Dr. Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, spoke to an audience of students on Sept. 3 in the Skyhawk Fieldhouse.
Twenge, author of over 140 scientific works and three books about the “iGen” generation, spoke to students as a part of UTM’s ENGAGE Civic Initiative.
Dr. Arthur Hunt, professor of public speaking and program co-director, introduced Twenge prior to the lecture.
Twenge started the evening by discussing different generations and some of the stereotypes associated with people from the baby boomer generation all the way to the modern-day iGen generation.
“Your generation is the first to spend your entire adolescence, and maybe your entire childhood as well, in the age of the smartphone,” Twenge said, describing where the name for iGen originated from.
Twenge also mentioned an alternative meaning of iGen when she said, “The ‘i’ can also stand for other cultural trends, like individualism and income inequality.” However, Twenge limited her speech to the technological perspective of iGen.
A portion of the lecture highlighted the culture change and different parenting styles across the baby boomers, Generation X, millennials and iGen.
Twenge later went into survey information that highlighted several trends that iGen is showing, such as lower happiness, decreasing mental health and an increase in self-destructive behaviors.
“More and more teens said they started to feel left out…felt lonely. More started they that they couldn’t do anything right or that their life wasn’t useful…These are classic symptoms of depression,” Twenge explained.
The statistics also showed drops in overall self-esteem and happiness across 8th graders, high school sophomores and high school seniors.
The period of time towards the end of 2012, going into 2013 was the first time that a majority of households owned smartphones, according to Twenge. She pointed this out as a factor explaining the trends among iGen teenagers.
At the end of the lecture, Twenge gave the students some tips on limiting screen time, such as limiting smartphone usage to only two hours of leisure time, excluding work and homework.
Twenge fielded questions at the conclusion of the lecture. One student asked, “Social media is advertised to bring people together. Why do you think [it] splits us apart?”
In response, Twenge pointed out that social media is marketed as a way to bring people together as a way to make money. Twenge also pointed out that social media can be used to connect people to an extent, and is useful for political movements and so on.
The reason why social media splits people apart, according to Twenge, is because people, “don’t see each other face-to-face. People say things online that they would never say face-to-face.”
More information about UTM’s ENGAGE Civic Initiative can be found online at UTM’s website under about utm/chancellor’s corner/ENGAGE.
