Analysis Of Generation Me, By Jean Twenge

Contemporarily, more and more people tend to prioritize themselves before others. This specific view has become popular, especially for the current generation. Jean Twenge, as a psychologist and professor at San Diego State University, demonstrates her conception of Generation Me, which refers to the contemporary generation with large attention of self and claims the generation has an exaggerated the sense of self-esteem in her article “An Army of One: One”. Twenge explains the Generation Me’s focus as “a way of moving through the world beholden to few social rules and with the unshakable belief that you’re important” (491). Similarly, in Steve Johnson’s article “The Myth of the Ant Queen”, he illustrates how the system of self organization …show more content…
According to Twenge’ description, Generation Me are identified as people born in the eighties and after. They have strong sense of self-esteem because “we were born into world that already celebrated the individual. The self-focus that blossomed in the 1970s became mundane and commonplace” (Twenge 490). The word “mundane” and “commonplace” demonstrates that self-focus and self-esteem are just regular human feelings for GenMe. Generation Me grow up surrounded by the idea of self and they are prominently influenced. They are used to develop their own individual skills. In the same way, Johnson points out that “all you need are thousands of individuals and a few simple rules if interaction” (199) in his article. He describes the system of people spontaneously participate by performing each one of their own tasks and provide a bigger picture collectively. Generation Me have been trained long enough to perform well on their own since they believe in their self values. The idea of trusting themselves that imbued with GenMe changed them better off for individual work. They feel more confident in individual performances. By holding that thought to the self-organized system, Generation Me fit nicely since they are self-organized. In a self-organized model, it is people form the bottom up that truly matters since there would be no hierarchical leader organizing and straightening things out. When individuals are asked to work or perform on their own, GenMe would provide satisfied outcome since they are used to this working by themselves due to their huge self-esteem. Therefore, Generation Me can succeed in Johnson’s system because they perform individual works all the time and that makes them feel 满足about