iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us

Written by Jean M. Twenge

Narrated by Madeleine Maby

“We’ve all been desperate to learn what heavy use of social media does to adolescents. Now, thanks to Twenge’s careful analysis, we know: It is making them lonely, anxious, and fragile—especially our girls. If you are a parent, teacher, or employer, you must read this fascinating book.”—Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation

Born after 1995, the smartphone generation grew up with cell phones, had an Instagram page before high school, and cannot remember a time before the Internet. They are iGen, and this essential book reveals how these teens and young adults differ from millennials and every other generation in their mental health, social behaviors, and attitudes toward politics and religion.

With generational divides wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults.

Born in the mid-1990s up to the mid-2000s, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person—perhaps contributing to their unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

But technology is not the only thing that makes iGen distinct from every generation before them; they are also different in how they spend their time, how they behave, and in their attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and politics. They socialize in completely new ways, reject once sacred social taboos, and want different things from their lives and careers. More than previous generations, they are obsessed with safety, focused on tolerance, and have no patience for inequality.

As this new group of young people grows into adulthood, we all need to understand them: friends and family need to look out for them; businesses must figure out how to recruit them and sell to them; colleges and universities must know how to educate and guide them. And members of iGen also need to understand themselves as they communicate with their elders and explain their views to their older peers. Because where iGen goes, so goes our nation—and the world.

*As seen in Time, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and on CBS This Morning, BBC, PBS, CNN, and NPR*

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Aug 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781508245063

Jean M. Twenge

Jean M. Twenge, PhD, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, is the author of more than 190 scientific publications and several books based on her research, including Ten Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, Generations, iGen, and Generation Me. Her research has been covered in Time, The Atlantic, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA TODAY, and The Washington Post. She has also been featured on Today, Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, CBS This Morning, Real Time with Bill Maher, and NPR. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters. 

[Alex Houchens · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A pretty good book. Exploring today’s generation of young people. It does a good job of being fair and not just going for a “back in my day” mentality when dealing with today’s young people, as many a boomer and millennial love to do. The book acknowledges some flaws of today’s youths but also acknowledges some good that today’s youth being to the table.

[GeorgeScuba · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So relevant…all I-genners and parents should listen to this! Excellent and insightful!

[Kory Wheeler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Was this meant to be a horror novel?!
This book was extremely informative. I highly recommend it to all parents.

[rickgeissal · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am not big on this non-fiction exploration of how kids younger than Millennials are different from kids of other generation. There was some interesting statistics and graphs, but it is written in a boring manner with not as much substance as I had expected.

[mdoris_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a fantastic book this is! I got the idea of reading it from 2 other FANTASTIC books [The Coddling of the American Mind] and [Irreversible Damage]. This book describes the opinions, attitudes, and values of the current generation in universities and the individuals who are entering the workforce greatly influencing government, education, media etc. They are the smartphone generation and quite unique compared to other generations. The writing was excellent with lots of research base and interview content. Twenge is professor of psychology and knows her subject well. I am a Boomer so I certainly noticed the cultural differences!

iGen 1995 to 2012
Millennials 1980 to 1994
Gen X 1965 to 1979
Boomers 1946 to 1964

[aevaughn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I appreciated Twenge's insights into trends with the youngest generation and her suggestions regarding how to raise the iGen generation to be their best selves.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Twenge makes an excellent case about smartphones transforming a generation, but she also makes enormous generalizations about Gen Z (sorry, iGen is like fetch--not gonna happen) and doesn't really back up her suppositions with great evidence beyond data from a few surveys.

My big issue with the book is that very little of her narrative about Gen Z is rooted in the cultural contexts of what bred and shaped this new generation. Nothing happens in a vacuum! I would have liked a more complex context setup.

Finally, this book is already a bit dated. Her projections about Gen Z moving libertarian/Republican didn't reallllllly pan out, as evidenced by the 2018 election (although the youth vote was relatively low). And the Parkland kids probably defy a lot of her findings. I'll be interested to see Twenge revisit this research in ten years or so.

[librarycin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars

The author is a psychologist who studies and compares generations. She calls the youngest generation “iGen”: this generation was born in 1995 and later, and they have only ever known a life with the Internet, and for many, smartphones. In this book, she looks at how the internet and social media (“new media” vs “old media” (tv, radio)) have affected them and their mental health. She also looks at communication, religion, politics, sex and dating, work and college, racism, and more. She believes that iGen is taking a much longer time to grow up; they have extended their childhoods.

Her previous book, Generation Me, looked at Millenials and I found it very interesting. Ditto for this one. I don’t have kids, but I still found this fascinating (and in some cases, horrifying – those “safe spaces” on college campuses? For anything that might offend anyone!). She includes a lot of statistics in the book; I like that she is able to compare the generations, but when all the generations were teens and young adults, due to surveys that have been done since the 1970s.

She also includes a lot of graphs, which are hard to read on my small Kobo screen, so print might be a better way to go if you want to look at the graphs. In addition to the statistics, though, she has done a lot of interviews, so she can take some of the stories from the interviews to highlight some of the findings from the stats (or show other perspectives) – the stats are averages. Overall, it’s a very interesting book.

[bill5bradford · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating look at the most current generation. Highly recommended for anyone working with them.