iGen

by Jean M. Twenge

  Then there’s the elephant in the room: many Millennials and iGen’ers distrust religion because they believe it promotes antigay attitudes. More young people now associate religion with rigidity and intolerance—an automatic anathema to a highly individualistic and accepting generation. “I feel like some of the worst people, who are the most bigoted and closed-minded, are religious,” wrote Sarah, 22. “My step-sister is constantly posting things on Facebook about how good she and her religion are, while posting hateful things about gays, people who eat pork, and anything else she doesn’t agree with.” That has hit some iGen’ers personally. “No, I do not pray,” wrote Earnest, 21. “I’m questioning the existence of God. I stopped going to church because I am gay and was part of a gay-bashing religion.”

  A 2012 survey of 18- to 24-year-olds found that most believed that Christianity was antigay (64%), judgmental (62%), and hypocritical (58%). Seventy-nine percent of the nonreligious believed that Christianity was antigay. “I’m religious and I love God,” wrote Michelle, 22. “But the rules are too strict. And some of them are prejudicial, like not liking homosexuality. How can you love everyone, except gays, transgenders, and people who don’t believe in our God? I think people don’t want to live with that kind of thinking anymore. It’s a disgusting way to treat other people.”

  These views came up over and over again when I asked iGen’ers about religion. Kelsey, 23, told the story of a gay friend of hers who was “kicked out of Bible school in middle school because he was gay. He then hid being gay for years and felt horrible about it.” She concluded, “That is why people do not want to associate with religion. Nobody wants to associate with something that tells people their sexual preference is a sin. God loves all. God just wants you to be nice.” David Kinnaman’s book unChristian reported that four out of ten young people outside Christianity have a “bad impression” of the religion. Why? As Kinnaman put it, “We have become famous for what we oppose, rather than who we are for.”

  Community college student Haley, 18, is not religious herself but works at a part-time job with many people who are. When we meet for lunch one day in San Diego, she tells me that many of her coworkers are intolerant toward gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals. She has no issue with their religious beliefs but does with their intolerance. “If you are religious, if that helps you become a better person, good, that’s what religion should do—help you become a better person and treat others better,” she says. “If that’s not what it’s doing, you’re using it for hate, you’re using it for your sole social and moral code, then you’re going to be a messed-up person.”

  So what do iGen’ers want from religion? Many echo Kinnaman’s assessment, saying they want religion to be more positive and less negative, to focus on what to do rather than what not to do, and to accept everyone. Tess, 21, grew up Catholic. “When my cousin was twenty-one, she learned she was pregnant and went to confession for guidance. Instead of the priest telling her of God’s forgiveness and giving her hope for herself and her future child, he shamed her until she cried all the way home,” she wrote. “How does something like that appeal to people? Even if it wasn’t God directly shaming her, the leaders of the church are still the medium in which the message of the Lord comes through. God’s word should foster happiness and faith. Not self-loathing and hopelessness.” iGen’ers don’t see the need for enforcing rules around sexuality, since most of them see these prescriptions as hopelessly outdated. Millie, 19, noted that the “ideals of religions conflict with what people believe to be normal in modern society. For example, the Bible says no sex before marriage, but in today’s society, sex is considered a normal, healthy part of nonmarital relationships; people may even find it strange nowadays if you haven’t had sex before marriage. Getting married just isn’t considered a necessity to [us], but rather a choice in a variety of options.”

  iGen’ers want to interact with religion and not just be told what to do. Trevor, 20, wrote, “Young adults want answers about life and about who we are, why this even matters, what we can do. Instead we get told just to pray or a handout worksheet about Bible verses.” Vanessa, 21, echoes this thought: “The church should make things more interactive to keep people actively thinking instead of just listening to someone speaking at them.”

  This suggests that religious organizations should focus on active discussions with iGen’ers that address the “big questions” they have about life, love, God, and meaning. Kinnaman found that 36% of young adults with a Christian background said that they didn’t feel they could “ask my most pressing life questions in church.” Just as education is moving away from the straight lecture format toward more interactive group discussions, religious organizations could consider gatherings that encourage parishioners to participate and to question. Mark, whom we met earlier, says he likes the megachurch he attends because “you’re at church to learn more about God and know that you’re not alone throughout whatever experience you’re having. People give their testimonies all the time, and it’s nice to know someone else went through the same thing you did and they turned out fine so you’re going to be fine.” There’s progress on some counts, however: one church in Oregon invites parishioners to ask any question about faith—and questions can be asked via text and Twitter. iGen’ers don’t want to be told exactly how to live their lives and what to believe—but that can be a strength, because if they come to beliefs themselves, they might be more likely to keep them.

  Europe with Bigger Cars: The Future Religious Landscape

  Many Americans see the trend away from organized religion as profoundly negative. “This is family,” said Lorraine Castagnoli, who attended one of the eight Catholic churches shuttered in Westchester and Rockland, New York, in 2015. “With this church closing, a part of my soul and my heart is dying. We come together all the time and it’s just sad.” Religious leaders lament the loss of communities and note that religious people tend to be healthier and happier. “At the end of the day, most of us will figure out that we have a dimension that takes us beyond ourselves,” said Father James Bretzke of Boston College. “There’s a transcendental pull in our lives, and . . . [religion offers] deeper meaning [and] some deeper answers.” According to a 2012 Pew Research Center poll, most Americans (56%) believe that the decline in religion is a bad thing, while only 12% believe it’s a good thing.

  Others see positives in religion’s decline, such as Ronald Lindsay of the Center for Inquiry, which works to reduce the influence of religion on public policy. Americans, he theorized, are “no longer looking to the church as an authority on issues. These are issues they feel comfortable in deciding themselves . . . . People are still seeking community . . . but they’re no longer seeking it in the context of organized religion.” When the decline of religion is discussed online, many mention the negative history of religion in persecution and hatred, often specifically bringing up LGBT issues.

  In Europe, half of the population disavows religion and many churches sit empty, and as more US churches close, charities run by religious organizations will begin to crumble. By the time iGen’ers have children of their own, the way the nation interacts with religion will look quite different.

  Will any religions survive? Evangelical churches have not lost as many members over the last few decades as other Christian denominations have. That might be because they’ve recognized that iGen’ers and Millennials want religion to complete them—to strengthen their relationships and give them a sense of purpose. Some of those churches will begin to loosen their views on premarital sex, same-sex marriage, and transgender individuals as their acceptance becomes more mainstream, even among religious people.

  Religion will survive, but it will be a flexible, open, equal religion that gives people a sense of belonging and meaning and that reaches less than half of Americans. It is unclear where iGen’ers will find community interaction to replace religion. Perhaps they won’t find it at all, content to rely on their social media network, with deleterious i
mpacts on their mental health. Or perhaps iGen’ers will affiliate with others who share their interests rather than building community through religion. Either way, the structure of American community will fundamentally change.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Insulated but Not Intrinsic: More Safety and Less Community

  The sun has just begun to burn off the morning’s gray clouds when I arrive at my favorite San Diego sushi restaurant on a June day just before noon. Haley, 18, is already there, rising to meet me as I walk in. She’s part white and part Asian, with a warm smile that lights up her eyes behind her glasses.

  Over shrimp tempura and a dragon roll, we talk about everything from jobs to psychology to relationships. Haley has just finished her first year at a community college and is living at home with her parents. She has a part-time job but isn’t taking any classes over the summer. “I need my summer,” she says. “If I didn’t have it, I’d go crazy.” Like an increasing number of young people, Haley doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and has had limited experience with romantic relationships.

  The intriguing part is why. In short, it’s because she doesn’t think those things are safe. “Going out and partying when you’re drunk, you’re in such an altered state of mind, you behave in ways that you never would sober,” she says. “There’s drunk driving—and people take advantage of you when you’re drunk. It’s not safe. You’re going to hurt yourself, or someone’s going to hurt you. It’s not my thing.”

  Haley’s interest in safety extends beyond physical safety to a term I only recently learned from iGen: emotional safety. For example, Haley believes that high school is too young to have a romantic relationship, especially a sexual one. She points to scientific research to back up her conclusions. “With the release of oxytocin [during sex], you form emotional connections to someone whether you like it or not,” she says. “I think it’s dangerous to become emotionally reliant on someone, but especially at that age, when your brain is still developing.”

  Stay Safe

  Like most generational trends, the interest in safety was not iGen’s idea alone. The concern was already in the culture, in the air, when they were growing up. iGen’s was the childhood of the car seat, of being picked up at school instead of walking home by yourself, of sanitized plastic playgrounds. Boomer and GenX kids free to roam around their neighborhoods have been replaced by iGen kids supervised at every moment. Even our language shows the growing attention to safety: in American books, the use of phrases such as “Keep safe” and “Stay safe” zoomed up in use in the early to mid-1990s, right when the oldest iGen’ers were born (see Appendix G).

  This increasing interest in safety may be at least partially rooted in iGen’s slower developmental trajectory: younger children are protected more than older ones, and children are protected more than teens. Notice how Haley immediately relates the danger of teen sex back to the notion of slow brain development—the study every parent cites when he or she doesn’t want to give a teen the car keys. Now the kids quote it, too.

  In many ways, this interest in safety has paid off. For starters, iGen teens are safer drivers: fewer high school seniors get into car accidents, and fewer get tickets. This is a recent trend, beginning only in the early 2000s for tickets and in the mid-2000s for accidents (see Figure 6.1). As recently as 2002, more than one out of three 12th graders had already gotten a ticket, but by 2015 only one in five had.

  Figure 6.1. Percentage of 12th graders who got a traffic ticket or into a car accident among those who drove in the last year. Monitoring the Future, 1976–2015.

  iGen’ers also take it for granted that you should always wear your seat belt. More do so than among any previous generation—twice as many high school seniors said they “always” wore their seat belts in 2015 than in 1989. Some of this increase in seat belt use is likely due to the mandatory seat belt laws passed across the country during the 1990s—but of course laws have not always been successful in getting teens to do what’s safe, and the increase has been gradual rather than all at once, as you’d expect if it were just an effect of the laws. A 2016 survey asked iGen teens what they wanted the most out of a car, comparing them to Millennial young adults who recalled their preferences as teens. The feature iGen wanted much more than Millennials? Safety. And remember: these were teens, not usually the group known for wanting Volvos. But that’s iGen.

  iGen teens are also less likely to get into a car driven by someone who’s been drinking; the number who did so was cut in half from 40% in 1991 to 20% in 2015 (see Appendix G). One out of five is still too many teens getting into a car with a potentially impaired driver. There’s a possible twist to this, however: with iGen’ers less likely to have their driver’s license and less likely to drink themselves, some of that 20% might be teens counting being in the car with Mom after she had a glass or two of wine (right before she got the text that asked, “Mom, can you pick me up at Tyler’s?”).

  The Danger of the Drink and the Safety of the (Pot) Smoke

  As we saw in chapter 1, fewer iGen’ers try alcohol at all. Merely trying alcohol isn’t dangerous, but binge drinking—usually defined as having five or more drinks in a row at one time—is. That’s the type of drinking adults warn teens about.

  iGen’ers are less likely to binge drink—binge-drinking rates for 12th graders have been cut more than in half. Do they think it’s safe? Here’s where the trends get interesting. Until very recently, more teens binge drank than thought it was safe (see Figure 6.2). Teens are risk takers, and they’re willing to live on the edge a little to get plastered and have a good time. Well, teens were risk takers—until iGen entered the scene. Then, for the first time, the lines crossed: fewer teens binge drank than thought it was safe. Instead of going a little beyond safety and taking risks, iGen teens are staying below the threshold of what they think is safe. That’s an attitude many of us associate more with older people than with teens, a vivid illustration of the generational shift toward safety.

  Figure 6.2. Percentage of 12th graders who have had five or more drinks in a row on a single occasion (binge drinking) in the past two weeks and percentage who believe that binge drinking carries “no” or “slight” risk. Monitoring the Future, 1976–2016.

  Some attribute the decline in binge drinking to iGen’s fear that your slobbered self will end up ridiculed all over Instagram. This is the first hint at a theme to come: for iGen, safety goes beyond just physical safety to encompass damage to one’s reputation or even emotions as well. “I don’t drink, and the reason is lack of safety,” wrote Teagan, 20. Drinking, she said, “may lead to problems with law enforcement and embarrassment on social media. Employers [might] not hire you because you are unreliable and an embarrassment.” Notice that Teagan’s reasons for avoiding alcohol didn’t include physical safety; she focused instead on emotions and economics, among the primary safety concerns of iGen.

  As we saw in chapter 1, iGen’ers are just as likely to use marijuana as Millennials were. If iGen’ers are so interested in safety, why is their marijuana use about the same? In short, because they believe it’s safe. In fact, iGen’ers see regular marijuana use as safer than binge drinking, the first generation ever to do so (see Figure 6.3). That might be why so many fewer are drinking alcohol as teens even as about the same number indulge in marijuana.

  Figure 6.3. Percentage of 12th graders who agree that binge drinking and marijuana use are very risky. Monitoring the Future, 1976–2015.

  “I believe that marijuana is completely safe to use as long as you are not using machinery or a vehicle,” wrote Brianna, 20. “It is far less harmful than alcohol, which is perfectly legal, but leads to far more problems that marijuana use ever could.” Some iGen’ers embrace the idea that marijuana is not just safe but beneficial. “Weed has been proven to provide many health benefits,” wrote Ethan, 19. “It helps with pain, cancer, and many other illnesses. It can prevent people from getting addicted to other drugs that are way more harmful.” So
me iGen’ers use marijuana for medical purposes themselves. “I consider marijuana to be a very safe substance. I’ve personally been using it for three years for chronic spinal pain, depression, anxiety, and psoriatic arthritis,” wrote Nellie, 21. “The withdrawal from my pain medication was among the hardest times in my life, but I was able to use marijuana to curb both the withdrawal and the heightened pain. I’ve never experienced any detrimental side effects in years of heavy use.” Unfortunately, few iGen’ers seem to be aware of the long-term risks of marijuana use, which can include reduced intelligence and higher risks of schizophrenia, especially when use begins during adolescence. Marijuana is also now much more potent than the pot Boomers smoked in the 1970s.

  Still, iGen’ers remain cautious. Even though they are more likely to see marijuana as safe, use hasn’t gone up. Historically, pot smoking has come and gone with perceptions of its safety. But iGen’ers break that pattern, playing it even safer than they think they need to. Just as with alcohol, iGen is the first generation in which fewer teens used marijuana than thought it was safe. Once again, the lines cross (see Figure 6.4).

  Figure 6.4. Percentage of 12th graders who have ever used marijuana and percentage who believe that occasional marijuana use carries “no” or “slight” risk. Monitoring the Future, 1976–2016.