Factually! with Adam Conover - Do Generations Exist? with Jean Twenge

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Are Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers truly distinct groups or just convenient labels? With millions of individuals in each category, it's hard to imagine they all share common experiences. Together with renowned psychologist Jean Twenge, Adam unravels the conventional notions of generations, exploring when these labels can be helpful and when they might miss the mark. Find Jean's book at factually.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgumSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert

about all the amazing things that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together and we're going to have so much fun doing it. This week, we're talking about generations. Now, I'm on record as being somewhat of a skeptic about the entire concept of generations. After all, one of the first YouTube videos I ever made that went viral was called Millennials Don't Exist. And my skepticism is well-founded. It comes from who I was and where I was when the concept was popularized. A decade ago, people started talking about millennials as if we were a new kind of human recently hatched in a lab to wreak havoc across America.

We were blamed for being entitled, social media obsessed, and for not being able to afford homes because we were all too busy eating too much avocado toast. And you know, it struck me, as an actual human being who has literally never eaten avocado toast, that this way of talking about people was reductive and flattening and just plain stupid. Classifying people into generations minimizes the massive diversity of actual people. You know, in the popular imagination, every boomer had sex at Woodstock

and hitchhikes to San Francisco for the summer of love before being drafted to go to Vietnam. You know, they all basically just reenacted the plot of Forrest Gump. And guess what? It's just not fucking true. We're talking about a cohort of tens of millions of people. Sure, some of them were drafted, but some of them dodged the draft, and many just stayed home and quietly supported the war. Many boomers maintained conservative attitudes about sex their entire lives, and a lot of them thought that that hippie music sucked ass.

And you know what? I'm with them. Country Joe and the Fish is not a band name. It's the name of an overpriced crab shack by the beach. And that's not even getting into the fact that the baby boomer myth is incredibly white and has almost nothing in common with the experiences of people of color or immigrants.

The truth is, when you're talking about a cohort of tens of millions, it is hard to find anything that they have in common at all. I often feel that generational descriptions sidestep the real and significant differences of life depending on class, education, ethnicity and gender that people actually experience. Now, all of that said, it is true that people change over time and that societies do as well. For instance, you see major increases in LGBTQ plus identification in younger people today. And we're starting to see a groundswell of young people adopting generational thinking. If you go on TikTok, you'll find millions of Gen Z teens talking about how cringe the millennial pause is.

And I have to say, in my weaker moments, I use these terms too. As flattening as generational thinking is, it still has a pull on us. So how should we actually think about generations? How much can they actually explain? And what do the facts and statistics actually say about the differences between people who were born in different years?

Well, to dig in, we have one of the foremost researchers on this topic. But before we get to that interview, I have to remind you that I am on tour right now. If you live in Baltimore, St. Louis, Buffalo, or Providence, Rhode Island, come see me. You can go to adamconover.net for tour dates. And by the way, if you want to support this show, please chip in on Patreon. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free. You can even join our community discord. It's so much fun. See at Patreon dot com slash Adam Conover. That's Patreon dot com slash Adam Conover. And now to introduce today's guest. Her name is Jean Twange and she's a psychology professor at San Diego

State University and the author most recently of Generations, The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silence, and What They Mean for America's Future. She's appeared on the podcast previously and on Adam Ruins Everything. I don't always agree with every single way she frames things, but she is always fascinating to talk to, and she is one of the foremost researchers on this subject. So it is such an honor to have her today. Please welcome Jean Twenge. Jean, thank you so much for coming back on the show. You're very welcome. We last had you on the previous incarnation of the show when it was called the Adam Ruins Everything podcast. You've been on Adam Ruins Everything before, where you were part of one of our most famous popular segments about fertility and about how women can have children much later in life

than we think, which people come up to me all the time still and say, oh, that segment meant a lot to them. So thank you for being a part of that a number of years ago. But you're here today to talk to us about generations. As you know, I'm a little bit of a skeptic on this topic. I think it's because I was traumatized by being labeled a millennial around 2012 and all this slander coming out and people saying things that did not apply to me. And, you know, I just I've never been comfortable with the

concept. However, I have the utmost respect for you as a researcher, even though we sometimes disagree. So I'd love to know why. Why write a book about generations and what is useful about thinking about people in terms of generations? Well, you know, it really is about trying to understand each other better. So I dove into a tremendous amount of data for this book, 24 different huge surveys that go back decades, 39 million people filled out one or the other of these, uh 39 million people filled out one or the other of these and try to look at just everything that's going to differ based on on generations and you're you're absolutely right i mean there's there is something uncomfortable uh in being grouped with people born around the same time i think that's a very common reaction but that happens all the. It happens with all kinds of group differences.

You know, we group people by age. We group people by culture. We group people by race and ethnicity, by gender. And that just happens. I think especially in an individualistic country like the U.S., when we're grouped with other people, I'm like, yes, but I'm not exactly like that. There is some discomfort in there. But I do have a concern that and I'm starting to jump into it right away that, you know, we tell these stories about the generations that people then end up

applying to themselves. You know, like I was talking to a friend about TikTok and she was like, I can't be on TikTok. I'm Gen X. That's for you. And I was like, you're three years older than me, you know, because I'm like an elder, elder millennial quote. I'm on like the very early part and she's a very late Gen Xer. And I'm like, you know, we both like Sonic Youth, right? You know what I mean?

Like we're not, we're actually very similar, but she has this label in her head that came from reading Newsweek, you know, in whatever year Gen X came out. And I have this label from millennial. And then the kids on TikTok are all saying Gen Z. And we're all using these labels to define ourselves when I'm like, I don't like these are not like it's not the case that people come out of the womb, a particular generation. Right. Like we have if you look at the actual groupings of people, there's like a continuous line of people being born, right?

There's not, there's not like big gaps between the generations like you have in your family where, okay, grandma is 40 years older than me and mom is 20 years older than me. It's continuous. So is that, that's my skeptical view. But, but please rebut it, you know, tell me why I'm wrong and why this is a useful way to, to divide people up. Yeah. Well, you know, for one thing, I agree with you about it being somewhat continuous. So that's one reason in the book, most of the graphs

are line graphs. They go continuously across the years. So we can see how things change within a generation, what the transition looks like, just the overall change depending on when you were born. So, you know, I think in this area, I think that most people agree on the big stuff. And what we're arguing about is more details. So the big stuff is do cultures change over time? Obviously. Yes. Obviously. Living now is very different from what it was like to live 200 years ago or 50 years

ago or even 20 years. Mostly due to technology, and we'll get to that. So that's something we pretty much all agree on. And I think most people agree, you know, that people are different now in some way or another than they were again, 2050, 200 years ago, in terms of their attitudes or the behaviors or values that there are things that on average are different. I think most people agree on that. So really what I, there's more debate about is, yeah, where do we draw those lines between the generations? Because it is pretty arbitrary. It is. You can make a case for different cutoffs. Very true. Then there's a question of like, should we group people at all? Well, if we didn't, it'd be awfully hard to have a conversation about these differences. about these differences. And I think it's also good to put it in the context that we group people on arbitrary criteria all the time. Age is a great example. So we put people who are ages 13 to 19

into one group and call them teenagers, even though those cutoffs at each end are arbitrary, even though 13-year-olds are pretty different from 19-year- arbitrary, even though 13 year olds are pretty different from 19 year olds, even though 19 year olds and 20 year olds are more similar. Yeah. But it's just the way we do things. It's the way we talk. I mean, it's the way we research. Even, you know, saying, oh, when you're in your 20s, you're like this. And when you're in your 30s, you're like this.

And when you're in 40s, you're like that. Well, that's just because we use base 10. we use base 10. If we use a different counting system, we use base 12 or hexadecimal, we would have different tranches that we'd be dividing people into. And I don't think it's useless to compare 20-year-olds or people in their 20s to people in their 30s. And look, the fact that the edges of the categories are fuzzy is not a reason to discard them because the edges of all categories are fuzzy. Even trying to decide what's a fruit and what's a vegetable, if you look at the edges of that categorization or the stupid shit about is a hot dog, a sandwich, all categories are fuzzy. And we just need to accept that about categories. So I understand all of this.

But I do. I do just wonder about, you know, the the the buried issues, you know, within the idea of generation. So let me let me put this to you, for instance. And this is maybe a good way to get into the data. I think a lot of people feel when generations come up that it's just old people talking about young people or young people talking about old people. Right. Oh, they say that millennials are lazy because that's just what 50 year olds say about 25 year olds. Right. And I believe that. So how do we separate that out? Millennials are lazy because that's just what 50-year-olds say about 25-year-olds, right? And I believe that. So how do we separate that out?

How do we separate the effect of age out from the effect of birth year? So you look at data that's been collected over time. And you can look at people, say, of the same age or in the same age group and then use these awesome databases that go back decades to make those comparisons. And so there, we know that it's a generational difference or a time period difference, meaning that maybe everybody changed over that time. You can address that in different ways. But the primary thing is then you're at least taking age out of the equation. You're not saying, oh, you know, looking at, say, Gen Z and saying, well, you know, they're they're this way compared to boomers. You only have data at one time. You can't tell if it's age or generation. And but doesn't that present a problem with the younger folks, though?

Because like Gen Z folks. Right. When I say when I'm talking about someone who's Gen Z generally, I'm like, oh, Gen Z folks, right? When I say, when I'm talking about someone who's Gen Z generally, I'm like, oh, Gen Z people are XYZ. I'm usually saying that just because they are in their early twenties. And I'm talking about what people in their early twenties are doing.

We don't have as much data about them, do we? Because they are, there's, they've been on earth for less time. So how do we, how do we figure out what they, what typifies them? Well, I mean, the good news is we actually do have a fair amount of data by this point. I mean, for one thing, the oldest of Gen Z, at least by my cutoffs, are 28. Even by some of the other cutoffs, they're at least 26.

So that's good enough. They've been in the adult surveys for quite a while. And then a lot of the stuff that I work with is surveys of teens. And there's one of high school seniors goes back to 1976. We're gonna get 10 years of data on Gen Z from that survey, for example.

And so I imagine you could look at what are high school students doing differently now than high school students were doing differently when we're talking about millennia. And by the way, I'm going to adopt Gen Z millennial boomer silent, even though, again, I'm skeptical of the labels. Just for ease of conversation, I will I will accept this terminology because it's what everybody uses. So let's dive into it. How actually are these generations changing over time? into it. How actually are these generations changing over time? How is Gen Z different from millennials when we were that age and when Gen X and boomers were that age? There's a lot of differences. So just to kind of narrow it down, we can focus on one overall

change. It's actually affected all generations, but it's most noticeable for teens. And that is the pace of development. That because people live longer and because education takes longer to finish, the entire developmental trajectory has slowed down from infancy to old age. So for teens, where we really notice it is Gen Z teens compared to millennials, especially, and especially the Gen Xers and boomers before them, as high school students, they are less likely to have their driver's license, to have a paid job, to drink alcohol, to go out on dates. All of these things that adults do and children don't do, teens do them later than previous generations did. So that's part of this overall trend. It's called a slow life strategy. And that's really fascinating. What is the reason for that? I mean,

is it my first guess, if it's okay for me to make a guess, is that it's somehow related to the trend of having children later in life, that that's a general trend throughout the population that people have kids later than they used to. And I imagine if you're having kids later than you used to, all those other things might push forward as well, that it's somehow part and parcel. But yeah, do you have any explanation for that? Yeah, I mean, it goes hand in hand.

So the theory is that you could choose, and you look at any specific time or any specific culture that's going to tilt more toward this the slow life strategy of that slower development versus the fast life strategy where yeah people had their had their kids younger they also had more kids so you know mid-20th century instead the you know instead of having a few kids and nurturing them very carefully, which is the strategy now, people instead had a lot of kids and just hoped it worked out. That's kind of how they did it. Just hoping. they would be independent sooner. But with people living longer, more people going to college, better health care, infant mortality is way down, all of these things, then you get generally those smaller families and that slower development. But it's not just teens and parenting, though. I mean,

I think it's important to put it in the bigger context that the slow life strategy also explains why people marry later and have their kids later and settle into their careers later. It also explains why middle-aged people look and feel younger than their parents or grandparents did at the same age. You know, like 50 is the new 40 and that type of idea. So it's a really broad ranging explanation for a lot of things that have changed uh i mean i have to say look here's the problem with generations generally is it feels a lot like astrology where no matter what the description is you feel like it applies to you right and i'm experiencing that right now where everything you just said feel does feel like it applies to me i'm like oh yeah i feel like i feel like a late bloomer.

I feel like all of my friends are, first of all, all of my friends are having kids in their late 30s and early 40s, which is like late historically. But also I'm like, everybody is still super hot. Everyone is like listening to pop music. You know what I mean? Like it's wearing the concert T-shirt. Yeah, exactly.

People aren't like in a hurry to like settle down. I mean, some of them do and they move to the suburbs. I still live in the city, you know, and people are different. I have relatives in Utah who all, you know, had kids in their early 20s. You know, it's still different strokes for different folks. But I do relate to what you're talking about, that I feel like I I started entering adulthood weirdly late in life. Well, look, you identify with it because it's true. It's not astrology where somebody just made it up. You know, we have tons of data on this and you're right. There's certainly plenty of variation, but on average, this is very, very starkly where the difference has gone. I mean,

the average age at marriage has changed tremendously. I mean, for women, for example, the median age at first marriage in 1960 was 20. So that means half of the women getting married in 1960 for the first time were teenagers. And now that average is 27. Wow. Yeah, that's a huge demographic shift. And there is huge value, I understand, in saying, hey, when we were kids, everyone was getting married at this age. The kids today, they're doing it at that age. It makes me wonder, though, because so often when we're talking about

generations, we talk, we frame it as that the people have changed. The kids these days are different, like they decided to, you know, they they went out and said, ah, we don't feel like doing what you old folks did. But when you describe it that way, I'm like, no, hold on a second. You're talking about society changing. Absolutely. That would only, you're only going to make a change like that. Having kids that much later in life or getting married that much later in life. If the entire world around you is different, you're, you're not making a choice, right? Well, you are making a choice, but it is a choice influenced by the changes in the society around you. But, you know, I see this a lot. Generations happen because cultures change.

So that's the essence of it. But I totally agree. It's not that millennials woke up one day and said, hey, all of us are going to get married late. No, there's all of these other influences of technology and this slow life strategy and individualism and plenty of other things to come to bear on that with that social norm. And there's a real divide, I think, in a lot of the discourse you would see in the sort of when this got really heated in the sort of okay boomer period, right? When millennials started pushing back and invented the phrase okay boomer, a lot of the discourse was, you're talking to us as though we're doing something,

as though we're changing something. No, these changes were done to us, by you, was the retort, fairly or unfairly. The world, the world changed around us. You know, we're not decide, we're not like, it's not that we don't want to work. It's that, you know, there aren't enough good paying jobs like there were in your day, like that kind of difference. I'm not asking you to come down on one side of that or the other, but like, you know, when you're,

when you're looking at it, which, you know, how do you weight those different influences? I mean, as a general rule, I think it's counterproductive to decide whose fault it is and who we should blame when we're talking about big cultural changes. I think it's good to look at it in that context, that these are big cultural changes. That also helps because that means we're all in this together. It's not that it's any one person's or even one generation's fault, that there's these big changes that they have been going forward

and that we're all participating in that in one way or another. Yeah. So what are some of the other big changes that we've seen over the past, you know, from boomers through Gen Z today? Just some of the really macro ones. Yeah.

Mental health is a big one. So there's been lots of ups and downs of that over the years. But one of the biggest shifts is between, at least as teenagers and young adults, if you compare millennials to Gen Z, there was a huge uptick in depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide attempts, loneliness, unhappiness. I mean, you name it. If it's an indicator of psychological well-being, it started to get worse in that transition between millennials and Gen Z and among teens and young adults, mostly around 2012 or 2013 is when that change happened. So why is that? And if I can preface with a question, how do we know that that is not just because of improved reporting and diagnoses? Because I remember being in high school and I was part of a student group.

It was called Hugs. It was a wonderful group where I don't think I've ever talked about this publicly. group. It was called hugs. It was a wonderful group where I don't think I've ever talked about this publicly. It was like a group where, uh, like kids would get together. Like it was sort of like a weekend camp and talk about problems and, you know, and like a very open sort of sharing situation. And so you ended up hearing unfiltered, like a lot of kids struggles. Right. And I remember thinking at the time, Oh my God, there is an epidemic of depression, of self-harm of suicide. It felt like everybody I knew was struggling with that. And adults just like didn't know about it. There was no public discourse about it, even though it felt like

literally I was I felt like every girl I know is is doing self-harm. Right. It was like really upsetting. And so to me, it's never it's never felt like an increase. It's felt like it's come out of the shadows. And so, you know, so do we know that it's not that and that there actually is an objective increase in the number of people suffering this? Yeah, we do know that. So first, the screening studies that look at symptoms, they're screening studies. They're not looking at people who are seeking diagnoses or getting help. But I think this is probably what might be the most convincing to you in terms of it being objective. So if it was just, for example, on an anonymous survey, people are more willing to admit that they have X or Y symptom. If that was it, that was everything,

you would not expect to see changes in objectively measured behaviors that are related to depression, such as self-harm, suicide attempts, and so on. And we do see those, and they look almost exactly the same as the uptick of the reports. And I would say maybe self-harm, that could happen quietly, but suicide attempts, you generally know about them. That's a pretty objective measure that is, yeah, okay. Right. And self-hharm to the data that we've got is actually emergency room admissions for self-harm got it okay okay so it's these are like these are the hard medical numbers uh and how much have those gone up like from you know let's let's go millennial

to gen z from when i was in high school to the 90s to now? So let's take self-harm. And that's a behavior that's much more common on girls and young women. So I'll focus on the data for them. So for 10 to 14-year-old girls, it's where we see the biggest change. It's quadrupled. Wow.

Since about 2009, 2010. Since 2009, what exactly has quadrupled? Emergency room admissions for self-harm behaviors among 10- to 14-year-old girls. Okay. That's very recent and very, very strong. That's horrifying.

Yeah. It really is. And I really hope... I mean, I think it's finally being taken seriously. There's finally more discussion around the adolescent mental health crisis. What's a little frustrating to see is how often it's attributed to the pandemic, though. And these are changes that started a good 10 years before the pandemic. Right. Well, because with the pandemic, you've got people who are especially folks who are unsatisfied in one way or another with pandemic policy will go look at numbers and say, well, because of this policy, it's caused this because of the shutdowns X, Y, Z.

And maybe some of those are true, but there's a tendency for folks doing that sort of policy writing or punditry to go looking for that sort of effect. So I could imagine why that would happen. But so what I mean, what is the reason that you think for that massive increase? You know, when I first started to see those trends, you know, I really didn't have any idea what could be causing it was a real mystery it was completely misaligned with changes in the economy because the u.s economy is finally starting to get better after the great recession dragged on and on you know about 2012 that's when things finally started to improve sure um it was tough to think of a big event that happened around that time especially

something that happened around the world because we now have evidence that these increases in mental health issues worldwide not just in the u.s really okay yeah that's another big piece of the puzzle we have really good data on adolescent loneliness and then um that colleagues i just just came out with another paper on psychological distress going up in many countries around the world so it's it's definitely there and self-harm we have good data from the uk same pattern so you know this is big it's happening around the world so yeah that's the question you know why what's different you know about the the early 2010s so um i realized in trying to figure this out i was seeing some other

trends in these big surveys so one was the teens also started spending a lot less time with their friends face to face around that time. And then I was trying to puzzle out why that happened to you. And I realized the two might be related and they might be related to more online communication and more social media, smartphones, all these things, you know, these technologies that certainly have some upsides, but at least for teens, we're starting to replace the time that they used to spend hanging out with each other face to face. And for teens, that's huge because their social lives and adolescence, that's really key to mental health. You know, it's, it's much more important than,

you know, a lot of other things that people have suggested as explanations over the years, more important than, you know, a lot of other things that people have suggested as explanations over the years, you know, things that happen in the news. Well, that tends not to affect people's day-to-day lives that much with a few exceptions, of course, but socializing and how you get together with your friends and how you spend your time outside of school for teens in particular, that's enormous. And so that's why that made sense as the explanation, because there was this fundamental shift in how they socialize. Yeah. I mean, look, I have to say, this is another one of those explanations that I'm sort of resistant to on a personality basis, right? The kind of argument I like is, look, same as it ever was.

There's always been new forms of technology. Fifty years ago or 70 years ago, they were worried that kids were getting addicted to radio serials. Right. And, you know, or comic books and that that was driving kids insane and creating an epidemic of of suicides and juvenile delinquency. Right. I mean, that's the thing. Did we have data showing that that was the case? Yeah. Probably not. Well, I would imagine the people of those time marshaled whatever arguments they had

and a lot of people found them convincing. And in the fullness of time, we see that it was bullshit. But so to me, when I hear this kind of argument, that's where I go, right? I say, how could, sure uh sure sure but i was on the internet all the time i mean i i was a very early internet adopter i played video games right i watched a ton of tv uh you know what we were okay what's what's the big difference um but as you know from doing what you do you're not a study of thousands of people yes of course there's

exceptions oh absolutely absolutely and and you know the my anecdotal example of that is you know just as anecdotal as anybody else's um i i just mean that argument cuts both ways the way you're framing it though makes it difficult for me to take that tack because uh the fact that the change would be so rapid and so large, like because I would say, well, what about, you know, the increased suburbanization of of America? What about that's been going on for decades? Exactly. That's a much longer. You know, people are isolated by geography and architecture. Well, that takes a lot longer than the last, you know, 10 to 15 years, et cetera, et cetera. I also believe news wouldn't make sense. Economy, I agree. That can't explain it that well.

So I'm at a loss because I don't have my normal weapons to fight back against this argument. So go into a little bit more detail about why you think this is the explanation. Yeah, well, there's many different threads. I think that's one of the other reasons that I found it convincing over the years is that this shift, so it meant more time online, but it wasn't just that. Then it also meant less time with friends in person. It's also coincided with teens spending less time sleeping.

Sleeping is absolutely key for both physical and mental health. So that's a huge risk factor for depression and self-harm. And there's, we know from lots and lots of lab studies that there is a link between, say, having your phone in your bedroom and technology, you know, interfering with sleep, keeping people up late the blue light you know all of these these things have have an impact then there's the specifics of what people are doing online because of course there's there's certainly enormous benefits to spending time online um gaming is a great example that they're you you know, the way people game now, they're often connecting with other people. It's hugely social. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I mean, I'd be as good as

like being in the same room and doing a sports activity, but you know, it's, it's real time interaction, but then there's, there's, there's the, the downsides, you know, there's, there's the downside of the social media is a great example that it can be used for connection, but that the algorithms that the social media apps have in place are designed to keep people off on for as long as possible. So use can become excessive very, very quickly. And then it can crowd out time for more beneficial things like sleep, like face to facial interaction, like exercise, like being outside, you know, all of these other things. Then there's the social comparison and body image issues that have been very well documented, particularly for Instagram. I mean, Facebook's own research,

Facebook owns Instagram. And then there was that leak of documents, you know, a couple of years ago showing that they looked at that and that's what they found, that there were some of these, you know, body image issues, especially for girls and young women showing up. So there's all of these different mechanisms. And then you lay on top of that, that smartphones can be taken into social situations and they can interfere with social situations.

Even when people do get together face-to-face, and this isn't just teens, this is everybody. There's that, oh, that my friend pulled out her phone. I guess I'm boring. Yeah. My girlfriend is looking at her phone instead of talking to me and listening to the funny things I have to say. I experience this almost every day. And it's extremely painful. I can imagine it'd be more painful if you were an insecure, vulnerable teenager, as I certainly was when I was that age. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the way teens talk about this themselves is really interesting. They like being able to connect with their friends on social media, but they don't like

how much time they spend on it, but they don't know how to give it up. Yeah. You know, because everybody else is on it because, right. So it's social. So social media affects even people who don't use it. That's the other really interesting aspect of the situation is there's the social pressure to be on social media as well. It's not possible to leave it. I mean, just for me as a comedian, I'm not able to leave social media because a lot of my work is conducted on it. Like I literally, you know, am booked on shows right via social media. And it's such an intensely social world. I need to be keeping up with it if I'm going to be a part of the community. And that's my career. But, you know, I think teen social lives are even more important to them than my career is important to me. So, yeah,

it's not something that you can opt out of without, you know, cutting off a social limb, really. And I think that I think a lot of people can identify with that experience of all ages that you go on social media for work or you go on it to keep up with friends or family. But then you end up looking at stuff about politics that makes you mad or you end up getting sucked into stuff where then you look up and it's 45 minutes later and you're like, oh, I didn't do the work I was supposed to do. You know, there's just and then teens experience that, too, of they just end up getting sucked into it and then can't get themselves out. I have so many so much more to ask you about this, but we have to take a really quick break to do some ads. We'll come right back with more Gene Twangy. OK, we're back with Gene Twangy. Okay, we're back with Gene Twangy. We're talking about the differences between generations, but we're specifically talking right now about technology and the rapid rise in depression among teens. Just to push back on this a little bit more. I mean,

first of all, why would it be... Teens have always been depressed, right? I was depressed as a teen. I didn't have that much technology. So why would technology interact with it that closely? You know, if it's something that has always existed. I mean, adolescence is a vulnerable time. It's a time that a lot of people struggle with their identity, with their mental health, very common experience. But unfortunately, that is even more common. And it's not just that people are unhappy, teens or teens are more unhappy, and they are, unfortunately. It's also that clinical level depression that really requires treatment has gone up, that suicide attempts have gone up, that self-harm has gone up. And again, we have objective measures of that. So we do know that it is worse now.

my problem with generational thinking, especially the early days with the millennial talk was I was like, old people just want to hear that young people are lazy. Right. And here's somebody now telling them that, oh, my research shows that, you know, generation generations, the younger people don't want to work anymore. Right. And there's a fair amount of that going on. And that's why I'm very curious to dig deeper into the data. I do have that fear about this same argument that like old people just want to hear, oh, young people are obsessed with technology and they want to hear this argument, even though they are equally obsessed with technology. Like all of the adults are glued to their phones, too. cabin, you know, for the 4th of July. And everybody was on, including my 92 year old father-in-law. All right. Was like on his phone the entire time, just reading about stuff Trump did. So we're all doing it. And so to me, then it sounds like, hold on a second. Isn't this just another panic about, oh my God, the teens are running amok doing something that we're all doing,

but because it's teenagers, we're very worried about them. And we're saying, oh my God, the teens are running amok, doing something that we're all doing, but because it's teenagers, we're very worried about them. And we're saying, oh, we must take the phones away from them. Like, what about all the 92-year-olds? Aren't they also becoming depressed? Is there a rise in suicide attempts among elderly folks? I mean, yeah, fight back against me on this stuff. Yeah, there's not.

And so this, I think, is a really interesting thing to kind of dig into is where are we seeing the increases in mental health issues where are we not you know why why might that be the case i mean the thing that really helps us you know a little bit on on that argument with you know are we just panicking over nothing is the teens themselves are telling us that they're that they're suffering you know this is not just older people going on oh, the teens, they seem like there's something wrong with them. This is the data on millions of people where we know from self-reports and those objective measures that we have more issues. So then we can dig into, okay, who has mental health issues more and who doesn't? So we know that we see the big increase

in the last 10 to 15 years in mental health issues among teens. Then a year or two later, then it shows up among young adults, 18 to 25-year-olds. Then a couple years after that, around 2015 or 2016, then you start to see the increase

among 26 to 34-year-old millennials. And a little bit for people in their late 30s, there's not much for people ages 40 and over in terms of increases in depression or poor mental health. So then we have to try to unpack, you know, why is that? Well, one reason might be that in-person social interaction hasn't changed that much for people over the age of 40. So, yeah, they're on their phone and they're using those technologies, but they seem to be keeping up with about the same level of social interaction face-to-face that they always did. So that might be one good reason. It could also be that it manifests in different ways. I mean, when you saw a lot of reporting a year or two ago

about people who lost their parents to QAnon, right? Where folks' parents, you know, people would be retired. They'd be maybe a little bit unable to leave the house in a little bit more of a shut-in situation, would spend all day on Facebook, would go down some bad rabbit holes and sort of, you know, lose their minds on the conspiracy theories. This happened to friends of mine, and they'd come to me and say, well, because I've done work on conspiracy theories, they'd be like,

how do I how do I talk to my parents? They won't. They've they've cut me off, that sort of thing. And that's maybe not showing up on. There was certainly at least a mini epidemic of that. And that is maybe not showing up on a mental health survey, right? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting theory because maybe it's that, say the baby boomers who are spending a lot of time on social media, maybe it's not making them depressed,

but it's making them angry and nuts. Like it leads them to terms of conspiracy theories or politics or something like that. So that's an interesting theory. Oh, well, you do me such great credit. That's so kind of you to say no i like it well so i i mean before we move off of technology what can be done about this i mean you are talking about a macro change you know i mean scream time limits who gives a shit right like we can we can all do what we want with our own families and and try to impose those limits but you know we live in a new world where this technology is not just everywhere it's mandatory so um you know do you see any any

way out of this problem i do um and i think that the most straightforward and potentially impactful solutions are around children and teens when it comes to social media, especially younger teens and kids. So, because, yeah, as we've been discussing, social media for adults, you know, you're an adult, you know, you can do what you want and people use it for work and career and so on. But what about 10-year-olds? Well, you're supposed to be 13 to have a social media account an adult you know you can do what you want and people use it for work and career and so on but what about 10 year olds well you're supposed to be 13 to have a social media account in your own name but it's not enforced age is not verified so there are routinely 9 10 11 year old kids on instagram and tiktok yeah especially tiktok yeah um and you And these platforms were not designed for kids

or even teens. They were designed for adults. The algorithms have, well, we're still figuring this out in terms of research, but just because of self-control and the way the brain develops, it's a pretty good guess

that those algorithms are going to have a bigger impact on children and teens who don't have as much self-control. The frontal lobe is not as developed, all of these things coming up. And you don't need a parent's permission to sign up for social media, and you can just lie about your age. So something might be going wrong with a kid, or they might be exposed to certain things online or get depressed from it, and their parents may have absolutely no idea why. online or get depressed from it. And their parents may have absolutely no idea why.

So what I and a lot of other people are starting to say is that we should raise the minimum age for social media to 16 and actually verify age. And that is something we could impose legally on. I mean, at this point, there's only like two or three companies that are even making this software and you could certainly regulate those few companies in order to force that to happen. So that's not that's not like an impossible solution. I'm wondering, are there any or do you see any benefits to technology and the data? I mean, there's certainly, you know, again, I grew up with video games, which were something that my parents were convinced were terrible for me. And I now know as an adult, we're good for me. I was actually there for the birth of a new form of media that taught me to be comfortable with technology, taught me to explore a digital, you know, game space created by another person, you know, gave me a fluency with technology that helped me in my future career.

And it's something I still enjoy today. Right. And I would have to say that I'm like, I think parents were wrong about that. Is there anything, uh, and if I look today, by the way, to some of the video games, kids are playing like say Minecraft, for example, I'm like, God, what a wonderful thing. I wish that had been around when I was a kid. So are there any, are there any like in the data, anything that you look at, you say, Oh, this is a positive effect that we see. I think we get too deep into video games. We'll end up on a tangent. Yeah, no, I didn't mean that to be specific. But I understand what you mean about an example.

But I mean, how about this? We can think about technology overall, because that was a huge focus in this new book, that somewhat through the lens of thinking about social media and smartphones and technological change. Well, of course, technology is a lot more than that. We talk about longer lifespans. Why do we have longer lifespans? Because of better medical technology and research. Why do we have more leisure time? Well, because of labor-saving devices like washing machines and refrigerators. Why can we be more comfortable? Well, things like air conditioning. Why can we travel around the world? Because of airplanes. There's just all of

these technologies that have made the world a better and more comfortable place. And they have trade-offs. Technology is never all good or all bad, but it's overall in that good. It is really amazing to consider. I think everybody can do this thought experiment. What would my life have been like if I had been born a hundred years ago or 200 years ago? And it's really mind blowing when you do that. So I compare my own life to that of my grandmother, or think of you know being a woman in the 1800s i wouldn't have a job i would probably spend you know half of my time doing laundry because you know you have to used to do laundry you build an open fire have a big iron kettle and you know i mean you would take all day usually with with a lot of uh you know other women girls helping and you couldn't

you you couldn't do anything other than survive yeah in so many places you know, other women and girls helping. And you couldn't do anything other than survive in so many places, you know, around those times. And, you know, how you do laundry now, you just throw your clothes in and walk away. I mean, it's crazy. And the clothes are a lot more comfortable, by the way. There's a lot less starched hollers. I mean, I'm not wearing a corset right now, right? You know, it is really amazing. And I mean, for men, I mean, men used to wear crazy outfits too, you know? They used to wear tights. I think tights look really good on men, but I don't know. I'm probably in the minority.

Now that's a generational change. Maybe we can go backwards now. We can see, how about more men in tights? Let's go back to the old days. Well, speaking of generational change, there's a couple more I want to ask you about. Let's talk about the there's been a marked rise in LGBTQ plus queer identification. Right. Among Gen Z or among the younger generations. How much have we seen and why? Yeah. So important to put this in context. important to put this in context you know there's there's a couple of surveys that got a ton of attention showing that that you know gen z young adults are more likely to identify um as a lesbian

gay or bisexual um but that was a one-time poll maybe people when they're young are more likely to identify that way but we actually have the data going back in time to show young adults now are more likely to identify that way than say millennials, Gen Xers were at the same age. The biggest change is women identifying as bisexual. That has doubled among young adults. There's not as much change in people identifying as lesbian or gay. It's more people identifying as bisexual that's gone up. Over the last how many years?

Over the last 10 to 20 years. Got it. Okay. So like the rates of gay and lesbian have stabilized a little bit, but bisexual has- Yeah, they've gone up a little bit, but really not much compared to the big change in both men and women identifying as bisexual, although the change for women is larger. What about beyond that, non-binary identities, trans folks, that sort of thing? I mean, how good is our data on, uh, on those identifications? Yeah, that, that was, um,

something I really wanted to delve into in this, in this book, because I had seen a lot of speculation, like a ton of speculation about that. And I was able to find a big, uh, survey, survey that is administered by the CDC that starting in 2015 started to ask about identifying as transgender. And that has gone up an enormous amount, mostly among young adults. Mm-hmm. And is there, do you have any analysis of that or any reason why you think that may be or? You have any analysis of that or any reason why you think that may be? There's a lot of theories. And we don't really completely know. And a pretty common theory is that it's greater acceptance, which is absolutely true. There's certainly been a big increase in acceptance.

But if it was just acceptance, then why would the change mostly appear among young adults? Because there's very, very little change in transgender identification among people 40 and older. Really? Because I do. I mean, again, extremely anecdotal. Right. But anecdotally, my own life, I know so many more trans people than I did 10 years ago. Right. By a factor of 10, at least. And some of those people are over 40. Like, you know, there are people in my life who have come out and transitioned that late in life. Yeah.

And I mean, it could also be, so this is an anonymous survey. It could be that, you know, maybe there have been more older people coming out, but then it just hasn't changed that they would identify that way on an anonymous survey. But this is another interesting area to explore more that I'm hoping there'll be a lot more research on about why that has changed so much in a short period of time and mostly for young adults. changed um so much in a short period of time and mostly for for young adults yeah i mean it to me that feels like the largest change that when i if someone asked me what typifies the big change between gen z and millennials yeah when i uh you know i spent my 20s in new york right and i visited there for the first time since the pandemic and hung out with a bunch of folks. And I was just like, my God, the number of out

thriving queer people, right. Uh, who are just, you know, part of the, part of the community, right. Um, in a general way is it felt very, very marked to me. I was like, that is a big difference in just the social landscape. Right. And that's just because I went back to the place I was in my twenties, the same transition happened everywhere happened everywhere. It's just having gone back. I was like, oh, the comedy scene, the open mic comedy scene was not like this in 2007. They in this survey, they say what state the date was the data was collected in and the increase in overemphasize how big the red-blue gap is in America, because everybody is truly everywhere. And that's what makes us start to feel like a social change that may be durable in the long term. But it sounds like maybe the data is still pretty new and we're still analyzing it. Is that how you'd put it? Well, you know, I think we know for sure that it's that it's changed a lot. I think we know for sure, you know, it's pretty clear it's changing everywhere. It's just I think the why question is where we need a lot more

research. Yeah. In your mind, is that connected all to technology, you know, because the new technology that we have, the communications technology, allows people to connect with each other in a way that they didn't before, to form community, to realize, oh, this is my that's your identity. Maybe that's my identity. Oh, you know, people can make those discoveries in a way that weren't really available to us in the 90s. For example, when we were stuck watching what was on cable TV and reading the Newsweek that was delivered to our house. You know, is that could that possibly be a component about why we're seeing these changes? It might be some of it, you know, just being able to seek information and seek community. I think there's also an indirect effect of technology. So this is the other big theme that comes up in the book, that we have technology that

leads to the slow life strategy. And then the other thing it leads to is more individualism, more focus on the self, less on social rules, you know, less on, on others. And that is the logical outcome is saying we're going to accept people for who they are. You say we see more individualism over time. Is that right? Yes, that's right. That's really interesting to me because that individualism is always just framed as like an American value that we, you know, we're a very individualistic society. I would have imagined that Americans would always rate as max individualist all the time. But you say we've seen an increase. Yeah. But think about

the U.S. in the 1950s. That doesn't strike you as probably as individualistic a culture as now, right? Sure. Yep. And we've seen that around the world too. There's been a couple of people have researched this, that indicators of individualism have increased in a number of countries around the world. But you're right, that individualism, collectivism distinction is often used cross culturally based on region, but it works across time as well. But it works across time as well. Well, I need to wrap us up here. One thing that I've noticed about the way that the generations discuss generations differently is that I have noticed that when I, to adopt the language all the way, as a millennial, when the term millennial was applied to me, I hated it.

Right. I was like, this is bullshit. This is flattening. Right. This is stereotyping in a stereotyping dressed up as science was the way it struck me initially, as you all know, because we've discussed it before. And but what I have seen in the time since is that now the younger generation is adopting the generational labels. When you go on TikTok, you see Gen Zers go, well, I'm Gen Z, so I'm like this, but the millennials are like that and the boomers are like that. And that's why I made the comparison to astrology earlier is because it seems that there has been an embracing of applying labels to ourselves and using them to

understand ourselves. And from that perspective, then it gives me a little bit more grace with a generation. If it helps you understand yourself, fine. If it helps you understand yourself too, I used to be a resident to astrology too. Now I'm like, look, if it helps you to say I'm a cancer, so I'm like this, go for it. As long as you're not using it to harm or judge other people,

which sometimes people do, but hopefully they don't. So I do, I have a little bit more grace that I'm wondering if you have seen a generational change in the way generations are regarded. Yeah, well, and I have a particular and kind of odd perspective, which is, I mean,

I think there's more respect for the idea of generation simply because we know more we're in the age of big data, you know, we can find out, you know, what the differences actually are. So I can completely identify with your experience, you know, with saying, oh, you know, I'm supposed to be a millennial yet. I'm hearing all of this stuff so i'm i'm a gen xer so i was in college in the early 90s and that's when gen x got its name and got its reputation i was like hold on i'm not a slacker and i don't wear black all the time

how can i be a gen xer right and so i had that experience of like wait you know what is going on here um and that's actually one of the reasons I got into doing this in the first place, because I was 21. And I was like, wait, somebody's defining my generation. And what do they know? And but I found out, you know, there were actually Yeah, there were differences. There were definitely some interesting trends going on. Let's look at you know, what they actually are. What bothered me was when I would read things that would say, oh, Gen Xers have low self esteem because X, Y, and Z. I'm like, wait, did you actually measure self-esteem over time? So then I was a smart-ass grad student, right? I'm like, let's go do that.

And it turns out it's the opposite. Gen Xers actually have higher self-esteem than boomers did, probably because of growing individualism. So that's what I really like about digging into this stuff is some of the stereotypes are true and some of them aren't's what I really like about digging into this stuff is some of the stereotypes are true and some of them aren't. And I really like finding out which is which. And do you feel that? Because look, my fear is that these labels, I first heard them used as stereotypes. Gen X was absolutely used that way. When millennials and Gen Z started saying, OK, boomer, that's them turning it back around. You know, we so often,

it seems like this is how these labels were born. So my instinct is throw them out and let's just talk about, you know, birth year cohorts and like stick to the data. So why use the, you know, why use the labels at all when they've been used to do so much harm? You know, I guess it might be a good place to end.

Give me that positive view. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you're right. I mean, we have to make sure we are treating people as individuals and not assuming that they're going to represent their group or the average. I mean, that's a good principle overall,

not just for generations. You know, we want to make sure that when we're saying, you know, on average, you know, Gen X is this way, and millennials are this way, that we're basing that on at least something um but you notice how we use some of the generational labels in this conversation because they're useful you know it is useful because it's really awkward when whether

you're talking or writing to say uh i'm every time you talk about millennials to say people born between 1980 and 1994, it's a huge mouthful. Use one word instead. It's just, it's how, it's how humans use language. We, we fix into groups. I loved,

I absolutely loved your example of like fruits and vegetables, trees and bushes, you know, what's a chair and what's a couch. You know, there's all of these things and that's how language works. Yeah. Here's my last question. So often, again, this dialogue reduces down to old people slandering or worrying about young people. I personally love young people. I love Gen Z. I love interacting with them. I love TikTok. You know what I mean? That's just my, I love the, the, you know, the rise in all

these identifications that we're talking about. Certainly the stats though, you're talking about depression and et cetera, are worrisome, are worrisome. So in terms of young folks, do you feel the kids are all right? Are you worried? Where are you at with them? And what do you have to say to them? I mean, I think, I think we have to take the mental health crisis very, very, very seriously. Um, that's what they're saying about themselves. We know it's happening. Um, we have some ideas about why that that's a huge thing that, that we, we have to, to solve. So that, that's my primary big concern, but I love this generation too of young people. So I, you know, I teach undergraduates. They're my, they're my students. They're so nice. They're so curious about things. They're so

energetic. They're so open to ideas and identities. We have great conversations. You know, they're, they're fantastic. And I think we just, you know, overall as a society, not just Gen Z, we just have to figure out how to balance the technology that we use now. To use it for all the things it's good for, but then to not let it consume us, not let it overwhelm us. And I think everybody's struggling with that. I think it is having the biggest impact on Gen Z but one thing that has been very encouraging for me to see just in the last year or two is how many young adults are speaking out

about technology's impact on their generation and what they think can be done about it and I think that's amazing and fantastic and I hope to see it even more. Well, Jean, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate you giving us such a nuanced stat based fact based view and not dipping into the stereotyping and fear mongering that so many people do on this issue. I think that's really valuable. And thank you so much for for coming on the show. The book is called

Generations. You can pick up a copy at factuallypod.com slash books, which is our special bookshop. Is there anywhere else you would like to plug or any of your own? Are you on social media, Jean? Do you want to plug your social media accounts? That's a good question. I am on Twitter and that's it. So it's Jean underscore Twangy. And I do post updates and so on on there. I also just started a sub stack. Ah, okay. So I'm starting to write on Substack and sometimes highlight new findings that have been published. Other times I do original analyses just for the Substack. Awesome.

And what's the URL for that? I don't know. Okay. If you put in my name, you'll find me on Substack. I don't want to use your name, so it works out. Okay, great. Jean Twenge, thank you so much again find me on Substack. I don't want to do your name, so it works out. Okay, great. Jean Twenge, thank you so much again for being on the show. Thank you.

Well, thank you once again to Jean Twenge for coming on the show. Once again, you can pick up a copy of her book at factuallypod.com slash books. And if you want to support this show, you can do so at patreon.com slash Adam Conover. For just five bucks a month, you get every episode of this podcast ad-free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name this podcast ad-free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name on this very show, and we have some names to read today. I want to thank Kim Keplar,

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