Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean M. Twenge. Free Press; April 4, 2006; $25; 304 pages.

FROM THE DUST JACKET:

The Associated Press calls them "The Entitlement Generation," and they are storming into schools, colleges, and businesses all over the country. They are today's young people, a new generation with sky-high expectations and a need for constant praise and fulfillment. In this provocative new book, headline-making psychologist and social commentator Dr. Jean Twenge documents the self-focus of what she calls "Generation Me" -- people born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Herself a member of Generation Me, Dr. Twenge explores why her generation is tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also cynical, depressed, lonely, and anxious. Using findings from the largest intergenerational study ever conducted -- with data from 1.3 million respondents spanning six decades -- Dr. Twenge reveals how profoundly different today's young adults are -- and makes controversial predictions about what the future holds for them and society as a whole. But Dr. Twenge doesn't just talk statistics -- she highlights real-life people and stories and vividly brings to life the hopes and dreams, disappointments and challenges of Generation Me. With a good deal of irony, humor, and sympathy, she demonstrates that today's young people have been raised to aim for the stars at a time when it is more difficult than ever to get into college, find a good job, and afford a house -- even with two incomes. GenMe's expectations have been raised just as the world is becoming more competitive, creating an enormous clash between expectations and reality. Dr. Twenge also presents the often-shocking truths about her generation's dramatically different sexual behavior and mores.

GenMe has created a profound shift in the American character, changing what it means to be an individual in today's society. Engaging, controversial, prescriptive, and often funny, Generation Me will give Boomers new insight into their offspring, and help GenMe-ers in their teens, 20s, and 30s finally make sense of themselves and their goals and find their road to happiness.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

Publishers Weekly: In their 2000 book, Millennials Rising, Neil Howe and William Straus argued that children born after 1982 will grow up to become America's next Greatest Generation -- filled with a sense of optimism and civic duty -- but according to San Diego State psychology professor Twenge, such predictions are wishful thinking. Lumping together Gen-X and -Y under the moniker "GenMe," Twenge argues that those born after 1970 are more self-centered, more disrespectful of authority, and more depressed than ever before. When the United States started the war in Iraq, she points out, military enlistments went down, not up. (Born in 1971, Twenge herself is at the edge of the Me Generation.) Her book is livened with analysis of films, magazines, and TV shows, and with anecdotal stories from her life and others'. The real basis of her argument, however, lies in her 14 years of research comparing the results of personality tests given to boomers when they were under 30 and those given to GenMe-ers today. Though Twenge's opinionated asides may occasionally set Gen-X and -Yers' teeth on edge, many of her findings are fascinating. And her call to "ditch the self-esteem movement" in favor of education programs that encourage empathy and real accomplishment could spare some Me-ers from the depression that often occurs when they hit the realities of today's increasingly competitive workplace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D., is a widely published associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University. Her research has appeared in Time, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and she has been featured on Today and Dateline and National Public Radio's All Things Considered. She holds degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan. Dr. Twenge lives with her husband in Rancho Peñasquitos.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR:

My phone conversation with Dr. Twenge took place the morning before she was to fly to New York to appear on the Today Show. Although her bags weren't yet packed, she had decided what she would wear, and she was excited about the television appearance. "So, who's going to interview you?" I asked."I am not sure yet. I hope it'll be either Katie or Matt. We'll see."

"You say that 'Generation Me' spans the '70s, '80s, and '90s. How did you come to lump them all together?"

"Well, I came up with that idea because the emphasis on self-esteem for children in schools and in media sources really began in the early '80s. So, if you were born in 1970 and afterward, then you're a part of the generation who was raised to believe that everyone should have high self-esteem. I was born in 1971, so I'm at the leading edge here. And that was my experience in childhood. Beginning in the early '80s, there were many programs that were focused on self-esteem. I absorbed these media messages about the self and these programs in the schools as well."

"What have you found to be the reason for the schools adding self-esteem to their curriculum?"

"It's a little bit of a mystery where they got the idea. There's very little research to support the idea that high self-esteem leads to good outcomes. Almost all the research that's been done shows that it goes the other way around. When you make good grades and behave well, then you have high self-esteem, and not vice-versa. I believe that it grew out of the human potential movement and other similar things in the '70s."

"I'm OK, You're OK ?"

"Yes. The baby boomers got into this stuff in the '70s as young adults and then when they started to have children themselves, and to work with children, they decided this would be a good idea. I think this was where the school programs started."

"As you say in your book, media and advertising reflect and promote that message."

"I grew up with a lot of these phrases and took them for granted and I think maybe I didn't notice them until I started working on this book. I was surprised at how many television shows, movies, and magazine articles used phrases about the 'self,' and talked about self-esteem and loving yourself before you love someone else, and believing in yourself."

"Do you think this movement started with the school system, or did it bubble up in society in general?"

"It started with society in general and then it moved to the school systems."

"In your book you also focus on the high expectations that 'Generation Me' faced all the while they were growing up. Not only are you unique and wonderful and special but you'll rule the world, essentially. How is that experience different from the 'Boomer' generation that grew up believing that, or being told that, anyone could grow up to be president?"

"Well, the boomer generation didn't grow up with that. They grew up in the '50s, and they didn't hear that anybody could be president. The idea of 'you can be anything you want to be,' and so on, that did not become prevalent until the '70s."

"Parents want to have high expectations for their children, and want them to have high aspirations for themselves, and yet, there's reality to contend with. What do you counsel parents as to the line between those two?"

"You should encourage kids to aim high and to have goals for themselves, absolutely, but a phrase like 'you can be anything you want to be' is wrong."

"You write about the anxiety and the intense emotional distress that this generation is experiencing as young adults. Could you explain what you see as the big stressors?"

"The first is loneliness. A lot of this generation started to date very early, like at 12 or 13, but then we marry much later than the Baby Boomers. The average Baby Boomer woman got married before she was 21 years old. The average was 20.8 for women in 1970. Today, we marry when we are 25 to 27 on average. We've got about 15 years where we're dating and breaking up, and that's a formula for anxiety and depression.

"A second major stress factor is the fact that you have this generation raised with very high expectations. Eighty percent of college sophomores say that they're going to graduate from a four-year college; in reality, probably only about 25 percent of them will do so. Seventy-five percent of college freshmen say that they're going to get a graduate degree.

"Then there is the segment [of Generation Me] who expects to be rich and famous and become a basketball player or a movie star."

"What has to give in order for people to take better emotional care of themselves?"

"I think we have to start with the messages we're giving kids. I actually think it helps teenagers to know that it might be hard to get into college and that you have to work hard to be able to afford a house."

"You mentioned that Generation Me begins dating at a very early age. What other differences in attitudes toward relationships and sexual behavior did you find?"

"One of my graduate students, Brooke Wells, did her master's thesis on that. I owe her for that chapter in my book. She found that the average age for losing your virginity has dropped to 15, that the vast majority of teenagers and young adults say that premarital sex is acceptable, and that the majority have engaged in and find oral sex acceptable."

"What accounts for the change?"

"Like a lot of things we've been talking about, it's that move toward the individual and away from social rules. Across all of these different realms what you get is 'express yourself,' and 'do what's right for you.'

"In a previous era it would have been, 'you're not supposed to do it until you're married, and you're supposed to follow these rules and so on.' But now, 'if it feels good, do it' is the rule. Because it's about what feels right for you, and sex feels good.

"There is also an interesting move toward hooking up. Being a little more promiscuous rather than relationship based."

"And that attitude is shared by males and females?"

"One of the biggest trends Brooke found was that the changes were a lot larger for girls and women than they were for boys and men, because they had farther to go. Now there are just not that many differences in [sexual attitudes] between males and females."

"What are the emotional consequences of this kind of sexual behavior over time?"

"I don't think we really know, exactly, whether the anxiety and depression can be traced to that. I personally doubt it, because there's another element in this. In the last ten years, teenage pregnancy has actually gone down. So, although it seems like there's more sex among teenagers, they seem to be engaging in it more responsibly.

"If you look across time and across cultures, early sexual activity has been the norm. So, I'm reluctant to say that there's any connection between the two."

"In what ways are you like the generation you describe?

"I did grow up with a lot of these individualistic crazes and I think they did influence my thinking and they did encourage me... there's always good things and bad things.

"I am grateful every day I was born in the '70s instead of the '40s because I would probably not be a college professor and writing a book if I were a woman born 30 years earlier than I was. I am not one of those people who want to go back. But the disadvantage is, I think, I had to learn as an adult to value relationships and to think about other people's feelings. I think my parents tried to get that [idea] across but I think the messages that I was getting from TV and every other source trumped that.

"Because I was pursuing my own goals, I didn't settle into a stable marriage until I was 32. In an earlier era that would not have been the case.

"I've also got that assertiveness that previous generations of women didn't have; you know, I feel that I have that self-esteem and the self-focus. Oh, and chapter five, about thinking that marching in the streets isn't going to do any good, I totally fit that."

"How are you not like the statistics for Generation Me?"

"I really question a lot of those messages that this generation takes for granted, but I think it was through the process of working on the book that that happened.

"I haven't ever gone through a really, really major depression but I've certainly had the anxiety."

"You're a university professor, you've published this book that's being widely received, you're famous, you're going to be on the Today Show, why did it come together for you when it hasn't come together for so many others of your generation?"

"You didn't see me in my 20s. I mean, seriously, when I was a post-doc making $25,000 a year, living in Cleveland, by myself and depressed, with no permanent job and a relationship in the toilet, and everything else. So, it took like a good ten years of not-so-great years, to get to the good stuff where finally things have worked out. And I actually think that happens. I've seen that in a lot of my friends' lives -- their 20s are hell, and then slowly in their 30s things begin to work out."

"So, the promises may come in some form but not as quickly as one would like?"

"It's not going to be as soon as you'd like because we're also a very impatient generation. We think that we're going to get all of this stuff when we're 23, and it actually is probably going to take a lot longer, if it happens at all. So, that's the first thing. And it may not happen in the way that you think it's going to happen. You may get what you need and not what you want.

"I think all of us expected to end up as professors at major universities in the place we wanted to live. None of us have gotten all of those things. I got the place I wanted to live, and I feel extremely lucky for that. But I didn't get the major university part quite as much. And then another friend of mine got his major university job, but he's a New Yorker and he's in Nebraska."

"Compromise."

"We were not taught that when we were younger and it's hard. We've had to learn how to do that with housing and with jobs and all of that stuff."