The iGen teens are in slow mode
Today’s teens are growing up more slowly than previous generations – they’re less likely to drive, smoke, booze and have sex. But if they’re doing fewer risky things, why isn’t their mental health improving?
Teens are growing up more slowly than previous generations – they’re less likely to drive, smoke, booze and have sex. So, if they’re doing fewer risky things, why isn’t their mental health improving?
Author and generational change researcher Jean Twenge had never seen anything like it. For nearly 25 years, the San Diego professor of psychology has been studying the differences between generations, but in 2012, the gradual, subtle and often unremarkable changes that defined the Boomers, Generation X and the Millennials underwent a seismic shift.
The line graphs she’d been analysing for years that had once looked like hills slowly growing into peaks had suddenly become steep mountains and sheer cliffs. A new generation had announced its arrival with a louder yell than the average newborn.
The data revealed the marked differences between today’s teens and those of earlier times – and they’re not what you’d expect: they’re much less likely to have had sex, had a baby, drive, take drugs, drink or smoke – or even to go out without their parents. In other words, they’re growing up more slowly and taking fewer risks.
Many of the changes began around 2011 or 2012, too late to have been caused by the money squeeze of the global financial crisis (GFC) that ended in 2009. So what, then?
The answer, Twenge decided, is smartphones, because it was in those years that teens began to widely use phones that could access the internet. She’s dubbed the cohort iGen and written a book about it, iGen:
Why today’s superconnected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy – and completely unprepared for adulthood. A follow-up to her earlier work on Millennials, Generation Me, it explores her theory that because iGen’ers are socialising virtually, the traditional rites of passage are delayed.
“No matter what the reason, they are eschewing adult activities until they are older,” she writes. “Contrary to the prevalent idea that children are growing up faster than previous generations did, iGen’ers are growing up more
“They socialise in completely new ways, reject once-sacred social taboos and want different things from their lives and careers.”
slowly: 18-year-olds now act like 15-year-olds used to, and 13-year-olds like 10-year-olds.”
Somewhat paradoxically, however, she says that although teens are physically safer than ever, they’re more mentally vulnerable, putting them at the forefront of “the worst mental health crisis in decades, with rates of teen depression and suicide skyrocketing since 2011”.
She says iGen is distinct from every previous generation in how its members spend their time, how they behave and their attitudes towards religion, sexuality and politics. “They socialise in completely new ways, reject once-sacred social taboos and want different things from their lives and careers. They are obsessed
with safety and fearful of their economic future and have no patience for inequality based on gender, race or sexual orientation.”
MULTIPLE CAUSES
In New Zealand, youth health researchers noticed the same trend in data collected for the Youth2000 series, which questioned around 9000 secondary students in 2001, 2007 and 2012. But, they say, the changes were happening here sooner.
Terryann Clark, principal investigator of Youth’12 and a senior lecturer in the school of nursing at the University of Auckland, says researchers saw dramatic reductions in risky behaviours that were previously regarded as very difficult to modify. “We saw huge behavioural change and really interesting differences between various groups. Maori, for instance, who’ve always had much worse health outcomes and greater risk, [showed rates that] were dropping much faster than Pakeha.” That doesn’t mean Maori are now doing better – “they were starting off at a much worse place”.
Clark isn’t as quick as Twenge to identify the smartphone as the key driver of the shift, saying there’s unlikely to be a single cause. She says the changes were becoming apparent here between the 2001 and 2007 surveys – New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to report the trend – but accelerated in the 2012 results, perhaps because of the added financial pressure in the fallout of the GFC.
She points to law changes between 2001 and 2012 that introduced graduated driver licensing and reduced the breathand blood-alcohol limits for drivers aged under 20 to zero. Public health marketing campaigns, such as 2011’s “Ghost chips” targeting road safety, were highly successful; a new school curriculum rolled out by 2012 included education on sexuality, physical safety, smoking, alcohol and drugs.
“This generation of young people have grown up in a highly restricted environment. We’ve put in a whole bunch of stuff that’s changed the climate in a relatively short period of time. When I grew up, I remember watching my teachers smoking while they watched us in the playground and I knew what brand of cigarette each of my teachers used.”
She accepts that social media plays a big role, with teens more likely to socialise “virtually” now than in real time.
CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER
Wellington-based University of Otago public health research fellow Jude Ball describes the forces driving the change as “a perfect storm”, and says it can be difficult to differentiate cause and effect. For example, in the UK and US there have been big declines in the “night-time economy”, with clubs and bars closing. “Is it that young people aren’t going out as much and therefore places can’t make money so they close, or that young people haven’t got anywhere to go out to, so watch Netflix instead?”
She says that, oddly, the same declines have not been seen in countries such as Italy, Denmark and Austria, “and they all have teens with smartphones and social media, like we do. It is a real mystery, and the more I look into it, the more mysterious it becomes.”
She says most people would think risky teen behaviour was getting worse and
“I remember watching my teachers smoking while they watched us in the playground and I knew what brand of cigarette each of my teachers used.”