Generation Me

I’ll do a more comprehensive review of that book when I am finished with it. I’ve just started it thanks to danah boyd advices.

The objective of this book is in the subtitle : propose some explanations as to why today’s young americans are more confident, assertive, entitled and more miserable than ever before.

I always am extremely excited whenever I bumped into a book sheding some new light on society, offering a new perspective on urban sociology. Especially when this theory is supported by tons of data and when it remains readable even if you’re not a PHD in philosophy. Jean Twenge‘s book is one of those :

The boomers practically invented youth rebellion in the 1960s. By the 1970s the rebellion was mainstream and the defiance of authority an accepted social value.

Obviously, it’s fair to say that the scope of this book can be extended to young people in the western world even if the massive data gathered by Twenge only applies to USA.

Individualism : the child of the boomers

I always hear people in France whinging (we’re profesionnal whinger, sadly) about individualism in our societies, pointing the finger on hysterical consumerism. As a principle, I just dont buy blindly into simplistic and politically oriented types of explanations.

This book, for instance, comes with this other assumption whereby individualism is a direct consequence of being raised by baby boomers, the people that mainstreamed rebellion who incidentally grew their children with these values of being truth to themselves, their belief and what they want to be. Interesting.

Watch this space : I’ll get back to it later !

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