Jean M Twenge Generation Me Summary

You may often hear other generations stereotype different generations. Whether it be a moral issue or something the generation is doing, generations differ on their opinions. In a 2006 publication called Generation Me by Jean M. Twenge; Twenge brings up the thesis that, “ Today's young americans are more confident, assertive, entitled, and more miserable than ever before. (Twenge 53-71) While Twenge may have of those stereotypical beliefs towards my generation, I believe that she brings up many valid points, and shares strong examples and statistics to supplement her argument. Twenge starts off by first explaining that since the 1980’s baby boomers, now turned parents decided that children needed to always feel good about themselves. The print market show this with a 52% increase on articles relating to self esteem. (Twenge 53-71) Schools have also geared towards this mentality with programs that discourage children to feel bad about themselves. One program was called Self Science; “The Subject is Me.” (Twenge 53-71) Other schools have stated that self esteem is in their own schools mission statement, a google search yielded 308,000 schools that had self esteem in their mission statement. (Twenge 53-71) John Hewitt points out in “The Myth of Self-Esteem” that …show more content…
This would shift to a more hardworking mentality in the population if we shifted towards having better self control. Narcissism, which is deemed bad by all psychologists, has increased from 12% in the 1950s to 80% in the late 1980s. (Twenge 53-71) Narcissism can have an effect on multiple things, such as relationships.. Twenge finally argues that while self esteem is usually based on solid relations, narcissism is the worse of the two evils which has been built up with the focus on self