iGen

by Jean M. Twenge

  Millennial teens in the 2000s were also happier than the teens of the 1990s, the era when GenX’ers wore black T-shirts and talked about how depressed they were. With its emphasis on freedom and optimism, individualism is an advantageous system for teens, and greater happiness was the result.

  Then iGen arrived, and teen happiness began to falter. For 8th and 10th graders especially, the gains of the 2000s have been wiped out in the years since 2011 (see Figure 4.1). Just as iGen entered the samples, teen happiness started to wane from its Millennial exuberance. Pop culture somehow saw this one coming, with teen movies veering from happy comedies about partying high schoolers (American Pie, Superbad) to tales of young people fighting their way through dystopian landscapes (The Hunger Games, Divergent).

  Figure 4.1. Percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders who report being “very happy” (three-year moving average). Monitoring the Future, 1991–2015.

  Of course, the happiness question is just one item, and the decline is noticeable but not extreme. So it pays to look more deeply at trends in teens’ psychological well-being.

  The first serious rumbles of the oncoming crash in iGen’ers’ outlook appear in their answers to questions asking whether they are satisfied with themselves and with their lives as a whole. From the 1980s to the 2000s, progressively more teens said they were satisfied. Then, when the first iGen’ers became high school seniors in 2012 and 2013, satisfaction suddenly plummeted, reaching all-time lows in 2015 (see Figure 4.2). So as teens spent less time with their friends in person and more time on their phones, their life satisfaction dropped with astonishing speed.

  Figure 4.2. Percentage of 12th graders who are satisfied with their lives as a whole and with themselves. Monitoring the Future, 1976–2015.

  With this sudden, cataclysmic shift downward in life satisfaction, the gains of more than two decades were wiped out in just a few years. And that, as it turns out, is only the tip of the iceberg.

  Left Out and Lonely

  Thirteen-year-old Grace Nazarian opened her Instagram page one day to find pictures of her closest friends at a birthday party—one she hadn’t been invited to. “I felt like I was the only one not there,” Grace told the Today show. “. . . I was thinking, they’re having a good time without me. Then I just felt really, really bad about myself.” Grace’s experience is now common: whereas teens used to hear about social events through whispers and loose talk at school, they can now see up-to-the-minute pictures of exactly what they are missing. iGen has a specific term for this: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). In many ways, it sounds like a recipe for loneliness.

  Of course, electronic communication can also have the opposite effect, helping teens feel connected to one another even when they are apart. Teens stay in close touch with their friends via text and online, exchanging funny Snapchat pictures and constantly updating everyone on what they’re doing. But that doesn’t assuage their loneliness: in fact, they are lonelier than they were just five years ago. A stunning 31% more 8th and 10th graders felt lonely in 2015 than in 2011, along with 22% more 12th graders (see Figure 4.3). This is a monumental change in just four years. Teens are now lonelier than at any time since the survey began in 1991.

  Figure 4.3. Percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders who mostly agree or agree that “I often feel left out of things” or “A lot of times I feel lonely.” Monitoring the Future, 1991–2015.

  As might be expected in the age of FOMO, teens are also more likely to say that they often feel left out. Across all three age groups, feeling left out has reached all-time highs. Like the increase in loneliness, the upswing in feeling left out has been swift and large, with many more teens experiencing this feeling of exclusion (see Figure 4.3).

  Such large changes over a short period of time are unusual, suggesting a specific cause with a big impact. Given the timing, smartphones are the most likely culprits, increasing loneliness both directly and indirectly by replacing in-person social interaction. With teens spending less time on activities that assuage loneliness, and more time on those that don’t, it is not surprising that loneliness has increased. The likely mechanism looks something like Figure 4.4.

  Figure 4.4. A possible model for the origin of iGen loneliness.

  The decline in in-person social interaction is like a hit man hired by someone else: he commits the crime even though it wasn’t his idea. Screen time both hires the hit man and, for good measure, fires a few shots herself.

  One important note: this isn’t a model of how screen time and in-person time work among individual people, because teens who spend more time on social media also spend more time with their friends in person—highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less social teens are less. It is instead a hypothesis for how these variables relate at the generational level: When teens as a group spend more time on screens and less time on in-person social interaction, loneliness will increase on average.

  It’s possible that loneliness causes smartphone use instead of smartphone use causing loneliness, but the abrupt increase in loneliness makes this alternative much less likely. If loneliness caused smartphone use, a sudden increase in loneliness with no known cause would lead to smartphones suddenly becoming more popular. It seems much more likely that smartphones became popular, screen time increased, and thus teens’ loneliness increased. And, as we saw in the last chapter, several studies have shown that social media use leads to negative emotions rather than vice versa.

  Although the trend toward feeling left out appears among both boys and girls, the increase was especially steep among girls (see Appendix F). Forty-eight percent more girls felt left out in 2015 than in 2010, compared to a 27% increase for boys. Girls use social media more often, giving them more opportunities to feel left out and lonely when they see their friends or classmates getting together without them. Social media are also the perfect medium for the verbal aggression favored by girls. Even before the Internet, boys tended to bully one another physically and girls verbally. Social media give middle and high school girls a 24/7 platform to carry out the verbal aggression they favor, ostracizing and excluding other girls. Girls are twice as likely as boys to experience this type of electronic bullying (known as cyberbullying); in the YRBSS survey of high school students, 22% of girls said they had been cyberbullied in the last year, compared to 10% of boys. iGen teen girls are living their social lives online and, as a result, are more and more likely to feel left out.

  Afraid You’re Gonna Live: Depression

  In Laura’s profile picture on Tumblr, she’s a girl with wavy brown hair who looks no more than 16. Her site is titled “a depressed person life.” Her pain is starkly evident in her posts, which include “That’s how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you’re gonna live,” “I don’t know why I am so stupid. I don’t know why I am so sad,” and “They all looked so damn happy to me. Why couldn’t I look like that?” The web page’s title appeared as one apt word: “Broken.”

  Depression like Laura’s may be more common than it used to be. Many parents and educators worry that teens’ constant smartphone use, especially the constant thrum of social media and texting, has created an emotionally fragile generation prone to depression. There’s been a considerable amount of debate around this question, since much of what’s been discussed in the media comes from the reports of those who staff college counseling centers. These administrators say that more and more students are seeking their help and that the students’ problems are more severe than they were a few years ago. However, their perceptions could be influenced by a number of outside factors, including students’ being more willing to seek help.

  To really find out whether mental health issues are more common than they once were, it would be best to have data from anonymous surveys of a representative sample of teens (all teens, not just those who seek help), preferably before they enter college (to rule out any link between college attendance and mental health) and over several decades so we can compare their
responses with those of previous generations at the same age. Fortunately, that is exactly what the MtF surveys of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders do, using the six-item measure of depressive symptoms introduced in the last chapter. The items measure feelings and symptoms rather than asking teens outright if they feel depressed. This helps minimize the possibility that they are more (or less) comfortable admitting to mental health issues. And of course, the MtF surveys are anonymous, explicitly telling students that their responses will not be identified. This measure of depressive symptoms is not equivalent to a clinical diagnosis of major depression, but it does capture the feelings and beliefs that are major risk factors for diagnosed depression.

  The data from these surveys are stark: teens’ depressive symptoms have skyrocketed in a very short period of time. The number of teens who agreed “I feel like I can’t do anything right” reached all-time highs in recent years, zooming upward after 2011 (see Figure 4.5). In all three age groups, feeling you can’t do anything right also reached all-time highs in recent years. This isn’t just a wave—it’s a tsunami.

  Figure 4.5. Percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders who are neutral, mostly agree, or agree that “I feel like I can’t do anything right,” or “My life is not useful,” or “I do not enjoy life.” Monitoring the Future, 1989–2015.

  Social media might play a role in these feelings of inadequacy: many people post only their successes online, so many teens don’t realize that their friends fail at things, too. The social media profiles they see make them feel like failures. If they spent more time with their friends in person, they might realize that they are not the only ones making mistakes. One study found that college students who used Facebook more often were more depressed—but only if they felt more envy toward others. The researchers measured envy using items many social media users would agree with, such as “I generally feel inferior to others,” “Many of my friends have a better life than me,” and “Many of my friends are happier than me.” Megan Armstrong, a University of Missouri student who struggled with depression, put it this way: “You’re constantly hearing about what this person did that was really awesome. It always makes me wonder, what am I doing? What should I be doing? Is it enough?”

  Azar, the high school senior we met in earlier chapters, is an astute observer of the patina of positivity on social media covering the ugly underbelly of reality. “People post pretty Instagram posts, like ‘My life is so great.’ Their lives are crap! They’re teenagers,” she says. “[They post] ‘I’m so grateful for my bestie.’ That is b.s. You are not so grateful for your bestie, because in two weeks she’s going to, like, cheat with your boyfriend, and then y’all gonna have a bitch fight and y’all gonna, like, claw each other’s ears off. That is what a teenager’s life is.” Azar’s assessment, funny and sad at the same time, captures the paradox of iGen: an optimism and self-confidence online that covers a deep vulnerability, even depression, in real life. That’s the story of iGen’ers’ life on social media, and it is increasingly the story of their generation. Like the ducks they imitate in their selfies, iGen’ers are calm and composed on the surface but paddling madly underneath.

  It goes beyond just feeling inadequate, however. More teens in recent years agree with the depressing statement “My life is not useful,” with feelings of uselessness reaching all-time highs (see Figure 4.5). In addition, fewer teens agree that “I enjoy life as much as anyone.” Disagreeing with this item is a clear symptom of depression, as depressed people nearly always say that they no longer enjoy life as much as they used to. In just the few years between 2012 and 2015, more and more teens said they don’t enjoy life (see Figure 4.5). Across all six items, depression has skyrocketed in just a few years, a trend that appears among blacks, whites, and Hispanics, in all regions of the United States, across socioeconomic classes, and in small towns, suburbs, and big cities (see Appendix F). On Tumblr, a microblogging site popular with teens, mentions of mental health increased 248% between 2013 and 2016. “If you wanted to create an environment to churn out really angsty people, we’ve done it,” said Janis Whitlock, a Cornell University researcher. “They’re in a cauldron of stimulus they can’t get away from.”

  Just as with the rise in loneliness, girls have borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms. Although teen girls and boys were once about equally likely to experience the symptoms of depression, girls now report markedly higher levels (see Figure 4.6, and Appendix F). Boys’ depression increased by 21% between 2012 and 2015, and girls’ increased by 50%—more than twice as much. And girls spend more time on social media than boys do. “We’re the first generation that cannot escape our problems at all,” 20-year-old Faith Ann Bishop told Time.

  Figure 4.6. Depressive symptoms by sex, 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. Monitoring the Future, 1991–2015.

  College students’ mental health is also deteriorating. In a major over-time survey administered by the American Collegiate Health Association, college students are now more likely to say they feel overwhelming anxiety and that they felt so depressed they could not function. Just as with high school students, anxiety and depression ticked up recently—just since 2013 (see Figure 4.7).

  Figure 4.7. Percentage of undergraduate college students who felt overwhelming anxiety or who felt so depressed they could not function in the last 12 months, 2011–2016. American College Health Association (ACHA) survey of approximately 400,000 students on over 100 campuses.

  The American Freshman Survey of entering college students shows similar trends. Every indicator of mental health issues on the survey reached all-time highs in 2016—rating emotional health below average (increasing 18% since 2009), feeling overwhelmed (increasing 51%), expecting to seek counseling (increasing 64%), and (perhaps most troubling) feeling depressed (increasing 95%, or nearly doubling), with noticeable jumps just between 2015 and 2016. In 2016, for the first time, the majority of entering college students described their mental health as below average (see Figure 4.8). Overall, more and more college students are struggling with mental health issues—not just those who seek help at counseling centers but among representative samples completing anonymous surveys.

  Figure 4.8. Entering college students reporting mental health issues. American Freshman Survey, 1971–2016.

  The sudden, sharp rise in depressive symptoms occurred at almost exactly the same time that smartphones became ubiquitous and in-person interaction plummeted. That seems like too much of a coincidence for the trends not to be connected, especially because spending more time on social media and less time on in-person social interaction is correlated with depression. With correlational data like this, social media could cause depression, depressed people could use social media more, or a third factor could explain the rise in both. Even if the second two explanations are true for individual people, they don’t work very well for explaining why depression would increase so suddenly. That leaves the possibility of some unknown, outside factor that suddenly caused more depression among teens. Could the Great Recession of 2007–2009 be the outside factor? It did come on suddenly, but the timing is wrong. Unemployment, one of the best indicators of how the economy is affecting real people, peaked in 2010 and then declined, exactly the opposite pattern from depression, which was stable until 2012 and then increased. Smartphones, however, gained in popularity over that same time (see Figure 4.9).

  Figure 4.9. Smartphone ownership rates among Americans, yearly unemployment rate, and depressive symptoms among 10th graders. Monitoring the Future, 2006–2015. (Variables are standardized.)

  Why might smartphones cause depression? For one thing, not getting a reply to your text or social media message has a high potential for causing anxiety—a common precursor to depression. An exchange among three 16-year-old girls in Los Angeles captured this in American Girls. “I mean we all, like, overanalyze it,” said Greta, referring to boys who don’t respond to texts or Snapchats. “It goes both ways. I love it that, like, if I’m mad at a boy he can see that I’ve
seen his message and he knows that I’m ignoring him.” “It causes stress, though, when it’s you,” said Melissa. “And depression,” said Padma. “When they ignore your texts, and then you’re like, Well, why am I even alive?”

  Girls may also be uniquely vulnerable to the effects of social media on mental health. The emphasis on perfect selfies has amplified body image issues for girls, who often chase likes by taking hundreds of pictures to get just the right one but still end up feeling as though they’ve fallen short. “They make you think you have to change yourself, like lose weight or gain weight, instead of just being yourself,” said a 16-year-old in American Girls. “Every day it’s like you have to wake up and put on a mask and try to be somebody else instead of being yourself,” said another, “and you can’t ever be happy.” Nineteen-year-old Essena O’Neill, a model who made her living by posting her photos on Instagram, suddenly took down her social media accounts in November 2015. She posted a YouTube video in which she said, “I spent hours watching perfect girls online, wishing I was them. Then, when I was ‘one of them,’ I still wasn’t happy, content, or at peace with myself. Social media is not real life.” Her photos, which looked like casual snaps, actually took several hours to set up and up to a hundred attempts to get right. Caring about her number of followers, she said, “suffocated me . . . . I was miserable.”

  Double standards of sexuality are also very evident online. Girls often feel that they can’t win—a sexy photo will get lots of likes, but it also invites slut shaming. The usual girl drama of who said what to whom and who has a crush on whom is also heightened on social media, surrounding girls twenty-four hours a day with the back-and-forth of an often toxic interaction, all without the context of facial expressions and gestures. The perennial teen girl question “Is she mad at me?” is much harder to answer on a smartphone.