For both alcohol and marijuana, iGen’ers ask first: Is it safe? Even if they think it is, many still hold back—an unusual choice at an age traditionally associated with risk taking. Teens just don’t want to take chances anymore—so they stay at home, drive carefully, and use only substances in amounts they think are safe—or don’t use them . . . because it’s better to be safe.
The Decline of the Fight and the Waning of Sexual Assault
Most Boomers and GenX’ers can remember seeing a middle school or high school fight—a scuffle in the hallway, a brawl after school, fists thrown to settle a dispute. At my junior high in the early 1980s, the gauntlet would be thrown down the same way every time: “Meet me behind the KFC after school.”
The KFC back lot is seeing a lot less action these days: iGen’ers are fighting less. In 1991, fully half of 9th graders had been in a physical fight in the last twelve months, but by 2015, only one in four had (see Figure 6.5 and Appendix G).
Figure 6.5. Percentage of high school students who have gotten into a physical fight in the last 12 months. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, 1991–2015.
Many iGen’ers see physical fighting as risky and pointless, given the possibility of physical injury. “There’s no point to physical fighting,” wrote Aiden, 20. “I hate to see myself get hurt and I wish to see no one else be hurt either.”
Extremes of violence are also less common: as we saw in chapter 3, the homicide rate among teens and young adults reached a forty-year low in 2014. In the YRBSS survey, the number of teens who carry a weapon to school is now only a third of what it was in the early 1990s.
Given the attention paid to sexual assault in recent years, especially on college campuses, you might think that it would be the exception to this trend of declining violence. But it’s not: sexual assault is actually less common than it once was. From 1992 to 2015, the rate of rape was nearly cut in half in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, which are based on reports to police. Of course, rape is a notoriously underreported crime—most studies suggest that the majority who experience it do not report it to the police. Thus, to understand the true occurrence of rape, it’s better to rely on surveys of representative samples. One is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), administered by the US Department of Justice. In a 2014 report, the DOJ broke down the data by age and student status. Figure 6.6 shows the rate of rape for 18- to 24-year olds enrolled in a college or university, an important population given the recent attention paid to sexual assault on campus. Here, too, rape was less common in recent years, with the rate more than cut in half (from 9.2 to 4.4 per 1,000) between 1997 and 2013.
Figure 6.6. Rape (sexual assault) rates in the last year (1) from reports to police per 100,000 of the general population (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1960–2015) and (2) victim surveys of students and non-students ages 18 to 24, per 1,000 population (National Crime Victimization Survey, 1997–2013).
The number from the NCVS is the rate out of 1,000, while the FBI rate is out of 100,000; thus the survey actually shows a much higher rate than the FBI crime reports. Even this rate is lower (about half a percentage point) than the CDC’s 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which found that 1.6% of women had been raped in the last year using a broader definition of sexual assault. At the moment, the CDC sexual assault data are available for only 2010 and 2011, so we can’t tell from that survey if rape is more or less common than it used to be. That survey also found that 19.3% of women—about one in five—have been raped during their lifetimes (this figure is much higher as it focuses on lifetime experience rather than just one year). Other summaries, such as one released by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, also show declines in sexual assault rates for child and teen victims.
Overall, much controversy surrounds the question of how sexual assault should be defined and measured; the data here are necessarily reliant on their particular definitions. The rate of sexual assault is unarguably still too high, but it is encouraging that it appears to be dropping—yet another piece of evidence that iGen is safer.
No Risk, Please
iGen’ers’ risk aversion goes beyond their behaviors toward a general attitude of avoiding risk and danger. Eighth and 10th graders are now less likely to agree that “I like to test myself every now and then by doing something a little risky” (see Figure 6.7). Nearly half of teens found that appealing in the early 1990s, but by 2015 less than 40% did.
Figure 6.7. Percentage of 8th and 10th graders who like doing dangerous things or taking risks. Monitoring the Future, 1991–2015.
iGen teens are also less likely to agree that “I get a real kick out of doing things that are a little dangerous.” As recently as 2011, the majority of teens agreed that they got a jolt out of danger, but within a few years only a minority shared this view.
For the most part, this movement toward safety is a positive trend: it’s good for everyone that fewer teens drag race, set stuff on fire, and play mailbox baseball. The nuance comes when we’re talking about not just physical risk but intellectual, social, and emotional risks—the leaps of faith young people sometimes take that can lead them on their greatest adventures. Some wonder if iGen’s interest in safety will stifle exploration and creativity. Former Village Voice rock critic Richard Goldstein, who now teaches at Hunter College, observes that his students are much more cautious than his Boomer generation ever was. He praises his students’ ambition, but writes, “I get that it’s important to be safe, but I worry about the consequences of making that a priority. If you don’t take chances, how can you invent yourself? If you aren’t comfortable with instability, how can you create change?”
Wanting to feel safe all of the time can also lead to wanting to protect against emotional upset—the concern with “emotional safety” somewhat unique to iGen. That can include preventing bad experiences, sidestepping situations that might be uncomfortable, and avoiding people with ideas different from your own. That’s where things get dicey—both for iGen and for the older generations struggling to understand them.
A Safe Space for All Students
When the writer Claire Fox arrived at a girls’ high school in the United Kingdom for a debate, she expected the girls to challenge some of what she had to say. What she did not expect were tears. When the girls disagreed with her, she was shocked when they began crying and saying “You can’t say that!” instead of presenting rational arguments for their positions. She calls iGen’ers “Generation Snowflake,” apt to melt under the slightest pressure due to their extreme fragility.
This is the flip side of iGen’s interest in safety: the idea that one should be safe not just from car accidents and sexual assault but from people who disagree with you. For example, take the most recent version of the “safe space,” now known as a place where people can go to protect themselves from ideas they find offensive. In recent years, safe spaces have become popular on college campuses as responses to visits by controversial speakers: if students are upset by a speaker’s message, they can come together in a separate location to console one another. Safe spaces echo not just iGen’s interest in safety but their association of safety with childhood. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s much-discussed 2015 Atlantic piece on safe spaces and other campus controversies was titled “The Coddling of the American Mind” and was illustrated with a picture of a confused-looking toddler wearing a shirt that said “College.” As Josh Zeitz put it in Politico Magazine, “Yesterday’s student activists wanted to be treated like adults. Today’s want to be treated like children.”
Safe spaces began as places where (for example) LGBT or minority students knew they would be accepted—where they could congregate among themselves or with like-minded individuals without fear of judgment. In the last few years, however, the term safe space has broadened to include protecting anyone from any viewpoint that might offend them. This has spawned derision from many, including South Park, which featured the so
ng “In My Safe Space.” (“Everyone likes me and thinks I’m great in my safe space / We can face almost anything, but reality we can do without.”)
James, the Georgia college student, believes it’s beneficial to have safe spaces where LGBT people will not feel judged but does not agree that safe spaces should be created to protect students from controversial opinions. “Just because someone thinks differently from you or says something that you might find offensive or says something that might trigger you or whatever, that’s a part of life,” he says. “When you leave college, there’s not going to be any rule that’s going to protect your feelings.” He thinks the current notion of safe spaces distorts the original idea behind them: “Safe spaces are supposed to be for people who need a place that they can express themselves without fear of being harmed verbally or physically. Safe space is not supposed to be for people who are just afraid of being offended. [That type of sensitivity] can hinder your ability to function in our world.” It’s an intriguing reversal: the original type of safe space promoted tolerance based on someone’s identity or beliefs; the new version suggests that students should not tolerate another’s identity or beliefs.
Eighteen-year-old Ben, the entering college student whom we met in chapter 3, sees safe spaces as an issue of emotional health. “The way [safe spaces] are meant to be used was if you were, like, in the midst of some kind of panic attack or something where you were feeling incredibly depressed or stressed or whatever, then a safe space would be available for you to, like, go in and just relax for a little bit,” he says. Given that, he sees providing safe spaces as an individual right. “My view is, people know what’s best for themselves, and if people are saying they need someplace to go because they’re having a breakdown, then who are we to tell them they are not having a breakdown?”
My graduate student Hannah VanLandingham and I were curious how widespread these new beliefs about safe spaces were—is it just a few students at the extremes who thought safe spaces should be a place to retreat from contrary views? We surveyed more than two hundred SDSU students enrolled in introductory psychology, focusing on the iGen students aged 21 or under. As it turned out, support for safe spaces was widespread: three out of four students agreed that “If many students disagree with the views of someone who has been invited to speak on campus, the students should create a ‘safe space’ for students to come to during the speech.” A whopping 86% agreed that “It is the responsibility of the university administration to create a safe space for all students to thrive.” Thus, the vast majority agreed with the idea of safe spaces—both during controversial speeches and as a general goal for campuses. These are not fringe ideas but those embraced by the majority of iGen’ers.
The other common response to controversial speakers is “disinviting” a speaker from coming at all. Many disinvitations are framed in terms of preserving the “health” or “safety” of students—usually not physical health or safety but emotional health or safety. When Williams College “disinvited” a speaker, the campus newspaper editorialized that the speaker’s presence on campus would have caused students—and here is a uniquely iGen phrase—“emotional injury.” Protecting students from being distressed is considered more important than having a discussion of potentially uncomfortable ideas. If some people might be upset, the thinking goes, we’ll ban the speaker. And why can’t students who disagree simply choose not to go to the talk? I asked a few iGen’ers, but I never got a satisfying answer.
The embrace of safety and protection now extends to course readings, which must be sanitized to remove anything that might offend someone. In his piece “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” Edward Schlosser noted that many faculty members have changed their syllabi for fear of being fired if students complain about offensive material in the course readings. One adjunct professor, he noted, was let go when “students complained that he exposed them to ‘offensive’ texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate.” The focus, he says, is now on students’ emotional state rather than on their intellectual development, sacrificing challenging discussions for the possibility that a student might feel upset.
iGen college students’ beliefs, and the campus incidents they create, have some common themes. One is equating speech with physical violence. When safety extends to emotional safety, speech can hurt. As Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis wrote, “Emotional discomfort is [now] regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated.” Perhaps because they are so physically safe compared to previous generations, and perhaps because they spend so much time online, iGen sees speech as the venue where danger lies. In their always online lives, words can reach out and do damage even when you’re alone. In 2016, the number one Billboard song of the year was “Stitches” by 18-year-old iGen’er Shawn Mendes. “Your words cut deeper than a knife,” he sings. “I’ll be needing stitches.” The music video features Mendes being attacked by an invisible force that throws him to the ground, smashes his head into a car window, and pushes him through a wall, leaving visible bruises and cuts on his face. After he washes his face and stands up to look in the mirror again, the injuries are gone. Although on the surface the song is about a breakup, it can also be seen as an iGen metaphor for the cutting power of words—the pain that is mental rather than physical but (in iGen’ers’ view) hurts just as much, even if it doesn’t leave physical scars. With iGen’ers already mentally vulnerable due to higher levels of depression, words feel harmful. Unlike the rose-colored glasses worn by Millennials, the lenses iGen’ers use to see the world are much more blue.
To get a small window into this mind-set, I asked ten iGen’ers whether they thought safety also included “emotional safety.” All thought emotional safety was important, and all could articulate why. “Safety has to do with avoiding danger. There is physical danger and emotional danger. Traumatic experiences can affect your mind and cause emotional suffering which can feel just as negative as physical suffering,” wrote Owen, 20. Ivy, 20, sees emotional safety as even more important than physical safety. “Safe means caring for your physical and emotional needs,” she wrote. “You could cause serious emotional harm to yourself, which can be even more detrimental [than] physical harm.”
The difficulty, according to iGen’ers, is that it’s harder to protect your mind than your body. “I believe nobody can guarantee emotional safety. You can always take precautions for someone hurting you physically, but you cannot really help but listen when someone is talking to you,” said Aiden, 19. This is a fascinating, perhaps distinctively iGen idea: the world is an inherently dangerous place because every social interaction carries the risk of being hurt. You never know what someone is going to say, and there’s no way to protect yourself from it.
Some students have taken this notion even further—beyond offensive or extreme speech to anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or challenges them to question their actions. Everett Piper, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, said a student told him he felt “victimized” by a sermon on a passage in Corinthians about showing love. Why? Because it “made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.” In this way of thinking, no one should ever say anything that makes a student feel bad, even if it might inspire him or her to do better. His university, Piper wrote, “is not a ‘safe place,’ but rather, a place to learn”—about caring for others, about channeling bad feelings into self-improvement. “This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!” he concludes. “This is not a day care. This is a university!”
The idea that complaining students are like toddlers should not be applied too broadly; many campus protests and student complaints address legitimate issues, and protests are a long-standing tradition for voicing dissent. But when students want to ban anything that
challenges them, they are questioning the core idea behind higher education and requesting to live in a protected, childlike world. A university is a place focused not on protection but on learning and questioning. Piper’s example shows how far the movement toward safe spaces has gone, suggesting that ever feeling uncomfortable, for any reason, even your own failings, is something to be avoided at all costs. It’s not; that’s called learning.
The Safety of Home, Everywhere
In October 2015, the administration at Yale University suggested to students that they not wear Halloween costumes that might be considered offensive. Resident master Erika Christakis then wrote to the students in her dorm suggesting they decide for themselves what costumes to wear rather than having the administration tell them what to do: “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity—in your capacity—to exercise self-censure through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?”
Students called for her resignation, saying she was not creating a safe environment for minority students. A group of protestors then confronted Christakis’s husband, Nicholas, on campus, surrounding him on a walkway. One student began saying Christakis should create “a safe space here for all students,” and when he tried to respond, she barked, “Be quiet!” She went on, “It is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman . . . . By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master.” “No, I don’t agree with that,” Christakis responded. The student then began yelling. “Then why the fuck did you accept the position? Who the fuck hired you?! . . . It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! It is about creating a home here!”
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