Generation Me--Revised and Updated

by Jean M. Twenge

  When Keith Campbell and I did a different analysis of 355 studies of 105,318 people, we also found that girls’ self-esteem does not fall precipitously at adolescence; it just doesn’t rise as fast as boys’ self-esteem during the teen years. By college, the difference between men’s and women’s self-esteem was small. Another meta-analysis, by my former student Brenda Dolan-Pascoe, found that girls did have significantly lower appearance self-esteem, but that girls and boys scored about the same in academic self-esteem. Girls also scored higher than boys in behavior self-esteem and moral-ethical self-esteem. The achievements of adolescent girls also contradict the idea that they retreat into self-doubt: girls earn higher grades than boys at all school levels, and more earn college degrees.

  In other words, adolescent girls don’t have a self-esteem problem—there is no “critical nationwide problem of low self-esteem among adolescent and preadolescent girls” as the Girl Scouts claimed. But in a culture obsessed with feeling good about ourselves, even the hint of a self-esteem deficit is enough to prompt a nationwide outcry. The Girl Scout program premiered three years after the 1999 comprehensive study found a minuscule sex difference in self-esteem. Why let an overwhelming mass of data get in the way of a program that sounded good?

  AN EDUCATION IN SELF-ESTEEM

  There has also been a movement against “criticizing” children too much. Some schools and teachers don’t correct children’s mistakes, afraid that this will damage children’s self-esteem. One popular method tells teachers not to correct students’ spelling or grammar, arguing that kids should be “independent spellers” so they can be treated as “individuals.” (Imagine reading a Web paj wyten useing that filosofy.) Teacher-education courses emphasize that creating a positive atmosphere is more important than correcting mistakes. A British teacher proposed eliminating the word fail from education; instead of hearing that they have failed, students should hear that they have “deferred success.”

  The emphasis on positive feedback to students has had another widespread effect: grade inflation. The number of “A students” has nearly doubled. Only 19% of high school graduates boasted an A average in 1976, compared to 37% of 2012 graduates. This wasn’t due to improved performance, as standardized-test scores were unchanged or down. It also wasn’t due to increased study time—21% of 2012 high school seniors said they studied 10 or more hours a week, compared to 23% in 1976. Entering college students show the same trend: 50% graduated high school with an A average, compared to only 19% in 1966. “Each year we think [the number with an A average] can’t inflate any more. And then it does again. The C grade is almost a thing of the past,” noted Alexander Astin, the former head of the American Freshman study. College students report studying for fewer hours in recent years: only 38% of American college freshmen in 2012 reported studying six or more hours a week during their last year of high school, compared to 47% in 1987. So why are they still getting better grades? “Teachers want to raise the self-esteem and feel-good attitudes of students,” explains Howard Everson of the College Board. We have become a Lake Wobegon nation: all of our children are above average.

  Many Generation Me students would instead believe that their substandard work deserved an A. Trudeau’s comment on grade inflation in the service of self-esteem mirrors the views of many psychologists and education experts critical of the self-esteem movement.

  The results of these policies have played out in schools around the country. Emily, 8, came home from school one day proud that she got half of the words right on her spelling test (in other words, a grade of 50). When her mother pointed out that this wasn’t good, Emily replied that her teacher had said it was just fine. At 11-year-old Kayla’s school near Dallas, Texas, she was invited to the math-class pizza party as a reward for making a good grade, even though she had managed only a barely passing 71. The pizza parties used to be only for children who made A’s, but in recent years the school has invited every child who simply passed.

  As education professor Maureen Stout notes, many educational psychologists believe that schools should be “places in which children are insulated from the outside world and emotionally—not intellectually—nourished. . . . My colleagues always referred to the importance of making kids feel good about themselves but rarely, if ever, spoke of achievement, ideals, goals, character, or decency.” The future teachers whom Stout was educating believed that “children shouldn’t be challenged to try things that others in the class are not ready for, since that would promote competition, and competition is bad for self-esteem. Second, grading should be avoided if at all possible, but, if absolutely necessary, should be done in a way that avoids any indication that Johnny is anything less than a stellar pupil.”

  Grade inflation and lack of competition may be backfiring: in 2012, 38% of college freshmen reported that they were frequently bored in class during their last year of high school, up from 29% in 1985. This is not surprising: How interesting could school possibly be when there’s little reward for stellar performance? If one-third of the students are getting A’s, why put in the extra effort to be in the top 5 or 10%?

  This emphasis on praise may be one reason why teachers and managers are noticing that GenMe has a difficult time with criticism. Employers, get ready for a group of easily hurt young workers. I’ve learned not to discuss test items that the majority of students missed, as this invariably leads to lots of whiny defensiveness and little actual learning. The two trends are definitely related: research shows that when people with high self-esteem are criticized, they became unfriendly, rude, and uncooperative, even toward people who had nothing to do with the criticism. Stephen Lippman quotes an e-mail from a college student who was upset that he couldn’t take a class because he had not satisfied a prerequisite. “Do you really think it is absolutely necessary to require the completion of Soc151 to remain in this class? You’re not teaching Finance 400, buddy. You teach Women’s Studies. . . . But I guess if requiring the completion of a prereq makes you or the class you teach seem more important, then go ahead.” The end of this e-mail is especially fascinating, as the student assumes the professor has the same motivation he apparently does: to “seem more important.” This echoes a student I overheard recently on campus: “I think he makes the tests hard so he can feel smart.”

  Students also expect A’s—or else. When I gave one student an A- on her class presentation, she immediately went to ratemyprofessors.com and posted the comment “worst professor I’ve ever had!” Another, who received an A- in the class, wrote a long e-mail beginning, “I believe that I deserve an A in the course. I was marked down for things on both my paper and my presentation that I do not feel I should have been.” She demanded that we meet in person to discuss changing her grade. After much back-and-forth about the university grade-change policy, I replied that I would not change the grade, but would be happy to provide further feedback on her paper. After writing back 12 previous times, she never replied to that offer. (And this was four years after the first edition of Generation Me was published—students clearly don’t get the irony.)

  I’m not alone. Lippman quotes an e-mail from an undergraduate unhappy with the B+ she received: “To me, if a student does/hands in all assignments, misses class no more than two times, participates during lecture, takes notes, attentively watches videos, and obviously observes/notes sociology in his/her life,” she wrote, “it would make sense for that student to receive a respectable grade—an A.” Notice that good performance is never mentioned—instead, the student is asking for an A for showing up. She has company—in a 2008 survey, 66% of college students agreed that “if I have explained to my professor that I am trying hard, I think he/she should give me some consideration with respect to my course grade.” One-third agreed that “if I have attended most classes for a course, I deserve at least a grade of B.” Thirty percent said “professors who won’t let me take an exam at a different time because of my personal plans (e.g., a vacation or other trip that is important to me) are too
strict,” and 32% complained that “teachers often give me lower grades than I deserve on paper assignments.” A LexisNexis search of print media shows a sixfold increase from 1996 to 2006 in the joint appearance of the terms sense of entitlement and students.

  None of this should surprise us. Students “look and act like what the [self-esteem] theories say they should look and act like,” notes Hewitt. “They tend to act as though they believe they have worthy and good inner essences, regardless of what people say or how they behave, that they deserve recognition and attention from others, and their unique individual needs should be considered first and foremost.” This is exactly what has happened: GenMe’ers take for granted that the self comes first and often believe exactly what they were so carefully taught—that they’re special.

  When Time magazine labeled Millennials the “Me Me Me generation,” one of the most common reactions was, in sum, “But we are awesome!” A USA Today article concluded, “Guess what? Twentysomethings aren’t apologizing. They say it’s a good thing.” Matt Prince, 29, said, “I think it’s true what they’re saying—I just don’t think it’s as negative as it initially sounds. Our generation is so successful, there’s a feeling of ‘You know what? I do deserve this and should be able to do something to make me happy.’ ”

  SELF-ESTEEM AND PERFORMANCE

  But this must have an upside; surely kids who have high self-esteem go on to make better grades and achieve more in school. Actually, they don’t. There is a small correlation between self-esteem and grades. However, self-esteem does not cause high grades—instead, high grades cause higher self-esteem. So self-esteem programs clearly put the cart before the horse in trying to increase self-esteem. Even much of the small link from high grades to high self-esteem can be explained by other factors such as income: rich kids, for example, have higher self-esteem and get better grades, but that’s because coming from an affluent home causes both of these things, and not because they cause each other. This resembles the horse and the cart being towed on a flatbed truck—neither the cart nor the horse is causing the motion in the other even though they are moving together. As self-esteem programs aren’t going to make all kids rich, they won’t raise self-esteem this way either.

  Here’s an example that illustrates this finding. Which ethnic group in the United States has the lowest self-esteem? It’s Asian Americans, and Asian American young people have the highest academic performance of any ethic group. Asian American adults have the lowest unemployment rate and the highest median income. Instead of focusing on self-esteem, Asian cultures tend to emphasize hard work—probably the reason their performance is better. This strongly suggests that the modern American idea that self-belief is crucial for success is not correct.

  Yet try convincing GenMe of this. When I first began giving talks to undergraduates suggesting that their generation was more self-confident, even more narcissistic, than their predecessors, I was afraid they wouldn’t buy it. Instead, their reaction was a collective shrug—yeah, we know, they would say. But when I told them that self-esteem does not cause success, suddenly they were skeptical. It was as if I’d told them the world was flat. In one classroom at Southern Connecticut State University, one young woman said, “At the end of the day I love me and I don’t think that’s wrong. I don’t think it’s a problem, having most people love themselves. I love me.” Another said, “I am a narcissist—and that helps me succeed. I’m interviewing for jobs right now, and it helps me stand out.”

  Except it doesn’t. Narcissists are not any more successful, beautiful, or intelligent than anyone else—they just think they are. Inflated self-belief, in the end, is a bust.

  Nor does high self-esteem protect against teen pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, drug abuse, or chronic welfare dependency. Several comprehensive reviews of the research literature by different authors have all concluded that self-esteem doesn’t cause much of anything. Even the book sponsored by the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility, which spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to raise Californians’ self-esteem, found that self-esteem doesn’t cause academic achievement, good behavior, or any other outcome the Task Force was formed to address.

  Perhaps this emphasis on individualism and uniqueness has other benefits, though—say, in more creativity. However, Kyung Hee Kim of the College of William & Mary found that the opposite was the case—younger generations are actually significantly less creative. Drawing from 272,599 children, teens, and adults who completed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the standard objective measure of creativity, she found that creative-thinking scores declined between 1966 and 2008, and especially since 1990. She concluded, “Over the last 30 years, (1) people of all ages, kindergarteners through adults, have been steadily losing their ability to elaborate upon ideas and detailed and reflective thinking; (2) people are less motivated to be creative; and (3) creativity is less encouraged by home, school, and society overall.” How can this be when uniqueness is emphasized so much? Perhaps people want to be unique, but cannot translate that desire into actual creative thinking. Kim points to the increased emphasis on standardized testing and the increased use of “electronic entertainment devices” as possible causes for the decline in creativity.

  ARE SELF-ESTEEM PROGRAMS GOOD OR BAD?

  Psychologist Martin Seligman has criticized self-esteem programs as empty and shortsighted. He argues that self-esteem based on nothing does not serve children well in the long run; it’s better, he says, for children to develop skills and feel good about accomplishing something. Roy F. Baumeister, the lead author of an extensive review of the research on self-esteem, found that self-esteem does not lead to better grades, improved work performance, decreased violence, or less cheating. In fact, people with high self-esteem are often more violent and more likely to cheat. “It is very questionable whether [the few benefits] justify the effort and expense that schools, parents and therapists have put into raising self-esteem,” Baumeister writes. “After all these years, I’m sorry to say, my recommendation is this: forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline.”

  Self-esteem is an outcome, not a cause. It doesn’t do much good to encourage a child to feel good about himself just to feel good; this doesn’t mean anything. Children develop true self-esteem from behaving well and accomplishing things. “What the self-esteem movement really says to students is that their achievement is not important and their minds are not worth developing,” writes Maureen Stout. It’s clearly better for children to value learning rather than simply feeling good.

  So should kids feel bad about themselves if they’re not good at school or sports? No. They should feel bad if they didn’t work hard and try. Even if they don’t succeed, sometimes negative feelings can be a motivator. Trying something challenging and learning from the experience is better than feeling good about oneself for no reason. It’s also important not to confuse self-esteem or overconfidence with self-efficacy, the belief that you can do something. That’s very different from simply thinking you’re great. Self-efficacy is more external—it’s about trying something and seizing opportunities—and, unlike self-esteem, it is actually linked to success.

  Also, everyone can do something well. Kids who are not athletic or who struggle with school might have another talent, such as music or art. Almost all children can take pride in being a good friend or helping someone. Kids can do many things to feel good about themselves, so self-esteem can be based on something. If a child feels great about himself even when he does nothing, why do anything? Self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work. On the other hand, we shouldn’t go too far and hinge our self-worth entirely on one external goal, such as getting good grades. As psychologist Jennifer Crocker documents, the seesaw of self-esteem this produces can lead to poor physical and mental health. A happy medium is what’s called for here: don’t feel that you are a complete failure because of one bad gr
ade—just don’t feel good about yourself if you didn’t even study. Use your negative feelings as a motivator to do better next time. True self-confidence comes from honing your talents and learning things, not from being told you’re great just because you exist.

  Don Forsyth and his colleagues decided to directly test the effects of self-esteem boosting. College students who made low grades on their first exam in a psychology class were randomly assigned to receive study tips (the control group) or study tips plus a self-esteem boost such as “Hold your head—and your self-esteem—high” (the experimental group). So did the self-esteem boost help their performance on the final exam? No, it actually hurt their performance—the self-esteem-boosting group scored significantly lower on the final than the control group. They did excel in one area, however: they were more likely to say they felt “good about myself as a student in Psychology 101.”

  The practice of not correcting mistakes, avoiding letter grades, and discouraging competition is also misguided. Competition can help make learning fun; as Stout points out, look at how the disabled kids in the Special Olympics benefit from competing. Many schools now don’t publish the honor roll of children who do well in school and generally downplay grades because, they falsely believe, competition isn’t good for self-esteem (as some kids won’t make the honor roll, and some kids will make C’s). But can you imagine not publishing the scores of a basketball game because it might not be good for the losing team’s self-esteem? Can you imagine not keeping score in the game? What fun would that be? The self-esteem movement, Stout argues, is popular because it is sweetly addictive: teachers don’t have to criticize, kids don’t have to be criticized, and everyone goes home feeling happy. The problem is they also go home with an unrealistically inflated sense of self.