Generation Me--Revised and Updated

by Jean M. Twenge

  So many products now cater to the tastes of the individual. Instead of listening to the radio and hearing what everyone else does, we program our own special mix on our iPhone, put in our headphones, and enter an individually created world. We even choose unique ringtones for our cell phones. Instead of three or four network stations, we can watch cable channels dedicated to our own interests. Instead of watching TV live with everyone else in our time zone, we record it and watch it when we want to. “I want to do things that conform to my time frame, not someone else’s,” said UCLA senior Matthew Khalil on why he rarely goes to the movie theater anymore but instead watches DVDs at home.

  Individualism has driven the increasingly large universe of consumer choice in other things as well. Within a few decades, cream and sugar became decaf skim cappuccino grande to go. The coffee choices at Starbucks amount to 19,000 combinations—what better way to feel like an individual? From clothing to cars to jewelry, consumer products are designed to exhibit the wants of the unique self. “Shopping, like everything else, has become a means of self-exploration and self-expression,” writes David Brooks.

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  The individualistic ethos of America also explains a lot of negative trends that we see around us every day. A trip to the grocery store, as just one example, often involves aggressive drivers, sullen clerks, and screaming children. Then there’s that ultimate modern annoyance: the people who talk loudly on their cell phones, oblivious of their effect on others. GenMe didn’t pioneer this trend—it’s popular among middle-aged people as well—but young people are certainly continuing it. It’s not the technology that causes the problem, but the attitude that comes with it, an attitude that captures the trend toward self-importance better than almost anything else. “Years ago, cell phones were the province of the powerful, but now that they are mass-market items, everyone has delusions of grandeur,” says Eric Cohen, editor of the New Atlantis. “Now there are 280 million masters of the universe in America.”

  4

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  The Age of Anxiety (and Depression, and Loneliness): Generation Stressed

  In most ways, Kim looks like a well-adjusted college student. She dates her high school sweetheart and is studying psychology at a university in the Midwest. For the past five years, however, Kim has struggled with severe depression. When it was at its worst, she could not force herself to get out of bed to go to class. After hours of therapy and courses of antidepressant drugs, Kim was stable and ready to graduate; then she had a relapse. Now it will take her another year to finish college as she tries to manage her depression.

  Jason, 22, appeared from the outside to have everything: he had just graduated with honors from an Ivy League university and was starting his first job at a leading investment-banking firm. But he soon found that his job was not what he had imagined—the bosses doled out constant criticism and expected sixteen-hour days. The work was boring. Jason hated it, so after three months, he quit. Suddenly uncertain about what he wanted to do with his life, he sank into depression. He was devastated that a lifetime of achieving his goals had not brought him happiness.

  Beth, 19, became severely depressed in high school and seriously considered suicide. “My parents thought I was just a grumpy teenager,” she says. “They didn’t realize there were demons inside my head that screamed at me and ripped my life apart.” Although her parents were opposed to the idea, she eventually saw a therapist and began to take antidepressant medication. “I have so many more opportunities now that I can control the depression and the crippling panic attacks,” she says.

  Being young has not always carried such a high risk of being anxious, depressed, suicidal, or medicated. Only 1% to 2% of Americans born before 1915 experienced a major depressive episode during their lifetimes, even though they lived through the Great Depression and two world wars. Today, the lifetime rate of major depression is ten times higher—between 15% and 20%. Some studies put the figure closer to 50%. Although some of this trend might be due to more frequent reporting of mental illness, researchers have concluded that the change is too large and too consistent across studies to be explained solely by a reporting bias. In addition, these studies use a fairly strict definition, counting only depression severe enough to warrant medication or long-term therapy. If more mild depression were included, the vast majority of young people would raise their hands in recognition.

  Depression is oddly commonplace. In a mid-2000s TV commercial, a frowning, oval-shaped blob becomes happy and smiling after taking the antidepressant medication Zoloft. Panic attacks and OCD are the subject of cocktail-party conversation and TV episodes. Almost every high school and college student knows someone who committed suicide or tried. In past generations, suicide and depression were considered afflictions of middle age, as it was unusual for a young person to be depressed, but for Generation Me, these problems are a rite of passage through adolescence and young adulthood. Karen, 23, became depressed during college, as did her brother. One thing that helped, she said, was realizing that for young people “going through a time of depression is normal.”

  It wasn’t always “normal,” but it is certainly heading in that direction. One out of 10 Americans took an antidepressant in 2008, twice as many as in 1996. At the Kansas State University counseling center, the number of students treated for depression doubled between 1988 and 2001, and the number who were suicidal tripled. A 2010 study found that college counseling centers increasingly saw students with more severe mental-health issues, and twice as many used psychiatric medications as compared to 1997. In a nationwide survey of teens in 2011, 29% said they had felt sad or helpless almost every day for two or more weeks in a row—a common definition of depression.

  The ubiquitous sad blob of Zoloft. Correct your chemical imbalances and you might become a happy blob.

  I wanted to find out if this trend extended to feelings of anxiety, which often lead to depression as well as to intestinal problems, relationship dysfunction, and low life satisfaction. If anxiety had increased, this would truly be bad news for young people. As part of my doctoral dissertation, I gathered data on 40,192 college students and 12,056 children aged 9 to 17 who completed measures of anxiety between the 1950s and the 1990s. I was stunned by the size of the changes. Anxiety increased so much that the average college student in the 1990s was more anxious than 85% of students in the 1950s and 71% of students in the 1970s. The trend for children was even more striking: children as young as 9 years old were markedly more anxious than kids had been in the 1950s. The change was so large that “normal” schoolchildren in the 1980s reported higher levels of anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s.

  This study had another surprising finding: when you were born has more influence on your anxiety level than your individual family environment. Previous research found that family environment explains only about 5% of variations in anxiety (much of the rest is a combination of genetics, peer influence, and unknown factors). Generational differences explained about 20% of the variation in anxiety—thus four times more than family environment. So even if you come from a stable, loving family, growing up in the late 20th century might be enough to make you anxious.

  So did this trend continue into the 2000s, and thus into GenMe? My coauthors and I analyzed data from 63,706 college students and 13,870 high school students who completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) between 1938 and 2007. Recent students were much more likely to score at a problematic level on the MMPI’s scales of psychopathology. Seven times more scored high on hypomania, five times more on psychopathic deviation, and seven times more on depression. Thirty-one percent of the recent students scored above the cutoff for hypomania, characterized by an unrealistically positive self-appraisal, overactivity, and low self-control. Samples of high school students showed similar increases in psychopathology. Anxiety also increased: Thirty percent of college freshmen reported feeling “overwhelmed by all I have to do” in 2012, nearly twice as many as
in the 1980s. More also described themselves as below average in mental health.

  The picture is not completely bleak: teen suicides are down 22% since the 1990s, and self-reports of anxiety and depression have leveled off—though, admittedly, at levels that are still markedly higher than those of the 1960s and 1970s. With 1 out of 10 Americans taking an anti-depressant, we may have medicated away any continued rise in anxiety, depression, and suicide.

  Stress is also showing up in physical symptoms—complaints most people don’t even connect to mental health (which get around the possibility that GenMe is simply more willing to admit to mental health issues). More high school students in 2012 (versus 1982) reported common psychosomatic symptoms of depression and anxiety. Three times as many high school students in 2012 (versus 1982) said they had trouble sleeping most nights. Twice as many students in 2012 (versus 1982) reported being seen by a doctor or other professional for mental health issues. Yet slightly fewer said they suffered from a cold, suggesting that GenMe wasn’t simply more likely to complain about everything.

  Adults also seem to be suffering more. Drawing from the nationwide DDB Needham Life Style Survey, Chris Herbst found that 2005 (versus 1985) adults were much more likely to report psychosomatic symptoms. More said they suffered from headaches, more had trouble sleeping, fewer agreed they were in good physical condition, and more said they were “under a great deal of pressure most of the time.”

  Many young people shared their stories of depression and anxiety with me through my website. In answer to the question “Have you experienced anxiety, stress, or depression?” Josie, 19, wrote, “Duh. The first time depression really showed up in me was probably age 11. Anxiety has been a thing in my life for as long as I can remember.” Emma sounds like many high school students these days: “I face anxiety and stress on a daily basis due to the pressure of school. Parents are pushing their kids much harder so they can get into a prestigious college and be successful. Everyone around me seems to be better than me—there’s a lot more pressure to do well in everything.”

  Several young people confessed to being suicidal in their early teens. Clarissa, now 20, became depressed when she was 11. At 13, she locked herself in her room for a week and refused to speak to anyone. She took apart a plastic razor, thinking “about slicing my wrist open and watching the life drain away, taking the pain and loneliness with it.” Fortunately, she realized what she was doing and soon began counseling. Matt, 28, stood at the top of a rock quarry when he was 13 and thought of “ending it all by jumping.” He didn’t, but only because he wondered what the future would bring: “Even though that day and the preceding days basically sucked, tomorrow may suck in a novel way.” Debbie, 20, says that when she was 13, “I became unable to see that people around me cared. I was confused and unsure of how to get through the transition of child to young adult. I contemplated suicide, but when it came to it, I couldn’t actually cut my flesh because I thought about my family and how awful they would feel if they buried me.”

  Someone commits suicide every eighteen minutes in the United States. While the suicide rate for middle-aged people has declined steeply since 1950, the suicide rate for young people is now twice as high (even though it’s lower now than in the early 1990s). The suicide rate for children under age 14 has doubled just since 1980. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 24. In 2011, 16% of high school students admitted that they had seriously considered attempting suicide during the past year, and most of those said they had made a plan for exactly how they would kill themselves. These suicidal thoughts are often brought on by depression. Miranda, an 18-year-old from the Midwest, tried to commit suicide by overdosing on drugs. “Depression tends to grab people and suck them in,” she says.

  Headline after headline in the past few years has announced the suicide of a teen who was bullied. Years of bullying led 15-year-old Bart Palosz to kill himself with a shotgun after the first day of his sophomore year at Greenwich High School in Connecticut. That June, he had written to a friend, “I have chosen to go with 3 peoples advice and kill myself, I just wish it was faster.” After a dispute over a boy, girls sent 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick texts such as “can u die please?” “why are you still alive?” and “go kill yourself.” She did, stepping off a platform at an abandoned cement plant.

  BUT SHOULDN’T WE BE HAPPIER NOW?

  At first, it seems paradoxical that GenMe feels so much anxiety and pain. After all, the lives of people born in the 1980s and 1990s have been remarkably free of traumatic historical events. There have been no world wars, and fewer worries of nuclear war. The threat of terrorism to Americans did not emerge until after the rise in depression was well established. GenMe has never been drafted. Advances in health care and safety mean that more kids live longer and better lives. More students graduate from high school, and fewer are involved in crime than in the early 1990s. Teen pregnancy rates have also markedly declined since the early 1990s. These improving youth trends are one place where Howe and Strauss’s Millennials Rising got it right.

  In many ways, there’s no better time to be alive than right now. Think of all of the advantages we have that earlier generations did not: television, cell phones, better medical care, computers and the Internet, more education, less physical labor, the freedom to make our own choices, the ability to move to a more desirable city. These last two, however, begin to hint at the underlying problem. The growing tendency to put the self first leads to unparalleled freedom, but it also creates enormous pressure to stand alone. This is the downside of the focus on the self—when we are fiercely independent and self-sufficient, our disappointments loom large because we have nothing else to focus on. Generation Me has been taught to expect more out of life at the very time when good jobs and nice houses are increasingly difficult to obtain. All too often, the result is crippling anxiety and crushing depression.

  Or just plain unhappiness. In a well-publicized 2009 report, two economists found that women’s self-reported happiness had slid in national surveys between the 1970s and 2006. Chris Herbst analyzed another national survey of adults (average age 47) and found that both men and women decreased in happiness between 1985 and 2005. More agreed that “I wish I could leave my present life and do something entirely different” and “If I had my life to live over, I would sure do things differently.” Interestingly, fewer in 2005 agreed that “I have more self-confidence than most people,” suggesting that by adulthood, the generational increase in self-esteem may have begun to falter, replaced by unhappiness and regret.

  Why has this generation, and this cultural moment, seemingly so full of promise, also resulted in more stress, anxiety, and depression? We’ll explore a number of possible reasons.

  LONELINESS AND ISOLATION

  My friend Peter moved to an apartment on the North Side of Chicago after graduating from college. He did not seem happy when I visited him that fall. He had several hellish stories about going out on dates through personal ads, including with one woman who told him outright that he was not good-looking enough. His friends from college were either still living near campus or had scattered to graduate schools around the country. In his apartment, he showed me the feature on his cable TV that allowed him to buy movies. “This is what I do most weekends,” he said, a sad smile on his face.

  He’s not the only one. More than four times as many Americans describe themselves as lonely now than in 1957. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam documents the steep decline in all kinds of social connections: we’re less likely to belong to clubs and community organizations, less likely to have friends over for dinner, and less likely to visit our neighbors. Across many studies, people who do these things are more likely to be happy and satisfied with their lives. Putnam found that regular participation in clubs and other social activities increased happiness as much as obtaining a college degree or doubling your income. Yet close social connections may be harder to come by. One study found that in 1985, the average American had
three people with whom he or she could “discuss important matters”; by 2004, that had shrunk to zero. Our social contacts are slight compared to those enjoyed by earlier generations.

  It’s almost as if GenMe is starving for affection. “There is a kind of famine of warm interpersonal relations, of easy-to-reach neighbors, of encircling, inclusive memberships, and of solid family life,” argues political scientist Robert Lane. To take the analogy a little further, we’re malnourished from eating a junk-food diet of instant messages, Facebook posts, e-mail, and phone calls, rather than the healthy food of live, in-person interaction. One of the few exceptions: with more in GenMe living with their parents, they do get more family interaction in their 20s than previous generations did.

  But that can’t take the place of an adult romantic relationship. It helps explain a new kind of get-together that’s popping up in cities around the country: cuddle parties. It’s a deliberately nonsexual (though usually coed) gathering where pajama-clad people can enjoy the hugs and touch of others, overseen by a “cuddle lifeguard on duty,” who keeps things friendly and nonthreatening. One 26-year-old participant called it “rehab for lonely people.” As the official website (www.cuddleparty.com) explains, “In today’s world, many of us aren’t getting our Recommended Daily Allowance of Welcomed Touch.” Most cuddle party participants are young and single. As the website notes, “It’s okay to touch the one you’re dating or married to . . . but what about the single people? . . . We are touch-and-snuggle deprived.”