"Generation Me"

I read a fantastic book this week that was really thought provoking and wanted to share my thoughts. It's called Generation Me and the subtitle for the book is Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before. The book is by a professor who studies generational differences and includes fabulous pop culture references that rang true to me... from Marlo Thomas's "Free to Be You and Me" celebrating the individual and gender equality to references to Seinfeld or Friends episodes. The book refers to anyone born between 1970-1995 as "GenMe," and shows that the parenting styles of the time (focusing on self esteem and individuals being "special") have raised individuals who were told they could be anything they wanted to be. Interestingly enough, much of this stems from the access to reliable birth control so that many more children were planned and "wanted" than previous generations.

Sounds all good right? Well, there is a huge mismatch between expectations and reality as these kids who have been taught to dream big enter the real world. Not all professions are dream-fulfilling desires but are still essential for society to function. Kids dream of being in the NBA or an actor, yet such few people actually ever attain these positions. Such beliefs also have created a generation of young people who believe every dream is attainable but who aren't prepared to deal with discovering it isn't so.

The author calls for us to "ditch the self-esteem movement" in favor of education programs that encourage empathy and real accomplishment to spare some of us the depression that often occurs when we hit the realities of today's increasingly competitive workplace and. Get rid of the phrases, "You can be anything you want to be" and "Never give up on your dreams." Both statements are totally untrue. You can't be good at everything... no one is. And, sometimes you have to put true desires on hold while you deal with practical matters such as paying the bills and managing unexpected events. It's a Free to Be You and Me world where more 20-year-olds expect – not hope, expect – to make a living as musicians, actors, or artists NOT as lawyers, nurses, accountants, business owners, journalists, teachers, or factory workers. If the world was ready and able to cooperate with that dream!

Generation Me's expectations are highly optimistic: they expect to go to college, to make lots of money, and perhaps even to be famous. Yet this generation enters a world in which college admissions are increasingly competitive, good jobs are hard to find and harder to keep, and basic necessities like housing and health care have skyrocketed in price. This is a time of soaring expectations and crushing realities.... "the gap between what they have and what they want has never been greater."

Here are some of my favorite stats and quotes from the book - good and bad news:

"In the early 1950s, only 12% of teens aged 14 to 16 agreed with the statement 'I am an important person'. By the late 1980s, an incredible 80%, almost seven times as many, claimed they were important".

"Seventy percent of late-1990s high school students expected to work in professional jobs, compared to 42% in the 1960s ... In 1999, teens predicted they would be earning, on average, $75,000 by the age of thirty. The average income of a thirty-year-old that year? $27,000."

"Only 1% to 2% of Americans born before 1915 experienced a major depressive episode during their lifetime, even though they lived through the Great Depression and two world wars. Today the lifetime rate of major depression is ten times higher ... In one 1990s study, 21% of teens aged 15 to 17 had already experienced major depression ...".

"David Mindich, author of Tuned Out: Why Americans under 40 Don't Follow the News, interviewed 18-to-24-year-olds in 2002. He found that 60% could not name a single Supreme Court justice, 48% did not know what Roe vs Wade was, and 62% could not name any of the three countries Bush had identified as the 'Axis of Evil'".

"While only 30% of Americans support gay marriage, 59% of American 18-year-olds do". YEAH!!!!!!!

"Reliable birth control, legalized abortion, and a cultural shift toward parenthood as a choice made us the most wanted generation of children in American history. Television, movies, and school programs have told us we were special from toddlerhood to high school, and we believe it with a fierce self-confidence. Then many people reaching their twenties find that their jobs do not provide the fulfillment and excitement they had anticipated, and that their salary isn't enough to afford even a small house."