discretionary income has gone down. (The gap has been filled by more women working.) Families with children are significantly more likely to go bankrupt than childless couples, probably because living in a safe neighborhood with good schools is expensive. Bankruptcy is more common now, Warren argues, because fixed costs such as housing are higher, so there is no way to cut back when things get tough.

  To sum up: One parent should stay at home, but to afford a house—and sometimes even the rent—both parents have to work. You “choose” between expensive, difficult-to-find day care and renting an apartment where your child has no space to run around. Even if you don’t have children, you face huge bills just for the necessities of life: housing, health care, and paying for those student loans. More and more people are filing for bankruptcy or are on the verge of it. Young people feel screwed no matter what they do—no wonder they’re anxious.

  WHY GENME YUPPIES ARE UNHAPPY: EXPECTATIONS VERSUS REALITY

  So in this world where the essentials are so astronomically expensive, what messages has GenMe been fed? Save your money? Feel lucky to have a house even if it’s not a mansion? Of course not. In the world of individualism and consumer longing, GenMe’ers have been taught to expect more. Perhaps because of media exposure, they want to be millionaires, to be famous, to live in a large house and drive fancy cars. It’s all they’ve seen on TV and in movies since they were babies. In the movie Fight Club, the character Tyler Durden captures this perspective with searing accuracy: “Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our depression is our lives. . . . We were raised on television to believe that we’d all be millionaires, movie gods, rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re starting to figure that out. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

  These movie lines are ironic; after all, they are delivered by Brad Pitt, a “movie god” if there ever was one. But that’s the point: not everyone can grow up to be Brad Pitt or Kobe Bryant or Bill Gates or Jennifer Lopez. It has always been normal for kids to have big dreams, but the dreams of kids today are bigger than ever. By the time kids figure out that they’re not going to be celebrities or sports figures, they’re well into adolescence or even their 20s. Brian, a character in Avenue Q, says that as a kid he thought he’d “grow up to be a comedian on late-night TV.” Ten years out of college, he’s broke and unemployed. Before long the entire cast is singing a song called “It Sucks to Be Me.”

  As you might remember from chapter 3, twice as many in GenMe (compared to Boomers in the 1970s) expect to earn graduate degrees and have professional jobs, even though actual attainment of these goals has not changed. Some have even bigger dreams: in 2005, 31% of American high school students said they expected to become famous someday. A 2010 survey raised the bar: 26% of teens expected to become famous by age 25. That survey also found that 93% of teens said they expected to get a college degree, and 81% expected to have a “great-paying job” by 25. On the “Teen Advice” section of about.com, a teen writes, “I want to be famous. I’m not sure what my talent is but I really want to give it a try. Any tips for getting things started?” The answer from the website begins, “OK, first I need to state the obvious . . . who doesn’t want to be famous?”

  High expectations can be the stuff of inspiration, but more often they set GenMe up for bitter disappointment. Quarterlife Crisis concludes that twentysomethings often take a while to realize that the “be whatever you want to be, do whatever you want to do” mantra of their childhoods is not attainable. When they do come to this harsh realization, they say, the feeling resembles that of Charlie Brown falling flat on his back after Lucy pulls away the ball. “I remember hearing things like never give up on your dreams often,” writes James, 18. “Learning how meaningless these words truly are reminds me of a kid learning the truth about Santa Claus.” Georgia, 19, observes, “My generation thinks they should be doing something great with their lives but don’t really try to do anything about it. I’ve seen several friends drop out of college because they felt they were not doing what they were meant to do. But after they drop out, they don’t get a job or anything to try and FIND what they are meant to do. It’s like they think a brick is going to come flying in through their window with a note attached telling them their life’s purpose and career.”

  Tim Urban recently published an article in the Huffington Post titled “Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy.” This generation, he observes, is “wildly ambitious” and has continually been told they’re special. Urban likens Boomers’ career expectations to a nice green lawn. But GenMe, he says, is “delusional” as well as ambitious. Each GenMe’er thinks, “I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd.” So every GenMe’er expects not just the “flowery lawn” but “a shiny unicorn on top.” Urban illustrates this with a steeply rising career trajectory with the words “because just wait till the world sees how amazing I am.”

  The problem, Urban notes, is that the world is not an easy place and building a career takes years of hard work—but GenMe struggles to accept that reality. GenMe’s “arrogance” and “huge expectations,” he says, mean that reality can’t possibly satisfy them—which is why they are unhappy. Urban’s piece struck a nerve: before long, the article had 1 million likes on Facebook, had generated almost 4,000 comments, and was e-mailed more than 14,000 times.

  Some of these high expectations may have been fostered by a childhood of media consumption. Teens spend a lot more time with media than they used to. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that teens spent almost eight hours a day with media in 2009, two hours more than they had just five years before; if multitasking with multiple media platforms is included, teens in 2009 spent a jaw-dropping 10 hours and 45 minutes a day with media. This is enough to shape a worldview, and the worldview of media is almost relentlessly exciting and glamorous. Characters on TV shows and in movies rarely have boring jobs working for corporations, building houses, or working a cash register. And even those who work at professions often featured on TV—such as doctors and police officers—will tell you that the day-to-day reality is far less exciting than what you see. In between the shows, advertising constantly asks us if we are good enough, thin enough, rich enough. Writer Cathi Hanauer sums this up as “the ideas and belief—courtesy of a culture ever more mired in materialism, consumerism, and false advertising—that we should have it all, do it all, and be it all, and be Happy. And if we’re not, by God, something is wrong.” Lynn, 19, agrees that television has inspired many of these unrealistic expectations. “I think there is so much anxiety and depression because of the pressure the media is putting on the world to be perfect. On television, stars are portrayed as beautiful and worry-free. People are spending more and more time trying to make themselves a replica of what they see on TV.” That is even more true now that many of the most popular shows are “reality” TV—not a scripted fantasy, but someone’s real life. Of course, it’s almost always someone whose life is more glamorous, exciting, and dramatic than most people’s. This is where “you can be anything” and reality collide—right at the intersection of anxiety and depression.

  GenMe’ers are also often woefully unprepared for what they encounter in the “real world” of the workplace. Years of self-esteem instruction, of being told they are special and can do anything, leave them confused and hurt by the harsh realities of many jobs. In Quarterlife Crisis, Joanna says, “College doesn’t prepare you for the real world emotionally, which definitely brought on depression.” The environment in her first job, she says, was “sterile, not nurturing, and full of people who didn’t care about my welfare or happiness or well-being.”

  Young women in particular often feel that they have to “have it all,” balancing primary responsibility for
a family with lofty career aspirations. In her book on eating disorders, Joan Jacobs Brumberg lists the goals of young women as “to be brainy and beautiful; to have an exciting $75,000-a-year job; to nurture two wonderful children in consort with a supportive but equally high-powered husband.” To achieve such a perfect life, “young women must be extremely demanding of themselves. . . . The kind of personal control required to become the new Superwoman . . . parallels the single-mindedness that characterizes the anorexic.” It’s a tall order to do this and still maintain your sanity. As Midlife Crisis at 30 puts it, “The ‘you can do anything’ promise has a tendency to transform into an unrealistic ‘you should be everything’ brand of guilt.”

  Even if they reach many of their goals, GenMe’ers are likely to remain unsatisfied unless they earn heaps of money. The average person is now much more aware of all of the things she can’t have. Author Gregg Easterbrook calls this “catalog-induced anxiety” after the glossy pages of expensive things that land in our mailboxes. But it goes beyond that; we constantly see expensive things through TV, the Internet, movies, and magazines. Reality shows such as Rich Kids of Beverly Hills portray the careless wealth of those born into privilege. The show got its start when its protagonists started posting pictures of their expensive jewelry, cars, private jets, and purebred dogs on an account called Rich Kids of Instagram. Its tagline: “They have more money than you and this is what they do.” One post is a hotel bill for $10,000 with the caption “You stay a week, we stay a night.” Shows such as VH1’s The Fabulous Life of . . . display the expensive trappings of the famous; the details of indulgence are then followed by the cost, usually delivered in a riveting accelerating cadence: “The tile in the kitchen alone cost over two million dollars!” The Travel Channel regularly runs shows like Millionaires’ Hawaii, which demonstrate how nice a place would be—if only you had a huge pile of money. Sure enough, research shows that the more television you watch, the more materialistic you are.

  The Internet contributes to the problem as well. For example, the site realtor.com makes it possible to view pictures—and sometimes 360-degree video—of houses listed for sale. No matter how I try to look only at the houses I might conceivably buy, they just keep going up in price until suddenly I am drooling over a $2 million house I’ll never be able to afford. I often feel anxious after looking at this site, trying to figure out how I can possibly make enough money to buy one of these houses. Mostly, though, the experience is just abjectly depressing.

  Our perceptions are also skewed by modern life. Television wasn’t always a world devoid of working-class people. Witness 1970s shows such as Sanford and Son (father and son run a junkyard and live in a house apparently furnished from it), All in the Family (Archie Bunker’s working-class family lives in a duplex in Queens), and Good Times (family of five lives in a Chicago housing project). Because fewer of us ride buses and subways, send our children to public schools, and live in mixed-income neighborhoods, middle-class people rarely rub shoulders with poor people in real life either, which prompted a New York Times Magazine article titled “The Invisible Poor.” We’re constantly exposed to people who have more than we do and rarely see those who have less—a lack of perspective that’s a formula for dissatisfaction.

  People whose primary motivations are financial are much more likely to be anxious and depressed than people who value strong relationships with others. Psychologist Ed Diener got many of the hundred wealthiest Americans (from a Forbes list) to fill out a happiness questionnaire, and they turned out to be only marginally happier than people with average incomes. This is probably due to the adjustment of expectations; you think you’ll be happier when you get that raise, but a few months later you’ve adjusted to your new standard of living and want yet more. People who win the lottery are ecstatic at first but, a year after their win, are no happier than other people.

  GenMe also has high expectations for romantic partners. Marriage was once seen as a practical partnership for raising children, but is now expected to fulfill the most romantic ideals. In a Gallup poll, 94% of single women in their 20s agreed that “when you marry, you want your spouse to be your soulmate, first and foremost.” Norval Glenn, an expert on marital satisfaction, states bluntly, “People now believe that a relationship with one person should meet all of their emotional needs. In most cases, that isn’t going to happen.” The authors of Midlife Crisis at 30 call this the “romantic expectation gap.” They note, “Most of the women we interviewed insisted that they were not looking for a Prince Charming—then, without missing a beat, they described an equally unattainable ideal. It’s ironic that we’ve developed such lofty expectations of our potential husbands at a time when nearly 50 percent of marriages still end in divorce.”

  Few people can reach the goal of the perfect life, so more are anxious and depressed. “It’s as if some idiot raised the ante on what it takes to be a normal human being,” Martin Seligman writes. In many ways, the higher expectations of GenMe are rooted in our focus on the self. We’ve been told all our lives that we’re special, so we think we deserve to be famous and rich. We also have higher expectations for jobs and romantic partners, expecting fulfillment in all realms of life. It would be wonderful if these appetites could always be sated, but they can’t. Not everyone can live in a huge house, and most people’s jobs, by economic necessity, are not going to be fulfilling, at least not all of the time. You might be married to a great guy, but he’s not going to be your perfect soul mate all the time. We focus so much on our individual wants, feeling empty inside, that depression is often the result.

  But our dissatisfaction can’t solely be blamed on individualism. It’s not just that we expect more, it’s that the necessities of life are so much more expensive. GenMe anticipates more at a time when it’s more difficult to attain even the bare minimum. Movies are filled with people who have glamorous jobs, but it’s harder and harder just to get into a good college. TV shows are set in mansions, yet even a small house is outside the reach of most people. It’s like a cruel joke—GenMe has been raised to expect riches and can barely afford a condo and a crappy health care plan.

  DANGERS AND THREATS

  Even before the threat of terrorism made the world such a frightening place, many other modern dangers terrorized us and still do, from crime to school shootings to kidnappings. The role of the media is important here. The evening news (particularly the local broadcast) portrays a world filled with dangers. The mantra in local news is “If it bleeds, it leads,” which is why murders are often the top story. Sure enough, people who watch many hours of news coverage are more afraid of crime than people who do not watch much TV news. In the quest for ratings, many news programs focus on the terrible things that can happen to children, knowing that this is a natural source of anxiety for parents. (I often joke that the teaser for every TV news story is “And how will it affect your children?”)

  Most people, fortunately, will never be the victim of a violent crime. But the atmosphere created by crime is pervasive and painful. Living in a dangerous society can make people enormously anxious: Is it safe to walk down that street? What if I get raped? Will I get carjacked if I take a wrong turn? What if my child is abducted? Crime affects you even if you are never a victim. Even though the crime rate wasn’t much different from now, I often walked home alone from elementary school in the early 1980s and rode my bike for miles around our suburb (without a helmet!). Now parents are afraid to let their children walk to school alone, and many don’t allow their children to ride their bikes around their neighborhood for fear of kidnappers and child molesters. Magda, 24, has two little sisters. “Because of all the bad things that happen to children that are shown in the media,” she says, her mother “feels worried that something is going to happen to my sisters. She feels the world is a much more unsafe place now than twenty years ago.”

  Parents’ fears of child abduction have led many to tell their kids they should never, ever talk to strangers. Sometimes children a
bsorb this lesson a little too well. Boy Scout Brennan Hawkins, 11, got lost in the Utah mountains. Rescuers finally found him four days later, alive but weak and dehydrated. Why did it take so long to find him, considering he was alive and walking around all of this time? Because he got off the trail and hid every time he saw someone. After all, never talk to strangers. “His biggest fear, he told me, was someone would steal him,” said his mother. In other words, Brennan was so concerned about being abducted by the people who were trying to rescue him that he almost starved to death.

  As Barry Glassner writes in The Culture of Fear, media reports often make us afraid of things that are unlikely to occur, as small scares are turned into seemingly large dangers. Few children are abducted by nonrelatives. Other scares are considerably sillier. A few years ago, forty people in San Diego got food poisoning from the salad lettuce at a restaurant chain. The local media covered this story endlessly. Kristina, 25, commented on this sarcastically in one of my classes: “Now we’re supposed to be scared of lettuce?” And this was before the threat of terrorism scared us all out of our wits.