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A review by rsuray
iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us by Jean M. Twenge
5.0
Not only can I stop recommending this book to everyone, but I can't stop bringing it up in conversations and debates. Generational psychologist Twenge argues why a subset of the millennial generation, born in the early nineties and coming into adolescence when the majority of Americans owned smart phones, is hugely different than any other generation preceding them. She hits many startling and interesting points about iGen; for example, one of my favorite, how they are so much more inclusive and championing of minority groups, yet they balk at any opinion different to theirs, stifling social and intellectual growth.
As an adult born in 1994 but not having a smartphone until my 20s, I still relate to the vast majority of iGen-related phenomena that Twenge describes. The characteristics I both love and hate about my generation are defined in statistics. For example, political activism. It has long irked me that people I follow on social media constantly virtue signal but do not seemingly get involved in their community and/or vote. Twenge proves my suspicions true by showing us that only a mere percentage of people will submit an easy e-letter to their Congressman, etc. compared to the days when people had to go to their local libraries to look up their representative's address. (Note: this book encompasses many points of the 2016 election and is not dated in that regard.) But a major point of Twenge's throughout the book is that inaction is a hallmark of iGen, from dating, to religious beliefs, to general growing up, to politics. The inaction is often coupled with other prominent traits, such as obsession with safety, and it was very telling to find these traits across many different facets of life outside of smartphone usage.
It seems that, from a brief glance, most Goodreads reviews for this book are either from the parents of iGeners or iGeners themselves. The parents of iGeners tend to review the book in a positive light and iGeners more poorly. To the parents, I gotta say, you are the helicopter parents that Twenge describes: if you are deeming iGen behaviors as bad, either reflect on if they actually are so or if you are the cause of them.
The reviews from members of my own generation seem to detail how Twenge cherry-picked the points that she wanted and ignored other factors. I did not find this to be the case at all (I have a MA in soft data if this backs up my experience with this point). She is very clear at the beginning of the book that though she was an adolescent in the 1980s, she is not trying to make any inferences, good or bad, to the changes that iGen brings to many facets of life. The only chapter she does so is the concluding chapter, where she offers some advice for parents as to how to get their kids off their phones and active in the community. Hardly a bad thing. Part of me suspects that some iGeners reading this book felt called out at some points. Good.
As an adult born in 1994 but not having a smartphone until my 20s, I still relate to the vast majority of iGen-related phenomena that Twenge describes. The characteristics I both love and hate about my generation are defined in statistics. For example, political activism. It has long irked me that people I follow on social media constantly virtue signal but do not seemingly get involved in their community and/or vote. Twenge proves my suspicions true by showing us that only a mere percentage of people will submit an easy e-letter to their Congressman, etc. compared to the days when people had to go to their local libraries to look up their representative's address. (Note: this book encompasses many points of the 2016 election and is not dated in that regard.) But a major point of Twenge's throughout the book is that inaction is a hallmark of iGen, from dating, to religious beliefs, to general growing up, to politics. The inaction is often coupled with other prominent traits, such as obsession with safety, and it was very telling to find these traits across many different facets of life outside of smartphone usage.
It seems that, from a brief glance, most Goodreads reviews for this book are either from the parents of iGeners or iGeners themselves. The parents of iGeners tend to review the book in a positive light and iGeners more poorly. To the parents, I gotta say, you are the helicopter parents that Twenge describes: if you are deeming iGen behaviors as bad, either reflect on if they actually are so or if you are the cause of them.
The reviews from members of my own generation seem to detail how Twenge cherry-picked the points that she wanted and ignored other factors. I did not find this to be the case at all (I have a MA in soft data if this backs up my experience with this point). She is very clear at the beginning of the book that though she was an adolescent in the 1980s, she is not trying to make any inferences, good or bad, to the changes that iGen brings to many facets of life. The only chapter she does so is the concluding chapter, where she offers some advice for parents as to how to get their kids off their phones and active in the community. Hardly a bad thing. Part of me suspects that some iGeners reading this book felt called out at some points. Good.