Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future

In her most recent book, "Generations," Dr. Jean Twenge has produced a spectacular volume that is the latest culmination of the work she has done to document and understand the characteristics of the various generations and to understand the differences between those generations. The direct concept of the book is to document the characteristics of the six generations that are alive at this time, the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation X, the Millenials, Generation Z, and, as she calls them, the Polars. She does this in a very informative and interesting way, by focusing on various traits of the different generations. She uses the many very informative graphs as aids in order to explain those traits. A major example of this is in her chapter on the Millenials. She shows, certainly to my surprise, but with evidence that is hard to argue with, that the Millenials are doing considerably better financially than has generally been reported. Her basic point is that though the Great Recession certainly got them off to a slow start, they have essentially caught up in the time since then. Dr. Twenge then looks at the question of why Millennials feel poor even if they aren't. She presents and discusses six possible explanations for this perception, looking at which of these possible explanations are more likely and then her conclusions as to where the truth lies. It is this detailed examination of traits that provides a lot of the fascination that this book provides.

The concept of there being different generations of people, who then exhibit common characteristics to a greater or lesser extent, along with differences from other generations, is one that is quite intuitive when we look at our history. Perhaps the greatest example of this that we are all familiar with is the generation prior to the Silent Generation, which is the generation that fought World War 2. The movie, "It's A Wonderful Life," which has now become a classic that is shown every Christmastime, illustrates this idea very well. The war affected everyone who came of age at that time. Millions of men were in the Army or the Navy. All of the women who came of age at that time were also greatly affected as well, for instance through the need to, as Donna Reed did in that movie, go through rationing of commodities, or be involved running drives for collecting different items needed for the war effort. And those that came of age at that time had also grown up during the Great Depression. It is inconceivable that there would not be a major effect on the attitudes and way of life that these people would lead following the end of the war that had dominated the lives of the generation that came of age during it. The Silent Generation, who were still children or adolescents at the time of World War 2, could not help but have a different experience from those who were directly involved with the war. They and the generation that fought World War 2 were the parents of the Baby Boomers, who were not alive at the time of the war. But the key characteristic of the Baby Boomers was that there were simply so many of them. The population of the United States in 1945 was about 140 million. The population of the United States in 1965 was about 195 million. In those 20 years, around 75 million babies were born, a major portion of that population. By comparison, even though a comparable number of babies were born in the Millenial Generation as were born during the Baby Boom Generation, they form a smaller percentage of the overall population. By the end of the period of the birth of the Millenial Generation, the population of the United States was 266 million, so the numerical impact of the Millenials is not as great as the impact of the Baby Boomers was.

I think it is the three generations of the World War 2 Generation, the Silent Generation, and the Baby Boomers that have focused attention on the importance of the construct of generations. Interestingly, Dr. Twenge goes against the idea of looking at historical factors in determining the way that generations have differed from one another over time. Instead, she points to technological change and development as the prime factor separating the generations, along with, as she calls them, technology's daughters, individualism and the slow life strategy. As World War 2 has receded into history, her characterization of technology and it's daughters, individualism and the slow life strategy, make sense to me as the driving forces for Generation X and the generations that have followed. But for those earlier generations, the World War 2 Generation, the Silent Generation, and the Baby Boomers, I don't see how you can minimize how impactful World War 2 and the Great Depression were to those generations, either directly through their having lived through them, or indirectly, in the Baby Boomer case, by being the children of parents who were directly affected by the Great Depression and World War 2. One interesting consequence of this that I have heard came when the hippie culture emerged in the 1960s. The hippies were Baby Boomers. The parents of the hippies, who were of the World War 2 Generation and the Silent Generation, had difficulty understanding them. However, they say that many of the grandparents of the hippies had less difficulty understanding them because they had come of age to a great extent during the Roaring 20s, a time which had, among other wild things, speakeasys and flappers. And so hippie culture could remind the grandparents of some of the wildness that they lived through during the Roaring 20s!

The key to how much can be learned from this book are the many very informative graphs that are provided throughout the book. It is this information, put together from many sources, that makes this book so much more than Dr. Twenge's opinions and shows it to be backed by a great deal of evidence. Her previous book, "iGen," which was focused primarily on Generation Z, used this same method of graphs to illustrate her points. However, what she has done in this book greatly exceeds what she accomplished in "iGen!"

With regard to the Millenials and Generation Z, Dr. Twenge's previous two books, "Generation Me" and "iGen" provided illustrations of those generations at the time that she wrote them. In this book, she has been able to update her descriptions of the Millenials and Generation Z to the present and it is fascinating how life has developed for those generations even in the relatively short number of intervening years since Dr. Twenge wrote those previous books.

As much as I admire what Dr. Twenge has accomplished in writing this book, perhaps the biggest item that I wish there was more on is the question of what caused the Baby Boom, particularly the length of time that it lasted. As she points out, the number of babies that were born was unprecedented. A big question is, why did the later World War 2 Generation and Silent Generation women (who were the mothers of the Baby Boomers) keep having baby after baby? As Dr. Twenge says, no one has ever come up with a definitive explanation of why the Baby Boom kept on going long after the obvious effect of the return of the servicemen from World War 2 had passed. I think the reason this question fascinates me so is that today, as is well known, birthrates keep on falling, not only in the United States, but throughout the industrialized world. Compared to this, the Baby Boom forms such a contrast that it makes me wonder. What were the characteristics that caused that to happen? And then, could those characteristics return or is the Baby Boom simply a historical curiosity, whose causes and characteristics are of no use to us today? One result of the Baby Boom, that I find interesting, is that without the Baby Boom producing so many children, the Millenial generation would not be as big as it is, relative to its adjacent generations. This is the case since, to a large degree, the parents of the Millenials are the Baby Boomers. One area that Dr. Twenge discusses is the politics and political power of the various generations, and the large number of Millenials derived from the large number of Baby Boomers would look to be setting them up for a lot of political power in the future.

This has actually changed my perception on life and all of my interpersonal relationships. I can’t stop telling people about this book. I can’t stop annoyingly quoting this book. I’ve bought copies for everyone I care about in every generation discussed. I am on the cusp of being a Millennial (b. 1980) with Boomer parents, Gen X siblings, Millennial husband, and a Gen Z child. I am highlighting this book like I’m in a college course. I do not feel it has bias (although I’m sure some will disagree). It is a very easy read even with a ton of graphs and statistics. But what it has truly done is given me the ability to understand everyone in my life so much clearer. I love sociology and this is most modern and clear description of American humanity I’ve ever read. If read with an open mind, you cannot help but become a more insightful and empathetic human. I love it.

Jean M. Twenge, a psychology profession at San Diego State University, has added another work to her ouevre on American generations. This book profiles six of them: the Silents 1925-45, Baby Boomers 1946-64, Gen X 1965-79, Millennials 1980-94, Gen Z 1995-2012, and the current unnamed generation 2013-29 that she calls Polars. The work dedicates a robust chapter to each generation, punctuating them with major events. She also makes a respectable and moderate case for generational analysis. The criticism of this perspective is that the groupings are arbitrary, and Twenge's response is that we use these types of somewhat arbitrary grouping regularly in social analyses (e.g. any binning of different aged people together).

The major thrust of the book is exploring the differential psychological impact of technological change across the generations and the trend of increased individualism over time. These two themes also contain the shift toward a "slow life strategy," where youth is prolonged. This is just an academic way to refer to the phenomenon of successive generations taking longer to complete education, enter the workforce, get married, have children, etc. Twenge is a collaborator of Jon Haidt's. For those unfamiliar with Haidt, this means that Twenge is a critic of social media and smartphone and its impact on our psychology. The shared hypothesis between Twenge and Haidt is that the increased opportunity for social comparison, other related performance pressures, and the psychological incentives create by the structure of social media applications generally exacerbate anxiety and depression in teens and some young adults. I like that Twenge takes measured and cautious positions on these trends. She's a reasonably balanced and quantitatively oriented analyst, which this topic requires.

I recommend this book. It was an engaging and compelling read. I think a lot of readers will find interesting and useful knowledge in this book.

I just got started reading this book but so far it has really piqued my interest! You can tell the author has had many year’s experience in this field which makes her work very credible. Normally I do not read academic books like this for leisure, but this one is an exception. I highly recommend it.

It is a book that you can't put down once you start reading it.

Easy reading