Generation Flex

Did safety culture create cancel culture?

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By popular demand, psychologist and author Jean Twenge joins the Remnant today to affirm Jonah’s status as America’s most arrogant Gen Xer. Dr. Twenge’s recent work has focused on generational differences, the challenges facing Generation Z, and how generational changes are influenced by developments in technology. All of these subjects and more are examined throughout, and many disturbing questions are answered: Why are Gen Zers living life at such a slow pace? What’s the real link between pornography and America’s sex recession? What determines generational happiness? And can anything shatter Jonah’s ‘70s-bred ego?

Show Notes:

–Dr. Twenge’s webpage

–Dr. Twenge’s latest book, Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America’s Future

–The Dispatch reviews Dr. Twenge’s latest book

–The Remnant with Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

–William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Generations

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Comments (47)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ppetersen57

    Thank you for doing this interview! It affirmed some of my thinking about the spike in the number of people choosing a non-standard sexual identity. It challenged my thinking on many points and offered insights that are important (at least, to me) in this cultural moment. Mil gracias.

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    Rjosephpaquette

    I think the changes in American male testosterone (dropping by 50%) in just two generations is under appreciated in the research.

    Also, I'm banging on my high chair. Define your terms! Who are Boomers, Gen X etc by dates. It was never clarified.

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  3. Moorechaos

    I thought it was interesting that the guest hardly touched the gender topic. I think it is a social contagion. I think it's kind of like self-harm. I noticed there was a bit of a trend in that with teenage girls a while ago- and probably still is. I'm an old gen xer and when I was coming up it was binging and purging. Girls told each other that was a way of getting rid of all the junk they ate to stay skinny. I worry that people are going to be making terrible mistakes with their bodies.

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    Abacaxi

    This was good.

    I do disagree with Jonah that Gen Xers are the ones who are most inexplicably lost to Trumpism. Maybe that's his personal experience, but mine (as a fellow Xer) has been different: it seems to me that it's older Boomers and Silents who have really lost their gourds and set fire to their legacies over Trump. In the public sphere, there are just so many, but I'm thinking of people like Rudy Giuliani, Bill Bennett, Victor Davis Hanson, Roseanne Barr and Scott Adams.

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  5. Avatar photo
    George.Skinner

    The biggest differences I’ve noticed between the Gen X cohort and younger generations have been degraded mechanical skills and even computer skills. Younger generations aren’t building model kits, playing with construction sets, or fixing cars - they’re more likely to have been playing with video games.

    It gets interesting when a young engineer designs something that looks great on a computer screen, but they haven’t thought at all about how they’d actually put it together. I’ve also seen them flummoxed by simple things like installing a hose clamp or soldering a connector. As digital natives, they’re great at *using* the technology, but don’t necessarily have the understanding of how it works for programming or troubleshooting.

    My brother in law is a dentist, and he’s noticed that new students in dental skill tend to have relatively poor manual dexterity. Again, younger generations just don’t develop the same skills - they’re not even doing much writing with pens or pencils. It means they’re fumbling trying to do fine dental work like installing a crown.

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    1. Moorechaos

      My oldest (millenial) wouldn't mess around with putting things together that were complicated. If it was Legos, maybe. My youngest was the one who would put together a Rube Goldberg Style contraption similar to mousetrap. He would sit down and put his own computer together from parts he got at Micro Center when he was 9 or 10. They both know the ins and outs of computers. I guess it all depends.

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  6. Halfsteparrow

    Since Aristotal, parents and the aging have lamented wayward youth, alternating between pearl-clutching tut-tutting and “somebody needs to do something.” 1950’s congressional hearings on comic books polluting our youth, 1960’s television is a vast wasteland, 70’s and 80’s of “Gen X slacker clerks”, PMRC congressional hearings (that Frank Zappa well-skewered in senate), the missing on milk boxes. The list is endless and the media gleefully piles on regardless whether the Calvinist on the street corner, jazz music, “Mom and Dad” movies in the ‘50’s to the click-monster media of today.

    Flappers from the 20’s knew a thing or two about gender fluidity with styles and outlook celebrated by women from Manhattan to the Weimar.

    Technology is merely the change of venue. With each invention - Gutenberg to TikTok, the cry immemorial has been “but it’s different this time”, with prohibition and proscriptions always the answer.

    I trust my kids until I don’t. Have a phone, stay up late – fine, but grades slip and we will talk immediately. Paying attention and being situationally aware are the answers Mr. Goldberg seems to be searching for in this conversation. Doing so with trust will instill the right values. As a kid my generation was told “be home before the street-lights are on.” It seemed to work out fine.

    Goldberg observes the conversation felt awkward at points, attributed to Ms. Twenge’s brevity of response. In his conclusion that perhaps the fault was his, I would add that starting the interview with the dismissive “Full confession…I’ve written thousands of words about this…I dislike most of stuff about generations” likely put her on guard as, well, the concept is prominent to the title and rhetorical stasis of her book.

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  7. P Satter

    Interesting conversation. The "polar" generation designation was new to me and seems a tiny bit of a depressing name, given its meaning. One wonders what effect the disappearing middle child (since families often have one or two children now) has on increasing polarization?

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  8. Laddy says

    When is your next sex-ed class?

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  9. Phillyex1

    What happened to “No you won’t, this is a podcast”?

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  10. Avatar photo
    J. Eric

    I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for awhile. It did not disappoint. Thanks

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