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Generation Me, by Jean Twenge
Mar. 10th, 2007 05:19 pmLast week I posted about my irritation with the study on narcissistic college students that's gotten a lot of press lately. The chief author of the study wrote a book called Generation Me (also about What's Wrong With Today's Young People) that came out last year, so I requested it from the library and read it.
The coverage of her study annoyed me in all the ways that coverage in the mainstream media of sensational-sounding studies always annoys me. Generation Me annoys me in all the ways that sloppily done social science always annoys me, particularly when it's being marketed to the general public through mass-marketed popular nonfiction.
Easy ways to annoy me, if you're drawing sweeping conclusions from data acquired by social scientists:
1. Take all survey data at face value.
There are all sorts of hazards you have to watch for when interpreting survey data. But one of the ones I consider particularly obvious is this: if people are telling you things about other people's behavior, are they giving you reliable information, or are they pulling it out of their butt? Middle schoolers will tell you positively hair-raising stories about all the sex their classmates are having. This doesn't mean any of it is true.
2. Casually repeat rumor or propaganda as fact.
Twenge references the McDonalds coffee lawsuit as an example of a frivolous suit, and as the sort of stupid lawsuit that today's entitled and overprotected young people will bring. She misses two rather salient details. First, the woman who sued was so badly burned she was hospitalized for eight days and had to have skin grafts -- it was not a frivolous suit, she was really badly injured. Second, she was 79 years old. If you're making a point about the victim mentality of today's young people, you might want to stick with lawsuits where the plaintiff were under fifty.
3. Confuse correlation with causation, or for bonus points, infer causation where there isn't even clear correlation.
Twenge goes to a lot of trouble to show that teenagers have been told they're special too many times, and that they're much more depressed than kids a generation or two back. She wants us to believe that one caused the other (it's right there in the title) but doesn't make any sort of persuasive case.
4. While you're at it, ignore all other theories for the things you're talking about.
Twenge questions the societal dictum that you have to love yourself before you can love others. She may be right to question this particular bit of pop psychology, but as evidence for this, she points out that earlier generations didn't worry about loving themselves, and then points out the lower rate of divorce as evidence that "they were better at relationships than we are." (p. 90). Now, I'm not a social scientist or a social historian. But I do believe the stigma attached to divorce, the lack of no-fault divorce, and the economic dependence of women in earlier eras might also have been contributing factors to the lower divorce rate back in the day.
One of her biggest complaints in the book -- this comes up over and over -- is that young people are told that they can be anything they want to be, and this simply isn't true. And they're told to follow their dreams, even though their dreams may not be realistic:
And, well, my first response to that is, "True. And?"
( Read more... )
The coverage of her study annoyed me in all the ways that coverage in the mainstream media of sensational-sounding studies always annoys me. Generation Me annoys me in all the ways that sloppily done social science always annoys me, particularly when it's being marketed to the general public through mass-marketed popular nonfiction.
Easy ways to annoy me, if you're drawing sweeping conclusions from data acquired by social scientists:
1. Take all survey data at face value.
There are all sorts of hazards you have to watch for when interpreting survey data. But one of the ones I consider particularly obvious is this: if people are telling you things about other people's behavior, are they giving you reliable information, or are they pulling it out of their butt? Middle schoolers will tell you positively hair-raising stories about all the sex their classmates are having. This doesn't mean any of it is true.
2. Casually repeat rumor or propaganda as fact.
Twenge references the McDonalds coffee lawsuit as an example of a frivolous suit, and as the sort of stupid lawsuit that today's entitled and overprotected young people will bring. She misses two rather salient details. First, the woman who sued was so badly burned she was hospitalized for eight days and had to have skin grafts -- it was not a frivolous suit, she was really badly injured. Second, she was 79 years old. If you're making a point about the victim mentality of today's young people, you might want to stick with lawsuits where the plaintiff were under fifty.
3. Confuse correlation with causation, or for bonus points, infer causation where there isn't even clear correlation.
Twenge goes to a lot of trouble to show that teenagers have been told they're special too many times, and that they're much more depressed than kids a generation or two back. She wants us to believe that one caused the other (it's right there in the title) but doesn't make any sort of persuasive case.
4. While you're at it, ignore all other theories for the things you're talking about.
Twenge questions the societal dictum that you have to love yourself before you can love others. She may be right to question this particular bit of pop psychology, but as evidence for this, she points out that earlier generations didn't worry about loving themselves, and then points out the lower rate of divorce as evidence that "they were better at relationships than we are." (p. 90). Now, I'm not a social scientist or a social historian. But I do believe the stigma attached to divorce, the lack of no-fault divorce, and the economic dependence of women in earlier eras might also have been contributing factors to the lower divorce rate back in the day.
One of her biggest complaints in the book -- this comes up over and over -- is that young people are told that they can be anything they want to be, and this simply isn't true. And they're told to follow their dreams, even though their dreams may not be realistic:
"Following your dreams" sounds like a good principle, until you realize that every waiter in L.A. is following his or her dreams 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. (p. 82)
And, well, my first response to that is, "True. And?"
( Read more... )
