While I agree with a lot in this piece, and have witnessed it myself as a millennial, I would say the upcoming generation is even more coddled - iGen aka Gen Z. I hear these two generations often lumped together, and there are differences that cannot be ignored. It started with Gen Y for sure, and you nailed it with the helicopter parent…
While I agree with a lot in this piece, and have witnessed it myself as a millennial, I would say the upcoming generation is even more coddled - iGen aka Gen Z. I hear these two generations often lumped together, and there are differences that cannot be ignored. It started with Gen Y for sure, and you nailed it with the helicopter parenting, gap years, and advice to "live life" and "go find yourself," but it is worse for Gen Z. Gen Y was the last generation to have a childhood without the internet. I grew up playing outdoors, riding my bike, and being called in when it was time to eat. So did all of my friends. That is largely no more, and Gen Z had none of that, and their sensitivities and neuroses are even worse than Gen Y. They live online, have less sex, favor censorship, have more anxiety and depression, have less of a desire to start a family (as you mentioned), and are more concerned with creating their identities (aka avatars) than building their characters - like you said. If the upcoming generations have all been babied so much, what happens when they do finally step into the roles Gen X leaves behind (maybe when they're in there late 90s) and there are real, serious, international and global threats that must be faced that aren't in the form of words they don't like? Will Gen Y and Gen Z be up for the task? Or will we run in fear with our tails between our legs? So many of these young people have been victimizing themselves and fighting over who is more victimized than the other. It's absurd! It's cowardly and narcissistic - and as a member of one of these generations, I know it and I have seen it. I think the only thing that can turn the tides for these rising adults is to recognize their own weaknesses and work on building grit, facing adversity, being comfortable with disagreement, and getting over being offended. So...to grow up!
I agree with every single one of these points and I would highlight this:
"So many of these young people have been victimizing themselves and fighting over who is more victimized than the other."
I think Jonathan Haidt had an article on this recently. I am noticing it in the younger generations as well. It is a real problem, but likely one that will get worse before better.
Haidt has a great book if you haven't read it yet on this issue - the Coddling of the American Mind. I HIGHLY recommend that. Additionally, you should look into Luke Burgis' work on Rene Girard - it's about mimesis and how it controls so much of our wanting and desire as humans. He uses it to explain fads and popular culture, even politics and ideologies. Burgis' substack is Anti-Mimetic (and he wrote a book called Wanting, I believe - which I have not read yet) and lately I have been listening to many of his interviews on various podcast (Subversive, Rebel Wisdom, Daily Stoic, and The Symbolic World) about the most mimetic things people are doing right now is being the victim and playing the scapegoat and how upside down and backwards that is. It's fascinating to listen to his studies of Girard's work and I'm still not familiar enough with it to write or talk about it in-depth but it's a great rabbit hole to dive down.
There are gap years and gap years. Spending a year (or perhaps two) between high school and college in some sort of serious job or service is likely worth it. While the extended adolescence is something to be restrained and hopefully reverted, it's still a reality that few kids today are ready upon graduation from high school to commit to the level of debt required for a college education.
Indeed, this is a big part of the dramatic decrease in cost-benefit of college education. Boomer and millennial parents push their kids to college directly out of high school, at which point they start accumulating debt before they have anything resembling a coherent plan to pay it off.
I can't tell you how many of my generation dropped out of school because of this accumulation of debt and lack of corresponding plan, and then a short few years later, when they had a more realistic trajectory in mind, remained hobbled by the debt from their previous abortive attempt.
This whole process incentivizes people into dead-end diplomas, and incentivizes schools to care more about getting new students than creating graduates.
I see a real "gap year" as something which directly contributes to developing maturity, whereas jumping right into yet another coddling institution is unlikely to provide such.
So many good points made here Marshall. I recently read that there is a surplus of History PhD's coming out of graduate schools but not enough jobs for all of them. So we are going to have a useless class of PhD's whose only skill is looking at history through a critical race sense which translates great for a job at Target. Not to mention the crippling debt.
There are some better models out there. Germany pushes students into apprenticeship and what we would traditionally call "blue collar" jobs such as plumber, HVAC, electrician are held in HIGH, HIGH regard and esteem. They have a different cultural attitude towards the highly skilled jobs and help students along a long-term, skill-building path.
Israel has mandatory 2 year military service for its graduates, and there have been models suggested in the US that would allow students to "serve" in some capacity in the US be it through military or expanded programs in AmericCorps and Teach for America.
All that aside, if it's not a government program - which I would hate more government intervention - there's just getting a stupid job as a teenager at McDonald's or Starbucks that can help build soft skills and allow a teenager to figure out how to be more responsible in the real world. I have held a job (and often two through college) since I was 14 years old and set up a bank account when I was 15. Those things alone were HUGE in setting me up for success beyond a useless college degree. So much so that when I graduated during the Great Recession, I fell back on the work I did in highschool: I went back to waitressing for awhile.
While I agree with a lot in this piece, and have witnessed it myself as a millennial, I would say the upcoming generation is even more coddled - iGen aka Gen Z. I hear these two generations often lumped together, and there are differences that cannot be ignored. It started with Gen Y for sure, and you nailed it with the helicopter parenting, gap years, and advice to "live life" and "go find yourself," but it is worse for Gen Z. Gen Y was the last generation to have a childhood without the internet. I grew up playing outdoors, riding my bike, and being called in when it was time to eat. So did all of my friends. That is largely no more, and Gen Z had none of that, and their sensitivities and neuroses are even worse than Gen Y. They live online, have less sex, favor censorship, have more anxiety and depression, have less of a desire to start a family (as you mentioned), and are more concerned with creating their identities (aka avatars) than building their characters - like you said. If the upcoming generations have all been babied so much, what happens when they do finally step into the roles Gen X leaves behind (maybe when they're in there late 90s) and there are real, serious, international and global threats that must be faced that aren't in the form of words they don't like? Will Gen Y and Gen Z be up for the task? Or will we run in fear with our tails between our legs? So many of these young people have been victimizing themselves and fighting over who is more victimized than the other. It's absurd! It's cowardly and narcissistic - and as a member of one of these generations, I know it and I have seen it. I think the only thing that can turn the tides for these rising adults is to recognize their own weaknesses and work on building grit, facing adversity, being comfortable with disagreement, and getting over being offended. So...to grow up!
Yes, a good stiff dose of reality is needed to shake them out of their drunken stupor.
Good points. It is actually more complex and "worse" than that, but there are road maps out of the quicksand of cultural disintegration. Here is one:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
I agree with every single one of these points and I would highlight this:
"So many of these young people have been victimizing themselves and fighting over who is more victimized than the other."
I think Jonathan Haidt had an article on this recently. I am noticing it in the younger generations as well. It is a real problem, but likely one that will get worse before better.
Haidt has a great book if you haven't read it yet on this issue - the Coddling of the American Mind. I HIGHLY recommend that. Additionally, you should look into Luke Burgis' work on Rene Girard - it's about mimesis and how it controls so much of our wanting and desire as humans. He uses it to explain fads and popular culture, even politics and ideologies. Burgis' substack is Anti-Mimetic (and he wrote a book called Wanting, I believe - which I have not read yet) and lately I have been listening to many of his interviews on various podcast (Subversive, Rebel Wisdom, Daily Stoic, and The Symbolic World) about the most mimetic things people are doing right now is being the victim and playing the scapegoat and how upside down and backwards that is. It's fascinating to listen to his studies of Girard's work and I'm still not familiar enough with it to write or talk about it in-depth but it's a great rabbit hole to dive down.
There are gap years and gap years. Spending a year (or perhaps two) between high school and college in some sort of serious job or service is likely worth it. While the extended adolescence is something to be restrained and hopefully reverted, it's still a reality that few kids today are ready upon graduation from high school to commit to the level of debt required for a college education.
Indeed, this is a big part of the dramatic decrease in cost-benefit of college education. Boomer and millennial parents push their kids to college directly out of high school, at which point they start accumulating debt before they have anything resembling a coherent plan to pay it off.
I can't tell you how many of my generation dropped out of school because of this accumulation of debt and lack of corresponding plan, and then a short few years later, when they had a more realistic trajectory in mind, remained hobbled by the debt from their previous abortive attempt.
This whole process incentivizes people into dead-end diplomas, and incentivizes schools to care more about getting new students than creating graduates.
I see a real "gap year" as something which directly contributes to developing maturity, whereas jumping right into yet another coddling institution is unlikely to provide such.
So many good points made here Marshall. I recently read that there is a surplus of History PhD's coming out of graduate schools but not enough jobs for all of them. So we are going to have a useless class of PhD's whose only skill is looking at history through a critical race sense which translates great for a job at Target. Not to mention the crippling debt.
There are some better models out there. Germany pushes students into apprenticeship and what we would traditionally call "blue collar" jobs such as plumber, HVAC, electrician are held in HIGH, HIGH regard and esteem. They have a different cultural attitude towards the highly skilled jobs and help students along a long-term, skill-building path.
Israel has mandatory 2 year military service for its graduates, and there have been models suggested in the US that would allow students to "serve" in some capacity in the US be it through military or expanded programs in AmericCorps and Teach for America.
All that aside, if it's not a government program - which I would hate more government intervention - there's just getting a stupid job as a teenager at McDonald's or Starbucks that can help build soft skills and allow a teenager to figure out how to be more responsible in the real world. I have held a job (and often two through college) since I was 14 years old and set up a bank account when I was 15. Those things alone were HUGE in setting me up for success beyond a useless college degree. So much so that when I graduated during the Great Recession, I fell back on the work I did in highschool: I went back to waitressing for awhile.