Generation Me--Revised and Updated

by Jean M. Twenge

  One professor encountered the GenMe faith in self-belief quite spectacularly in an undergraduate class at the University of Kansas. As she was introducing the idea that jobs and social class were based partially on background and unchangeable characteristics, her students became skeptical. That can’t be right, they said, you can be anything you want to be. The professor, a larger woman with no illusions about her size, said, “So you’re saying that I could be a ballerina?” “Sure, if you really wanted to,” said one of the students.

  GREAT EXPECTATIONS

  This ethos is reflected in the lofty ambitions of modern adolescents. In 2012, 58% of high school students expected to go to graduate or professional school—nearly twice as many as in 1976. Yet the number who actually earn graduate degrees has remained unchanged at about 9%. High schoolers also predict they will have prestigious careers. Sixty-eight percent of 2012 high school students expected to work in professional or managerial jobs, compared to 40% in the 1970s. Unfortunately, these aspirations far outstrip the need for professionals in the future; about 20% of Americans work in professional jobs, about the same as in the 1970s. Short-term ambitions fare little better: In 2012, 84% of incoming college students in the United States expected to graduate in four years, but only 41% of students at their universities actually do so. In The Ambitious Generation, sociologists Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson label these “misaligned ambitions,” and another set of sociologists titled their paper “Have Adolescents Become Too Ambitious?” Apparently the kids learned the lesson “you can be whatever you want to be” a little too well. This might benefit some, but many others will be disappointed.

  Ambitions only grow stronger in college. In 2012, 3 out of 4 American college freshmen said they wanted to earn an advanced degree (such as a master’s, PhD, MD, or law degree). For example, 42% say they will earn a master’s degree, 19% a PhD, and 10% an MD. However, the number of PhDs granted each year is only 4% of the bachelor’s degrees given, and MDs only 1%. Thus about 4 in 5 aspiring PhDs will be disappointed, and a whopping 9 in 10 would-be doctors will not reach their goals. And that’s if students finish their bachelor’s degree at all. A Chronicle of Higher Education study found that among the 4.3 million students who started college in fall 2004, less than 1 in 4 graduated. During the next decade, we are going to see a lot of young people who will be disappointed that they cannot reach their career goals.

  Kate, 19, reflects, “As a child, I just didn’t understand that even if you said ‘I wanna be ____!’ you couldn’t necessarily do that. Adults made things seem easier than they were, and that made me grow up with unrealistic expectations of my future.” Once they reach young adulthood, GenMe’s overconfidence is often tempered by the dawning realization that reality may not live up to their fantasies. As aspiring writer Hannah says on Girls, “I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or, at least, a voice, of a generation.”

  Does this mean young people shouldn’t be encouraged to aim high? Of course not. But they also need to get the message, contrary to those promoted in movies and on TV, that it takes more than self-belief to succeed. Young people need to know that it takes years of hard work to succeed in most professions; they are unlikely to start at the top. It might also be better for students to identify the best path for them, not just what parents and teachers think is the highest goal. That way they’ll be less likely to waste their time pursuing a path that isn’t a good fit for them. The world will probably be better off, too. If all of the PhDs suddenly disappeared one day, the world would keep ticking along fine for quite some time. But if all nurses, police officers, plumbers, trash collectors, and preschool teachers disappeared, things would get ugly quickly. If school is your thing, absolutely, get a graduate degree. But it is not the only path to success (or, take it from me, to a high salary).

  There may be a silver lining to the trend of overly lofty ambitions. Perhaps some students who aim for graduate school will be more likely to make it through college. The best solution is to find the goals that will serve the student the best—whether that’s a graduate degree or a trade certificate.

  Young people also expect to make a lot of money. In a 2011 survey, 16-to-18-year-olds expected their starting salary to be $73,000, which they assumed would rise to $150,000 once they were established in their career. However, the median household income in 2009—for all adults—was $50,000, or around a third of the teens’ aspirations. Overall, young people predicted a bright future for themselves, even during the years of the late 2000s recession and its aftermath. Fifty-seven percent of high school seniors in 2012 predicted that they would own more than their parents; only 10% thought they would own less. In the 2011 survey, 59% believed they would do better financially than their parents.

  Expectations for advancement and promotion are also high. One young employee told a startled manager that he expected to be a vice president at the company within three years. When the manager told him this was not realistic (most vice presidents were in their sixties), the young man got angry with him and said, “You should encourage me and help me fulfill my expectations.”

  No wonder kids have such big dreams—even cheese is supposed to make them sports stars. The ad might be more accurate if the kid were standing on a hypodermic needle filled with steroids.

  Related to “you can be anything” is “follow your dreams” or “never give up on your dreams”—like self-focus, a concept that GenMe speaks as a native language. According to the Google Books Ngram Viewer, the phrase follow your dreams appeared 17 times more often in American books in 2008 versus 1990 and never give up appeared three times more often in 2008 compared to 1970. An amazing number of the young people interviewed in Quarterlife Crisis adhered fiercely to this belief. Derrick, struggling to be a comedy writer in Hollywood, says, “Never give up on your dreams. If you’re lucky enough to actually have one, you owe it to yourself to hold on to it.” Robin, a 23-year-old from Nebraska, says, “Never give up on your dreams. Why do something that won’t bring about your dreams?” I was pretty well indoctrinated myself: the title of my high school valedictory speech was “Hold Fast to Dreams.”

  Some people might argue that this is just youthful hope—after all, hasn’t every generation dreamed big during adolescence? Maybe, but GenMe’s dreams are bigger. While our parents may have aimed simply to leave their small town or to go to college, we want to make lots of money at a career that is fulfilling and makes us famous.

  “Following your dreams” sounds like a good principle, until you realize that every waiter in LA is following his or her dream of becoming an actor, and most of them won’t succeed. Most people are not going to realize their dreams because most people do not dream of becoming accountants, social workers, or trash collectors—just to name three jobs that society can’t do without but nevertheless factor into few childhood fantasies. And few dream of the white-collar jobs in business that many of us have or will have. “No one at my company is following his dream,” says one of my friends who works in marketing. That doesn’t have to be depressing—it’s just the reality that the vast majority of jobs aren’t particularly exciting or glamorous. With luck, you’ll enjoy what you’re doing and pay your bills, but dreams are called that for a reason: they are not real.

  The most common dreams of young people are acting, sports, music, and screenwriting. In 2012, more college freshmen wanted to be an actor or entertainer than a college teacher, a foreign service worker, a school counselor, a member of the clergy, an architect, or a salesperson. Music was just as popular as acting, and even more said they wanted to be artists. Almost 1 out of 20 college students expects to become an actor, artist, or musician—more than want to be lawyers, accountants, business owners, scientific researchers, or high school teachers. “I just wanted to tell you not to give up on your dream,” one student says to another on Glee. “If you can imagine it, it can come true.”

  GenMe also holds on to dreams more fiercely, and in a way that makes you wonder how t
hey will react if they don’t achieve their lofty goals. Morgan, 22, began her graduate school application essay by writing, “On my 70th birthday, I want to be able to reflect on my life and say ‘I followed my dreams and lived for my passions.’ In other words, I will not be discouraged by closed doors, and will not be denied the opportunity to live to my fullest potential.” In Quarterlife Crisis, Emily, 22, says that if a young person “never gives up, then he or she will never have to admit to failure.” Uh-huh. But you might have to live in your car.

  Quarterlife Crisis does discuss one young person who “decided to change his dream rather than accept failure.” Mark, 29, tried for years to make it as an actor in New York; he realizes now he should have moved to LA sooner, where “I bet I would have been cast on a soap opera.” He finally decided to give up on acting and pursue another career. His new, and presumably more realistic, choice? To be a movie director. (I am not making this up, and the book’s authors, both twentysomethings themselves, present this story without comment or irony.)

  EXTENDING ADOLESCENCE BEYOND ALL PREVIOUS LIMITS

  Mark’s story illustrates another change from previous generations: the length of time GenMe has to pursue dreams. Because they expect to marry and have children later, GenMe thinks it’s more acceptable to spend their entire 20s pursuing “dream” careers such as music, screenwriting, or comedy. Jeffrey Arnett calls that period emerging adulthood, a time when “no dreams have been permanently dashed, no doors have been firmly closed, every possibility for happiness is still alive.” That period is getting longer and longer for people who spend years trying to make it in Hollywood or get their first novel published. Many twentysomethings struggle with the decision to keep pursuing their dream or to cut their losses and go home. Choosing something seems like giving up on endless possibilities. In her book The Defining Decade, therapist Meg Jay relates the stories of her twentysomething clients who are so afraid of “selling out” that they drift from one meaningless job to another. She told one client, Ian, “You need to claim something.” Ian would reply, “But claiming something feels like I’m losing everything else. I don’t want to settle for some ordinary thing.”

  Some of the forces behind these trends are economic, and I’ll address those further in chapter 4. But many young people say that the reason they are postponing adult roles is, you guessed it, their desire to put themselves first. Jeffrey Arnett, author of Emerging Adulthood, says, “They’re not just looking for a job. They want something that’s more like a calling, that’s going to be an expression of their identity.” Overall, it’s the pursuit of individual wants at its most undiluted. As Time magazine explains, young people are “making sure that when they do settle down, they do it the right way, their way.” Their individual way.

  Consider the characters on Girls. During the first season, 24-year-old Hannah’s parents pay her rent as she tries to make a living from her writing; Marnie wants a career in art curatorship but doesn’t get far; Jessa travels constantly and has numerous affairs; Charlie hopes his band will make it big; Ray is 33 and still works at a restaurant. If they had been born in the 1940s instead of the 1980s, they would probably be living very different lives—married, working at steady jobs, with a child or two. This means they have more time to explore their options, which has a lot of upsides, but Dr. Jay (among others) argues that your 20s are the best time to build your career and relationships. In her view, they are not for messing around. More and more young people are going to find themselves at 30 without a viable career, a house, or any semblance of stability.

  “In the past, people got married and got a job and had kids, but now there’s a new ten years that people are using to try and find out what kind of life they want to lead,” said Zach Braff, the actor and screenwriter of the hit movie Garden State. The movie plays off these ideas: Braff’s character works as a waiter in LA and is trying to break into acting. His friends back home in New Jersey live with their parents and work dead-end jobs, one quite literally as a gravedigger, and another as a knight-waiter, in full metal body armor, at the restaurant-cum-festival Medieval Times. The only guy with any money made it by inventing something ridiculous (silent Velcro) and spends his time getting laid, taking ecstasy, and riding around his giant house on a four-wheeler.

  Extended adolescence also has a big impact on relationships. GenMe marries later than any previous generation, at 29 for men and 27 for women. In 1970, when the Boomers were young, these figures were 23 and 21—so much for Free Love. Only 20% of today’s adults ages 18 to 29 are married, compared to 59% in 1960. In a Pew Center poll, 44% of GenMe’ers said they thought marriage was becoming obsolete. “I want to get married, but not soon,” Jennie Jiang, 26, told Time magazine. “I’m enjoying myself. There’s a lot I want to do by myself still.” Marcus Jones, 28, says he won’t marry for a long time: “I’m too self-involved. I don’t want to bring that into a relationship now.”

  Delaying adulthood has psychological consequences as well as practical ones. A recent study found that in countries where young people take on adult roles more quickly (such as Mexico or Pakistan), people become more responsible, organized, and calm—basically, more mature—at younger ages than those in countries, such as the United States, that feature a long period of emerging adulthood.

  Generation Me’ers marry considerably later than their Boomer counterparts did in the 1960s and 1970s.

  Sometimes emerging-adulthood dreams are clearly thwarting more realistic goals. Arnett describes Albert, who works in an ice-cream store but says he wants to play professional baseball. Yet he did not play baseball in high school and does not play on a team right now either. So how will he make this happen? “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll see what happens.” Adrianne, 16, dreamed of being on American Idol. But, her mother says, “Unfortunately she was so focused on it that she didn’t care for school too much.” Some dreams are not just big but huge. “My big goal is to have a shoe named after me, like Michael Jordan or LeBron James,” says Corvin Lamb, 13, interviewed in People magazine. “I want to be something in life.”

  Movies have latched onto “never give up on your dreams” with a vengeance. My husband and I have decided that modern movies have only four themes: “Believe in yourself and you can do anything,” “We are all alike underneath,” “Love conquers all,” and “Good people win.” (Do try this at home; almost every recent movie fits one of the four.) All of these themes tout the focus on the self so common today; it is stunning to realize just how well movies have encapsulated the optimistic, individualistic message of modern Western culture. Romantic love with a partner of one’s choice (often opposed by one’s parents) always wins in the end; intolerance is always bad; and when you believe in yourself, you can do anything. Sure enough, people who pursue an impossible dream in a movie almost always succeed: Dusty and Turbo win races in the children’s movies; Rudy gets to play Notre Dame football; formerly broke single mother Erin Brockovich wins her million-dollar lawsuit; and Will Smith’s character in The Pursuit of Happyness goes from homeless to Wall Street tycoon. Former Hollywood producer Elisabeth Robinson tried to get the classic and sad story of Don Quixote made into a movie, but the studio insisted he win the duels he loses in the book and that “he dies in his bed because he’s an old man—who lived his dream and now can die—not because his dreams have been crushed or ‘reality’ has killed him.” It wouldn’t be a movie if it wasn’t an “inspirational” story of people never giving up—so what if it cuts the heart out of the world’s first novel? No one wants to watch a movie more like real life, where people try hard but fail more often than they succeed.

  At least GenMe doesn’t want to watch this type of movie; pre-Boomer generations liked them just fine. Take the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life, in which George Bailey gives up on his dreams of making it big to stay in his small town and run the local bank. After one particularly bad day, he decides to kill himself, but an angel stops him by showing him how all of his good deeds have benefited
others. Many people love this movie for its message that self-sacrifice can lead to good outcomes. I saw It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time when I was 18, and I hated it, probably because it violated the conventions of every other movie I had ever seen: Why should he have to give up his dreams? He should be able to pursue his ambitions, and—modern movies had taught me well—he could have won if he had tried hard enough.

  THE BRIEF BUT HILARIOUS REIGN OF WILLIAM HUNG

  Does anyone remember William Hung? Probably not, but his rise to fame in 2004 remains a sterling example of this system. A UC Berkeley engineering student, Hung stretched his fifteen minutes of fame to almost an hour with his spectacularly bad and uproariously funny rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs.” Hung’s singing was tuneless, but it was his jerky, utterly uncoordinated dancing that caused the American Idol judges to hide behind their ratings sheets as they choked back their laughter. When judge Simon Cowell stopped him from finishing, Hung looked surprised and hurt. Cowell chided him, “You can’t sing; you can’t dance. What do you want me to say?” Hung replied, “I already gave my best. I have no regrets at all.”

  Judge Paula Abdul praised him, saying, “That’s good, that’s the best attitude yet.” (Rule of the modern world: doing your best is good enough, even if you suck.) Hung then attempted to explain: “I have no professional training.” “There’s the surprise of the century,” Cowell shot back.

  In a later interview with Star magazine, Hung said he hoped to make a career as a singer. This was after the poor guy had become a national joke for not being able to sing. But he had done his best and had learned the lesson that “you can be anything.” Sure enough, when asked if he had any advice for his fans, Hung said, “I want to say something to the public: Always try your best, and don’t give up on your dreams.” William, please, for the sake of all of us, give up on your dream of being a singer. (He apparently has; he is now working as an analyst for the California Department of Public Health.)