The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Jean Twenge: a clash of generations

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

On this Munk Debate podcast, we're talking about the clash of generations: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.  How are these age groups - with vastly different life experiences and upbringings - interacting and competing with each other at home, at school, and in the workforce? Author and psychologist Jean Twenge, often referred to as the “reigning expert on generational change”, argues that evolving technology, more so than major historical events like the great recession of 2008 or the terrorist attacks of September 11th, has had a greater impact on how generations have come to see themselves, and what they want for the future. She joins us for a wide ranging discussion to dispel common misconceptions about certain generations (IE/ millennials aren’t as doomed as they believe to be) and why the young are postponing adult milestones for longer than any previous generation.   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Hello, month listeners. Roger Griffiths here.

moderator, welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the monk dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers with the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues that are transforming our world and moving the public conversation. Today we're talking about the clash of generations. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, how are these age groups with vastly different life experiences and upbringings interacting and competing with each other at home, at school and in the workforce. Author and psychologist, Gene Twangy, often referred to as the reigning expert on generational change, has a new book out called Generations, where she makes the case that evolving technology,

more than historical events in recent past, like the recession of 2008-09, the terrorist attacks of September 11, has had a greater impact on how generations have come to see themselves and what they think and want for the future. Gene, welcome to the Muck Dialogues. Thank you. Really looking forward to this conversation. And let's start with some basics. Why do you think that generations,

the concept of generations, is still a valuable way to try to think about society today? Well, I think it's useful because pretty much everybody agrees that living now is different from living 100 years ago or 50 years ago or 20 years ago, and that growing up as a child or teen now is different. So I think there's pretty good agreement that there are generational differences. And what people quibble about is just should we categorize people into generations,

where should those cutoffs be? But if we don't characterize people, how are we going to talk about it? Are we going to use a clunky phrase like people born in the 1980s? And is that really capture it? Or are we going to go on individual birth years? You know, to research this topic, and to talk about it, you do need groups and you do need labels. Well, what do you think about those labels that we're using right now and the groups that we've created? You're writing about them a lot, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z. Do those generally make sense to you? Are those the right ways to think about the generations that are around us today?

I think the birth year cutoffs that we are using now are pretty good. They're not perfect, but they capture some of the, transitions between the generations and some of the cultural changes pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of all the labels. I don't really care for Gen Z because if millennials are no longer called Gen Y, then we skip the letter. The whole thing about the letters is just not very informative. But that is the label that is commonly used now.

Of all the various labels that we are using, which one do you think is spot on? You know, boomers get a huge amount of attention when we've lived with them for the better part of 50 years, I guess we know them pretty well. It is eerie at times how much you can kind of say, wow, that's boomer behavior or that's, you know, a boomer based on their identity being X, Y, or Z. Which of the labels do you think really nail it? Boomers does a decent job because it's based on the baby boom. It's a very general description.

And so much of the influence of the boomer generation comes from how large regeneration that they are. I'm a Gen Xer myself. I think our label's pretty decent because X is the letter used for an unknown quantity. And that is often how we see ourselves and often how we're treated. I mean, Gen Xers are almost always ignored in generational conversations. It's usually boomers versus millennials these days. I actually think Gen Xers prefer that.

We kind of like flying under the radar. I got you. I'm a Gen Xer, too. If you think of that, the kind of chronology of generations as we've defined them, and you work back, in some ways in our media discourse, you know, the connotations almost get worse as you go. Maybe you're right, the Gen Xers, people kind of skip over because we're invisible. But, you know, while the boomers get a hard time, boy, are we increasingly seeing a hard time given to millennials and Gen Z. What's that all about? Is it deserved? Where's that coming? Is there some kind of like pecking order? between and within the generations? Isn't it just because everybody in media is kind of old? So we like beating up on younger age cohorts who, I don't know, haven't earned their stripes in the way that we think we have.

I mean, I think it's pretty clear in the last few years that it goes both ways. There's certainly criticism, lobbed by boomers and gen Xers toward millennials and Gen Z. But those two generations don't spare words when it comes to criticizing those in older generations either. I mean, it was a Gen Z guy who coined the phrase, OK, Boomer. Let's talk about the two generations that probably that our audience is the most interested in right now, because we're mostly talking today, probably to Gen X and Boomer's. So, hey, I think we assume we kind of know ourselves a little bit better. Let's hopefully, then we know other generations. Let's start with Gen Z first. What are the hallmarks of Gen Z? Do we have those right?

If you try to characterize this generation, how would you describe them? So Gen Z is a number of interesting characteristics, and we have to start with the biggest influences on generations overall. Technology, individualism, and a slower life, meaning that the whole trajectory from infancy to old age has slowed down, that kids are less independent, teens are less likely to get their driver's license and have a paid job. young adults take longer to marry and have children and settle into a career. And middle-aged people look and feel younger than their parents or grandparents did at the same age. It's a 60 is a new 50 type of idea. So those have all had a big impact on Gen Z. The difference in taking longer, teens taking longer to do adult activities is one thing that really makes Gen Z stand out, although millennials began that trend. Something people, you know, are interested in discussing,

you know, why is that? Why is it that? There's not as many. 16-year-olds have their driver's license now, for example, so that gets a lot of attention. And then there's other trends, which are arguably even more striking, though. One is just the enormous increase in depression and self-harm and suicide among teens and young adults that started around 2012. So there's a good amount of attention paid to the adolescent mental health crisis, but much of that assumes it was due to the pandemic. And it was not those trends started more than 10 years ago.

Well, let's come back to that. I want to bookmark that because it's a really important discussion to have and something we've touched on a number of times here on the monk dialogues. But let's just while we're looking and talking about generations probably not represented in the listeners to this podcast, let's talk a little bit about millennials because there is a, there's a lot of almost, I would say, mocking that goes on of millennials, characterizing. of them as entitled, spoiled, lazy, you know, indifferent. The last people that as employers, as GenX or Boomer employers,

people we have to hire, but sometimes the last people that we want or we think we want in our teams. Where's that coming from? Why is there such intense kind of intergenerational antagonism? And are these labels that are thrown, especially at millennials around the workforce, is there a grain of truth in them? So there is in some. I mean, one thing, though, to put it in context is that millennials have done pretty well economically. So in terms of their incomes, so if all of these rumors are true that they don't want to work and they're not earning their keep, if that were true, then you'd expect their salaries to be lower and they're not.

So at least in the U.S. median incomes for 25 to 44-year-olds are at all-time highs. and that is corrected for inflation. So housing costs, health care, toys, TVs, everything that families buy. It's corrected in there. So millennial wealth is also starting to catch up. It's already neck and neck with Gen Xers at the same age. And it's on track to equal boomers. So that's one counterpoint to the idea that, you know, millennials are downtrodden and not doing well.

On the other hand, there is some truth to some of these ideas. it's true that as 18-year-olds, millennials were less likely to say they expected work to be a central part of their life compared to boomers at the same age. They were less likely to say they were willing to work overtime compared to boomers and Gen X's just the same age. So there's some true to that. Millennials call that work-life balance. It's all a matter of perspective. And then in terms of self-confidence, this is a trade-off. millennials, especially as young adults, were confident and optimistic,

sometimes overly confident. And that can have some advantages in the workplace, but if it crosses over into entitlement, which it sometimes does and dead, that's when you see the downsides. I mean, you know this well. I mean, one of the kind of knocks against, especially the millennial generation,

I think in some ways is maybe how we've valorized or heroized the greatest generation, this idea that hardship at a generational level somehow breeds, you know, values, resiliency, care. Do you buy that argument? Is there something about, you know, a shared generational experience of hardship, crisis, a moment where maybe in the case of the greatest generation, absolutely, you know, individual interests had to be. sublimated or suppressed because of something big like the Second World War. I mean, there may be some true to that. I mean, one thing I found in the book is that the silent generation,

so those born right before the boomers, they were the children and adolescents during the Great Depression and World War II. And they have the best mental health of any generation that we've been able to measure. So in some ways, you can see that as strength born out of it. adversity. Okay. Building in the mental health theme and picking up the pin that we stuck in, in Gen Z, let's go deeper into that.

You've got an argument. It's again one that we've explored through this podcast with other guests, that there's something that's happened in terms of technology in our society, maybe notably the arrival of the social network in the last decade, and that this has had. maybe a more profound impact than we want to admit that it's really shaping the worldview, the mental health outcomes, some basic things that we hope for every generation, which is a sense of happiness or contentment about people's lives. Yeah, so teen mental health started to suffer right around 2012.

So that's the first year the majority of Americans owned a smartphone. It's also around the time that social media use went from something about half of teens were doing every day to something almost all teens are doing every day. The social media became much more ubiquitous right around that time. And we know that the more hours a day a teen spends on social media, the more likely it is he or she will be depressed. So we take all of this together and really look at, well, what had the biggest impact on teens' lives starting around 2012.

It wasn't economic factors. The U.S. economy, for example, was improving over that time. It's clear it was not something like school shootings because we see the exact same trends in mental health in countries around the world where school shootings rarely happen, if ever, compared to the U.S. So it's not just that it happened at the same time, though. It's also that that shift towards social media and smartphones

coincided with a complete reconsideration of the way teens spent their time outside of school. They started spending a lot more time online. They started spending a lot less time with each other face to face, and they started spending less time sleeping. And that's not a good formula for mental health. Yeah. You know, it is a hot topic right now, but many people hypothesizing that these trends could be intensified by, you know, the arrival of AI, especially to large language.

learning models that are creating these chat bots. I understand that, you know, ubiquitous teen platforms like Snapchat now have a chat bot that is appearing inside Snapchat and asking teens and tweens to kind of enter into conversations with it. What do you make of all that? Do you think this is an extenuation of this, the social harm, the risks associated with social media once we layer not necessarily thinking machines, but certainly large language learning models that are incredibly good at human mimicry, that can seem to be to some extent empathetic. They're certainly engaging. Where do you think that takes the future of teens and maybe this generation that now has suffered also through the effects of isolation

in the pandemic? I mean, it's too soon to tell, and I'm very empirically based. I have to wait until the survey data really arrives. I think it depends on how much time teens spend on those technologies, and then if it replaces face-to-face interaction with each other, even more than we have right now. Right, fair enough. That is the key point. So in a sense, reducing human contact,

you think that is where the correlation is with this kind of dysfunction. because, you know, I think of people like Jonathan Haidt, I'm sure his work you're familiar with, you know, he and others have kind of dated a lot of these things to the moment that platforms like Facebook turned on, in a sense, news feed or the idea that the content that you would consume would be the content that was being shared by your friends. Sociologists and psychologists like Hyde have taken that in a different direction in terms of its impacts on democracy and polarization. When you look at this and you try to look at the data, is this beyond mental health? Is this affecting Gen Z in different ways in terms of their attitudes about civic participation, their sense of community or belonging? Are there any findings that you can share that paint that bigger picture? I think one of the main things that shows up is pessimism, just the pervasive negativity. And I think that started with Gen Z and it's really kind of spread up the age scale and it's now, you know, taken over all the generations to an extent.

But it's really pronounced with Gen Z that they say they don't have hope for the world, that they are, they have a more external locus of control. They say, more likely to say, every time I try to get ahead of something or somebody stops me, they say that fundamental changes to American government are necessary, much more than previous generation. they're more likely to agree that the founders of the United States are better described as villains than as heroes in one poll. So it's just very pervasive negativity. Now, that's also combined with a higher rate of voting as young adults compared to millennials and gen Xers at the same age. So that's encouraging. So if they take that pessimism and that desire for change and channel it through civic participation, that could have very good outcomes. What I'm afraid of is, you know, that poll result of, you know, fundamental changes to the government are needed.

Well, if that means we're going to try to burn it all down and start over, that may not be the best, clearly not most stable outcome. Again, I don't know if this is a characterization, but opinion polls would suggest that Gen Z ideologically has an orientation towards more socialistic as opposed to capitalistic. views of how society should work and what constitutes, you know, social fairness or justice. Do you think that's true? And if so, I wonder why, because you've mentioned that, you know, millennials, for instance, financially have generally done pretty well as a generation, not experiencing significant hardship. I mean, we'll see what happens. It's just that they don't think they've done well. They think they've done terribly. I see. Okay. So do you think that's where this kind of predilection

indexing towards more kind of socialistic ideas and philosophies emerges within these generations, a misperception of just what their relative performance is vis-a-vis other generations? I think that's a good amount of it. Yeah. And we don't have a lot of data on Gen Z and their incomes yet, but given labor shortages and low unemployment, that's probably right on track, I would

guess. Yeah, but I think that's where a lot of it comes from is this perception that their generation is doing terribly, that they're doing terribly. And I think that comes from partially this media environment of negativity, that the news stories that say, oh, millennials are falling behind in wealth. They get clicks. They get spread everywhere. Then when you see the news stories and say, oh, they're actually doing okay, either doesn't spread, everybody says it's wrong. because there's that strong pull toward negativity in the culture now that I'd spend a lot of time in this new book trying to figure that out and getting to different aspects of why that negativity occurs. And my best theory at the moment is that it comes from unhappiness and depression, which aren't just about emotions, they're about cognition. They're about how you see the world.

And that's the definition of depression is that you see the world in a negative light. You combine that with the already negative tilt of social media and online news. And I think it's a perfect storm for the kind of negativity we have right now. Friendly reminder to our Monk Debate supporters and curators. Right now on our website, www.com. You can access a high-definition video version of the entire main stage. Monk debate on artificial intelligence, which took place recently at Roy Thompson Hall. Simply log on to the website using your membership credentials.

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Now back to our program. I want to ask you to this, maybe this is the right time to do it, about younger people, Gen Z, to a certain degree, millennials, perceptions of climate change. Because you do get a sense of a transition amongst that generation from the kind of activism of a cohort like Greta Thurneberg to a almost now a resignation or a cynicism about the ability to address man-made climate change. What's going on there is that part of this catastrophizing that the generation engages in,

but then the catastrophizing doesn't seem to lead to a sense of agency or, you know, good kind of healthy public anger. Instead, it leads to at times it seems a kind of passivity, a resignation, a sense that this is just happening. Nothing can be done about it. We're all going to hell in a handbasket. And I think we see that, you know, in a couple places. So, you know, one is in this big survey of 18-year-olds. They're asked a bunch of questions about how much are people going to have to take action to help the environment,

How much the government do to help the environment? And the number 18-year-olds who agree on those things, we're going to have to make big changes peaked in the 90s, not recently. And they've come up a little bit in recent years, but they're still not replicating those peaks in the 90s when it was Gen Xers who were the high school seniors or the 18-year-olds. So I think that may give some credence to that theory of there's a lot of the catastrophizing, but then maybe not as much interest in action. And look, I hope I'm wrong about that.

I hope that that isn't the case because negativity can be used to make positive change. And I'm just going to hope that that's what happens. Yeah. Do you see political polarization within these generations. I mean, to go back to Jonathan Haidt and the extent to which, you know, these technologies and the larger kind of media sociodepographic environments that many of us operate in are seeing polarization, literal segregation of communities between spatially, between different ideologies, is that, you know, we know that's rampant and extreme amongst, let's say, the boomer cohort, and to a certain extent, Gen X, is it evidenced in younger, age groups or they, is that more of a life cycle thing that polarization is something people

grow into like mortgages and marriage? Now, we're seeing it among young people too. So they are reflecting the polarization in the society as a whole. So more grade 12 students, more university students are saying that they're at the extremes, that they're extremely very liberal or very conservative, far right or far left. So they are becoming more polarized as well, just like older generations are, too. Fascinating stuff. Just while we're here, let's talk a little bit about, you know, the latest generation. I've got one of them.

You're calling them Polars born in 2013 forward. This is the kind of group that ran smack dab at a very vulnerable period in their childhood into the pandemic. and the effects of that, what are you sensing about this generation, maybe how it might differ from Gen Z and older cohorts? Yeah, so pollers were really, yeah, hit by the pandemic at a vulnerable age. You know, these were the kindergartners or first graders who were trying to focus on Zoom lessons during the pandemic. So I think that that's a big concern is learning deficits around that pandemic time.

The other concern is because they can't remember a time before smartphones or tablets, and they were given those from toddlerhood. We're seeing a lot more childhood obesity and a lot more lack of exercise. So not as many kids are just running around outside playing, and instead they're inside on screens. The more positive news, at least with mental health during the pandemic, kids were pretty resilient. and young kids bounce back fairly quickly. I think the pandemic impact is going to be more on learning. Let's just pull back in our remaining moments together,

just talking with some bigger issues here. Is there a danger that in looking at things through generations, we lose maybe older, you know, methodologies of kind of sociological analysis, you know, based, let's say, on class. And some people might argue the inherent unfairness of, the class structure in society and that a lot of the media tends to ignore class to instead favor these types of generational comparisons. Well, I don't think we have to lose anything. I mean,

if you go on that argument, you would say that, oh, by focusing on race, we have to ignore gender. Of course not. And people differ on lots and lots of demographic characteristics. I would agree with that assessment that class is not examined enough. But I think that can absolutely intersect with the study of other group differences, including generational differences. Well, then let's briefly go there. If you were going to apply a class lens to these different generations that we've talked about, is it a question of emphasis that within certain generations issues of class are more evident, articulated, debated, discussed?

Is it how would you try to apply a kind of class comparison to these different generational cohorts? I think what class is arguably the most evident is with boomers. So there's this common perception that boomers are all rich and powerful. You know, they made the rules and then they pulled up the ladder behind them so the millennials couldn't climb it. Well, we know millennials are doing relatively well, so that's probably not true. It's also not true that all boomers are doing really well themselves, especially those without a college education. So they were the ones who got caught in the changes in the economy. in the 80s in the movement away from manufacturing and toward more white collar service-oriented jobs, and it was too late for them to change course in many cases. So there's this very pronounced class divide, particularly for boomers, in physical health and mental health. So for the silent generation, the gap between those low and income, high in income with a college education and without wasn't that large for physical health and mental health. They were pretty close. And then that diverged quite starkly for the boomers. So the boomers with lower incomes without a college

education are dying sooner. There's all kinds of problems with alcohol and drug abuse and the opioid epidemic. And it affects everybody, but it's affecting the working class more. And then you also see it for mental health. There's not just a gap for physical health. There's a growing gap in happiness and in depression that is really particularly stark for boomers on the upper and lower ends of the income scale. When you jump to the other end of the age spectrum, do you see similar patterns, let's say, Gen Z are polar? I'm just thinking of families that can't afford mental health counseling that are on food stamps,

where children are just dealing with realities that are shaped by their economic status in in a society with significant amounts of economic inequality? So we do certainly see that. There's still a big class divide in terms of, say, depression. However, that increase in teen depression shows up in both groups, those with more resources and those without. So that's another reason, you know, why I point to technology, because that was something that was more universal as an experience across teens

regardless of their background. Right. Just while we have the lens pulled way out here, a couple of the things that I've always wanted to ask someone with your deep knowledge of this area. Are these categories replicable in other countries? Like, have you looked at Europe? Can you apply a similar type of schematic to generations in Europe? And then if you can, maybe what's the limit? Like, has anyone looked at China and tried to figure out if there's, are similar generational cohorts that, you know, through survey methodology or other approaches, you could kind of group around different shared attitudes. I mean, I've been able to look at mental health among teens and young adults in many countries around the world. That was important given that we need to try to explain why it happened and having international data is extremely helpful for doing that.

But being a resident of the United States, I feel like it's my job to explain. in the United States. And my hope is that people who live in other countries will do the same for their country because they're the ones who are going to know the cultural influences, the changes, the data sets that are reliable. And I hope we see more of that because I think we need more understanding in this area, you know, around the world because there are so many myths and stereotypes about generations. And it's just really, I mean, that was my goal in this book, was to dial down to find out what are the differences that actually exist so we can try to understand each other better. Yeah, I would certainly say for Canada, a lot of these cohorts would kind of hold true.

I don't know if that's because we consume a lot of the same media and culture. We share a language together. But I think a lot of what you've talked about and what people have read about these different generational groups would kind of ring true in the Canadian experience, despite, you know, having a large French language minority, strong regional identities. So it's interesting how these things do kind of layer on top. So in our remaining, in our closing moments, let's just talk about kind of the future and what happens next. We'll have the boomers kind of aging out now into retirement,

society coming under increasing pressure to basically pay for their proverbial exit stage left, do you sense a period of increasing intergenerational kind of strife and friction? Or, you know, is that not necessarily a fait accompli? Is there a different way to think about how the future can play out when we do have this remarkable, you know, demographic bulge around the boomers that does have to kind of work its way out of the system? I do think we are at a time of heightened. generational conflict. I think it's just as much or more than it was, say, in the late 1960s when it was the boomers and their parents who didn't understand each other because we communicate in

different ways. It's not just slang and language, but where people get their information and where people get their news is different. There are very few Gen Xers and boomers on TikTok, for example, and that's where Gen Z seems to get everything. So the way we communicate is fundamentally different. And I think it will continue, even as more boomers retire, because a lot of the cultural conflicts, particularly around speech, have instead broken between Gen X and millennials. In writing the book and in thinking about some of the cancel culture incidences

in the last five years or so, so many of them over and over. over for a Gen Xer versus millennials. That's fascinating. Did unpack that for us a little bit more? What do you think is going on there? Is it somehow that millennials have a greater sense of, I don't know, equity, fairness, some sense of injustice that they think is out there in the world that needs to be spoken against.

and the Gen Xers, I don't know, are what, quickly becoming boomers in their sense of entitlement and earned privilege? So a book that really helped me in this area is the problem with everything by Megan Dom. And the way that she sets it up is that Gen Xers having kind of the last analog childhood and partially adolescents, cried themselves on being tough and pride themselves. on being resilient because those are the lessons you learn in the physical world. And that contrasts with millennials with a more online upbringing, especially in adolescence and young adulthood, where she argues, and many people have argued this, that calling out

not just injustice, but sometimes playing the victim card can get you a lot of points. I try very hard, you know, in the in the book to not be judgmental and this, you know, starts to cross that line. But I think it is true that when you kind of look into what gets people really going online, it is a lot of that emphasis on injustice, which sometimes is justified and sometimes isn't. And who am I to say which is which? But that's kind of the debate that's going on right now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, maybe one way to look at is just, you know, different generations.

seeking, you know, status and social kudos in different realms. And as I think that's a great way to put it, that Gen Z, that it is in that digital realm that they build status, that they're acknowledged by their peers, that they rank themselves or compare themselves with each other as a group. And Gen Xers, again, well put as a generation that had a previous kind of analog period in their life, maybe don't, you know, index to the same. extent that the younger generation does in terms of a digital court of public opinion where the good, the bad, and the ugly is kind of arbitrated in real time. Do you think that's a way

to think about it? I think so. I mean, a phrase that there are a word that comes to mind, and I'm blanking on who coined this, it isn't me, is the idea of a cry bully. And that really captures a lot of what goes on online now of taking that feeling of being victimized and weaponizing it. Yeah. It's a good way to put it. Just finally, the United States is contemplating, you know, head first, feed first, pick your orientation into another U.S. presidential cycle with, could be two white men who are either octogenarians or close to being octogenarians. What do you make of this seeming, I don't know, phenomenon of it, especially American politics, probably even more so than what we see in Europe, certainly here in Canada, of an elderly

cohort, not even necessarily a young boomer cohort, an older boomer cohort, controlling and dominating the political realm. You think of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. I mean, this isn't to pick a political party or even a particular institution or branch of government. What's going on there? Yeah, this was something I looked at for the Gen X chapter in particular

because Gen Xers are at the age where they should be in political power. at least historically, that's been the case. And they're not as much as boomers were at the same age. That's true for governorships. It's true for the Senate. Obviously true for president. There's not been a Gen X president yet, although we like to claim Obama. He was a boomer, but we make him an honorary member when we want to. And I think some of it is that slowing down of life and the longer life expectancy. But if that's not happening as much around the world, they're most. be other things going on. And it may be just that the baby boom was so much more pronounced in the U.S. than in many other countries. And so they have continued that dominance for longer. Yeah, well, let's see what happens. Who knows? It's still weighs up from 2024. But you're right, it's amazing that we have not had even a Gen X viable kind of presidential candidate in a major U.S. presidential election to date.

This has been a fascinating conversation, but I always want to end by, you know, is there something that I should have asked you, which I didn't, like a piece of insight, something that's kind of stimulated your thinking, maybe since you wrote the book, that would help our audience just understand the importance of generations writ large or a specific cohort or group?

I mean, I think, you know, I really, come back to technology over and over because, you know, the traditional theory is generational differences happen from experiencing major events at different times. But that doesn't really have a long-term impact on day-to-day life. Really what makes living now completely different from 100 years ago or 20 years ago is technology. But it's not just computers and smartphones and social media. It's also technology like better medical care. That's why we live longer. It's also labor-saving devices like refrigerators and washing machines. It's faster transportation. You know, it's instant communication. These are all the things that have completely restructure our lives and

have all these downstream consequences too for more women in the workplace and that people, more people can live in Florida because you have air conditioning and you're not going to be sweating all the time. So there's all these things we don't even really recognize are rooted in technology. It really does, you know, explain so much. And I think it's an important perspective because it shows unlike a lot of the impacts that I think have been fairly negative, like the impact of social media, there's all these other impacts which have been really positive, that we have longer years of life. We have more years of life to enjoy. That because of labor-saving device, We have more leisure time.

And then the question becomes, what are we going to do with that extra time that we have? And I think that's where we end up in such a dilemma of the modern citizen, that we have all these advantages of technology. But then when we make decisions about how we're going to use our extra time, it's often that technology that takes it over. We end up watching TikTok videos or scrolling through Facebook. Is that really the way we want to use that extra time, that precious time that we've been given? As you say, especially to create those social connections, those human moments that we know are so important, not just to our society and our civic institutions in the public square, but really to our mental health, to our wellness at a fundamental level. Exactly. And that's what we're missing right now. We have the mental health crisis among adolescents, and it's moving up the age scale. It's hit millennials.

And I wonder if it will come to Gen X next. Yeah. And what will be the effective of AI on that? If these kind of thinking machines become even more ubiquitous in our lives because they in a sense become a necessity for us to use and interact with in order to remain competitive in the workplace or to simply function in a society that is dominated by intelligent machines. Well, that is a discussion. though, we can leave for another day. Thank you so much for coming on the Monk Dialogues, sharing your

wisdom and insights. We'll have links for your book, Generations in the show notes and urge listeners to grab a copy. It's a fascinating read, as you can tell. Gene's thought long and heart about these issues, and I always enjoy people that do that for me. So thank you, Gene so much for your wisdom and insights. You're very welcome. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank Gene Twangy, you've certainly given us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard on this podcast or any of our other episodes, The Monk Dialogues or The Monk Debates, send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Also a friendly reminder that a sample of our much anticipated and widely enjoyed weekly current affairs podcast,

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