Global Trend

Largely because of differing environmental circum stances, every generation has its own cohort psycho logical characteristics which fundamentally influence its behaviors.

In the 1990s, Neil Howe and William Strauss described this phenomenon and the prima ry geo-political, cultural, and economic implications.

Their schema has played a big role in the long-term forecasting models used by Trends.

Because the Boomer and Millennial generations are so large and represent such large shares of the workforce, consumer base and voting population, they get most of our attention.

Meanwhile, Gen-X is treated more as a transition between the two larger generations.

Until very recently, we’ve lacked the data needed to understand Gen-Z.

But since they entered college campuses and workplaces around 2017, we’ve been able to see how they respond to adult challenges and make their own decisions.

Perhaps the best analysis to-date appears in the just-published landmark book titled Generations:

The Real Differences Be tween Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Si lents - And What They Mean for America's Future. The author is psychologist Jean M. Twenge of the Uni versity of Chicago.

Twenge began studying the differ ences between generations in the early 1990s. And she has published many studies on the subject.

Twenge documented the rise in individualism that began with the Baby Boom ers and continued with Mil lennials.

But it wasn’t until 2012 that she noticed the data really beginning to change. As she observes,

“There were abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states.

The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs and many of the distinctive charac teristics of the Millennial generation began to disap pear.

In all my analyses of generational data - some reaching back to the 1930s - I had never seen any thing like it.”

Almost 30 percent of American girls have clinical de pression and it’s the same across the Anglosphere.

Furthermore, the suicide rate for ten to twenty four-year-olds has tripled.

In 2017, Twenge published a book about this dis tressed generation titled “iGen,” which identified the smartphone as the cul prit.

Now, six years later, a growing mountain of evi dence validates Twenge’s theories.

In Generations, she crunches the data from polls and surveys involving 39 million people in the US and UK. The resulting con clusions are highly disturbing.

As subscribers know, our world is shaped by inter actions between trends in human behavior, demography, and technology within the context of physical laws and constraints.

Generational psychologists like Twenge have long known that major events like wars, pandemics, and depressions help shape the character and attitudes of different generations.

Based on this framework, Strauss and Howe observed that generations cycle through four different psychological archetypes: ide alist, reactive, civic and adaptive.

Notably, the demographic and behavioral factors behind wars, pandemics, and depressions, change slowly.

And, until the 19th century, technology changed slowly as well. However, since then, technology has been changing at a rapid and ever-accel erating pace.

Twenge argues that, for the first time in history, rapidly evolving technology shapes our psychology to a greater degree than major historical events, like wars, pandemics, and depressions.

As she puts it, “the long-term impact of these major events is fairly limited in terms of how it influences values and day-to-day life, but when you think about technology, especially with the downstream effects on in dividualism and life strategy, it has a much more wide-ranging impact.”

In short, Twenge believes, “It really is technology that makes living now different from what it was like to live 150 years ago or fifty years ago or even twenty years ago, rather than a big event.”

As shown in the printable Trends issue, changing technologies not only directly influence generation al differences but indirectly influence those differences by shaping our preference for “collectivism vs individualism” and “the pace at which individuals mature,” as well as the “major events” which generational psychologists have previously focused upon.

That’s important because technology moves relentlessly forward, while generational life-cycles and economic conditions reliably conform to recurring life-death and boom-bust patterns.

Like more familiar “major events,” the adoption of a “major technology” either exacerbates or suppresses inherent cultural traits.

As Twenge observes, a society that was already very individualistic like the United States was likely to find those applications of the Internet which increased individualism, high ly appealing.

As she puts it, “Western society came into internet access with rising individualism already as a very strong trend. Individualism, like any cul tural system, has its upsides and downsides.”

The upside is more freedom and more opportunity for people regardless of their demographic make-up. The downsides are disconnection and sometimes narcissism.

And, according to Generations, one major downside for Zoomers and Millennials has been the epidemic of loneliness, covered in prior issues of Trends. As Twenge puts it,

“One of the eye-popping facts is that teens are much lonelier now than they were fifteen years ago. And that’s true in thirty-six countries around the world when we were able to look at the Program for International Student Assessment (or PISA) data.”

This is a seeming paradox since teens are always communicating. However, there is a big difference between interacting online and interacting face to face.

As Twenge observes, “Interacting face to face tends to be more cooperative and more emotionally close. It’s more honest but it’s also more agreeable.

People have a very strong tendency online to say cruel things that they would never say to someone’s face.”

A further paradox is that it’s the young rather than the old who are lonely in the 2020s.

According to Twenge, the Silent Generation needs the least sympathy: “They’re the least likely to be anxious and they are the happiest.”

The other factor adversely affecting Zoomers is their unwillingness to grow up.

Since the beginning of the millennium, this is reflected in a precipitous drop in the proportion of high school seniors having experienced traditionally adult activities, such as “working for pay.”

And this decline in the “pace of maturation” correlates with the rise in social media usage and the decline in “life satisfaction.”

This is becoming a problem that reaches far beyond Zoomers and their parents.

It has potentially ad verse implications for population growth, labor force participation rates, worker productivity, consumer spending, political stability, health care costs and even national security.

To address this looming crisis, Twenge argues that Gen-Z needs help.

They’re so sad and so convinced the world is appalling that they don’t even want kids themselves.

“They are more likely to report that they don’t think they will have children, and that was particularly interesting.

The percentage of eighteen-year-olds who say they were likely to have children was high and very stable from about 1976 to 2012 before it started to go down.

It was stable for [three and a half] decades and then started to change, which is really striking.”

Typically, they justify their decisions based on eco nomics; they say they can’t afford it.

However, the data shows that Millennials and Zoomers are not materially worse off than previous generations were at the same age.

However, they don’t see their future in the same positive light that Silents, Boomers and even Gen-Xers did.

Actually, the disadvantage is only in their minds. In fact, for Gen-Z the recent labor shortages should represent the kind of oppor tunity the Silent Generation enjoyed from 1950 to 1966.

So, it’s safe to say that “the problem is not real ity, it’s perception.”

Some of the most astonishing data show that much of Gen-Z in America, genuinely thinks that they live at the most misogynistic, racist time in history, even though these things are demonstrably untrue.

Why are these kids so resistant to facts?

Twenge hypothesizes that it’s related to the increase in depression.

“Depression isn’t just about emotion, it’s about thinking and cognition, it’s about how you see the world, and with more depression you are going to get more pessimism…

Look, the neg ative view of the world of course has some truth to it. Every era has its challenges as well as its advantages.

But if you take a step back and look at the time we’re living in, the advantages are often not talked about.

Sure, there is still racism and sexism, but a lot less than there was just fifty years ago.”

This model assumes depression comes first and then the kids start looking for negative facts to validate their pessimism.

Not surprisingly, online discussions tend to emphasize the negative.

Several academic studies show that negative news stories and negative posts on social media get more traction.

Research indicates that people are less likely to be interested in positive things on-line and less likely to share them with others.

Another problem is the tendency of Gen-Z to avoid evidence which contradicts their preconceived notions.

In order to co-exist, Boomers and Xers often have to agree to avoid difficult subjects like gender, race, and whether the world is getting better.

And if we can’t debate and discuss, we can’t reconcile or change. That implies that the generational divide can never close.

Given this trend, we offer the following forecasts for your consideration.

Attitudes and values developed in adolescence largely determine our ac tions later in life.

Depending on the specific cut-off dates used, the oldest Zoomers are now as old as 28 and as young as 8.

That means Zoomers will rep resent the vast majority of students and entry-level employees for the next two decades.

They will also replace the Silents as consumers and voters.

More importantly, this generation will come to dominate the 18-to-54-year-old advertising demographic sought by Madison Avenue.

So, if not redirected soon, Zoomers could become a “lost generation,” undermining our national well-being.

Assuming that they will enter permanent relationships and serious careers later and at lower frequencies, their consumption patterns will be distorted.

However, since Gen-Z emerged in the digital era with an extreme emphasis on individualism, it’s unclear whether we can draw conclusions about this generation based on averages.

The Greatest Generation as well as the Silent, Boomer and Gen-X generations emerged from the Mass Production ethos.

Millennials and Zoomers are the first generations to be shaped primarily by the Digital Techno-Economic Paradigm, which eschews mass media, mass markets, mass production and political conformity.

At Trends, our working hypothesis is that Zoomers will increasingly diverge into a highly productive “traditionalist segment” and a relatively dysfunctional “avant-garde.”

As highlighted in the June 2023 Trends issue, a technol ogy-enabled, values-driven wave of internal migra tion is underway between Red states and Blue states, as well as from the cities to the suburbs and countryside.

After the 2030 census, this is expected to give Red states a structural political advantage.

Not surprisingly, less happy liberals will be drawn to Blue states and more happy conservatives will be drawn to Red States.

Over time, this will further weaken Blue state economies relative to those in Red states and increase the relative power of suburbs.

In the end, we need social media companies not to be making billions from designing their algorithms to keep people on their apps as long as possible.

But as the on-going Congressional debate over Tik-Tok illustrates, it’s difficult to balance adverse so cial impact, freedom of expression and commercial innovation when it comes to regulation.

The 2020s will see numerous studies, commissions and court cases in both North America and the EU intended to resolve these conflicts. In the end, parents and children will make the decisions which matter most. And,

While technology may have played an out-sized role in enabling the Gen-Z psychological crisis, K-12 education and the rise of debt-enabled college-for-all have created a generation lacking critical thinking skills and demonstrably detached from objective reality.

If we are to solve the problem, implementing K-12 “school choice” and ending today’s counterproductive Federal student loan programs seem inevitable. Then, market forces will largely resolve this crisis.

1. The Spectator. June 14, 2023. Mary Wakefield. Why today’s teenagers are so unhappy.

2. RealClearPolicy.com. June 7, 2023. Tom Romeo. Communities, Not Gov't, Best Equipped to Ad dress Loneliness.

3. Townhall.com. May 18, 2023. Bob Barr. The 'Loneliness Epidemic' That Is Hurting Americans and America.

4. Atria Books. April 25, 2023. Jean M. Twenge. Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents--And What They Mean for America's Future.

http://

5. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. November 8, 2018. Melissa G. Hunt, Rachel Marx, Court ney Lipson, & Jordyn Young. No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression.

6. JAMA Psychiatry. January 16, 2014. Lisa Miller, Ravi Bansal, Priya Wickramaratne, Xuejun Hao, Craig E. Tenke, Myrna M. Weissman, & Bradley S. Peterson. Neuroanatomical Correlates of Religiosity and Spirituality.

7. Technology, Mind, and Behavior. May 31, 2023. Manuela Ellen Faulhaber, Jeong Eun Lee, & Doug las A. Gentile. The effect of self-monitoring limited social media use on psychological well-being.

8. Preventive Medicine Reports. December 15, 2018. Jean M. Twenge & W. Keith Campbell. Asso ciations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adoles cents: Evidence from a population-based study.

9. Clinical Psychological Science. November,14, 2017. Jean M. Twenge, Thomas E. Joiner, Megan L. Rogers, & Gabrielle N. Martin. Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time.