Review of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before (Hardcover)

First, the high points.The author has a lot of interesting survey data that she uses compare the attitudes of "baby boomers" and "generation me".

She shows how today's youth are much more accepting of other races, cultures and sexual orientations; how people are open about their feelings; how women no longer face the kind of discrimination that they did 30 years ago; how young people want to do fulfilling things with their lives and are more self-reliant than ever.

And of course we see the downside: narcissism due to what can only be described as too much self-esteem; an unwillingness to take personal responsibility; too much of a focus on money and celebrity; and an epidemic of depression that no one has yet found a cause for.

The contrast between the generations is very interesting - dating someone outside your race is no longer an issue; the average woman in 2005 has a more aggressive personality (as measured by her survey) than the average man did in 1968.All cool stuff, and it would have been great if the author could have distilled the most significant of these differences into a single chapter.

Unfortunately, she didn't, and I found this to be a very frustrating read overall.She discusses the mismatch between the ambitions of young people and the careers they ultimately end up in.She is right to question kids who want to be "made" into famous hip-hop stars or models or actors, but she also sneers at all of the kids who want to be doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc.

She devotes pages - if not chapters - to the idea that "work should suck" and that young people should not expect to find their dream jobs, let alone fulfilling employment - but then when she discusses what young people can do to be more realistic, she lauds two 25-year-olds who quit their jobs and biked across the US to raise money for charity.

To make matters worse, she chides young people for being cynical about the government, and then chides them for not being cynical enough about their jobs.To top it all off, she thens admits that, as a professor, she "[doesn't] know much about nonacademic career paths".

One thing she does know - and she repeats it numerous times in the book - is that not just anyone out there can become a college professor like her.In many ways, this book feels like the author's attempt to get back at people who made fun of her and wronged her when she was growing up.Even though she's 33 years old and some of the subjects she talks to are 12, she often calls this "her generation" and makes generalizations about it based on her experience.She writes: "Publish the damn honor roll...[I]t's [a] small bit of high school glory enjoyed by the kids who will someday be our doctors and lawyers."Though of course she cautions against encouraging even the smartest and most capable students lest they become convinced that they don't need to work hard to accomplish their goals.

Ultimately, she ends up blaming the victims.Today's 15-to-25-year-olds don't run the world, their parents do.For all her talk about personal responsibility, she devotes exactly one sentence to telling parents that they bear some of the blame for how their kids have turned out.

The author had the opportunity to write something substantial about the changes that have happened over the last two generations.Instead, she decided to write a polemic against people who are not just like her.This will certainly appeal to anyone who likes to believe that "these damn kids are so disrespectful these days", but an insightful book, it's not.



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