Si Ting Chen

The world’s leading expert on generational differences held a talk in the Visual Arts Center last month, and after leaving the hour-long entertainment special, I was disheartened. Jean Twenge is a renowned psychologist specializing in generations and how they differ. She has numerous accredited research articles, is a public speaker for hire and has published seven books to date. I entered with an open mind and left with a few qualms.

The vast majority of the audience had white hair and, as did I, arrived at least ten minutes early. Despite a reminder email sent to the entire Bowdoin campus, the ratio of senior citizens to college students was still quite skewed as Twenge’s slideshow began. Luckily, this talk was for them.

It began with Twenge defining all the current living generations. A joke was made about millennials and avocado toast, which warranted a few laughs. Who doesn’t love a good laugh at a millennial’s expense? I was expecting to learn about Twenge’s research, but instead, I experienced an hour of broad psychological findings, skewed graphs and a large focus on Gen-Z. Her generalizations were ones most of us Gen-Z-ers have heard before: We are more depressed, we are addicted to social media, our suicide rates are up and we don’t read books like they used to in the good old days.

I am currently taking Research Design in Psychology. I do not claim to know much about the field, but I have learned two things this semester: Correlation does not prove causation, and graphs with a skewed y-axis distort the data. Every single graph on her outdated slide show was distorted concerning the y-axis. Researchers do this to make an effect look more prominent than it actually is. As I watched the slides change from one steeply declining graph to another, and as the humorous quips about a generation too far gone continued, I was forced to change my mindset. This hour was one of amusement, not academia.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Dr. Twenge provided not one, but two solutions for this flailing generation: Wear orange-lensed glasses to avoid the effects of blue light from your phone, and put said phone away 30 minutes before bed.

I will point out that it is not a researcher’s responsibility to provide solutions for the problems they find. But if you are going to provide solutions, must they be trends found on social media? At one point, Dr. Twenge mentioned that the Gen-Z population is developing more slowly because of their overprotective parents. Social development, according to Dr. Twenge’s slides, is defined by the age you start having sex, the age you start drinking and the number of romantic relationships you have been in. Her claims are causal until the very end when she opens the floor for questions. A student asks her why the qualifiers for social development are limited to those three things. Why do sex, romance and alcohol make you an adult? Twenge  rebuts the question by asking him what else constitutes maturity. Then, she quickly finds the next raised hand. Many more questions were raised and then redirected by Twenge.

The talk ended with a slide of her newest book, which was displayed alongside two more of her books in The Bowdoin Store the next morning.

I am admittedly being harsh for the sake of proving a point. Once I realized this was an entertainment special, I did enjoy myself. I enjoyed the eye-rolls of the other students, and I enjoyed the chuckles made at my expense by the old people around me. Then, I went home and watched Twenge’s TED Talk. Watching the same lecture for a second time was a little less enjoyable: the same slides, the same spiel, the same millennial avocado toast joke. Verbatim. Her website claims that her talks are personalized for each audience, but I beg to differ. The most unfortunate part was that this TED Talk took place six years ago. Have there been no new developments in six years?

Ironically, I won’t be reading Dr. Twenge’s new book, which only further solidifies her assumptions about my generation and our failure to read.… Damn.