Talking about your generation

Jean Twenge has research

I’m leery of cultural arguments because they often devolve into “just so” stories, of people convincing themselves of something rather than actually getting out and talking to people. But culture does matter, especially when people face stressful situations. And, of course, I set Generation X as the target demographic for this newsletter, even though I have readers of all ages, because, well: It’s much easier to have a target in mind than to write into the void.

On a recent road trip, I listened to Jean Twenge’s book Generations (Amazon affiliate link), about the differences between age cohorts in the United States. Twenge is a researcher at San Diego State University, and her thesis is that generations are defined by exposure to technology than by shared events. She has the luxury of more data than prior researchers on generations, and she puts it to good use.

She has two lines of thinking. The first is that technology is allowing people to have a slower life. Improvements in health care and advances in contraception mean that infant and childhood mortality have fallen, and people can choose to have fewer children. Instead of people marrying young, having children young, and dying young, people marry at older ages, have children at older ages, invest heavily in those children because they are not likely to die, and then live a longer life. The result is that life stages last longer, with children being more protected and pampered than at any point in human history.

Fundamentally, children growing up today have a vastly different experience than their grandparents or great-grandparents, who were raised with different expectations for how their lives would progress.

Twenge’s second line of thought is that the technology we use changes and shapes generations more than major events. Broadly, the Baby Boom was shaped by television, Generation X was shaped by computers, Millennials were shaped by the Internet, and Generation Z is shaped by social media. While people of all generations use these technologies, the age at which you were first exposed influences how you interact with the world. It affects your expectations and your responses to social and political events.

I thought that Twenge’s arguments were interesting and did a better job of explaining generational differences than earlier punditry. I’m not entirely convinced, of course, but I also know that my teenage years would have been quite different if social media were a thing.

Twenge also argues that generations, from a sociological perspective, are becoming shorter because of the rapid pace of technological change. This is ironic given that if you use the usual definition, the number of years between parents and children, then generations are getting longer.

The definition of different generational cohorts may be arbitrary, but Generations gave me some good ideas about how technology has changed our society. It’s worth checking out.