Season 3, Episode 75 An Entirely New Perspective on Young Adults

This episode will defy nearly everything we've talked about over the past few years.

Our guest Jeffrey Arnett, Ph.D is renowned for proposing coined the theory and term “emerging adult” in the early 2000’s.   He characterizes this stage of life by exploration, instability, and boundless optimism.

But when we talk about technology, sex, and societal patterns he outwardly rejects much of the current research and tells us why. 

We take a look at how things have changed since his original book in 2013 Getting to 30: A Parent’s Guide to the 20-Something Years to his latest book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from Late Teens Through the Twenties. 

 What we talk about:

Significant changes that have occurred over the past decade. We tackle the topic of sex and how the current generation's approach to it has evolved. 

We get to the digital world and how completely disagrees with much of the so-called research and its lack of firm causation results.

He also offers some advice for staying connected to your young adults and leaves us with an optimistic view.

He discusses the historical pattern of societal issues and how they played out in past generations (including ours!)

And we touch on our grandchildren’s generation and the recent Los Angeles Times article “Millennials Gave Birth to ‘Generation Alpha.’ Are these kids already doomed?” 

Our takeaway is that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to stereotype any generation. Maybe we allow them to come out of the emerging adulthood stage as fully realized adults and they will prove all the naysayers wrong. 

Listen and let us know what you think.

A big thank you to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer.  Send your thoughts to biteyourtongue@gmail.com and follow us

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• 17:21 (Cont.) Season 3, Episode 75 An Entirely New Perspective on Young Adults

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

I think emerging adulthood is generally a good time of life for most people. They struggle with identity questions, they struggle with loneliness, they struggle sometimes with anxiety and depression, but there's a lot of joie de vivre, there's a lot of exuberance, there's a lot of optimism. This is striking to me. It has been since I started this research 30 years ago that most of them are struggling in one way or another and hardly anybody has any money and they all struggle with that. And they struggle with a lack of relationship. They struggle with the life direction but almost without exception, they're really optimistic.

Speaker 2: 0:48

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Bite your Tongue the podcast. I'm Denise and I'm here with my co-host, kirsten, and we're about ready to get started. But first I want to say I apologize. I'm on the road right now so I'm not using our fancy new mics that we were able to purchase because of all of you, so I'm just using my computer and I hope the sound is okay. I also want to let you know I'm visiting a good friend of mine, jan. She's going to say hi, hi, and she may pop in and ask a question or two.

Speaker 2: 1:17

But before we get to Kirsten introducing our guest, I wanted to say that what we're really hoping is that for the end of this season we want to do a whole episode on questions from our listeners, and we've been getting a slew of them, many of you who have not sent a question yet. If you go to our website at BiteYourTonguePodcastcom and just go to the bottom right-hand corner and there's a little microphone, send us your question and we're going to try to include as many as we can in our finale episode for this season. And also, one person sent a question recently about a divorce, but I couldn't really hear what she said. So, if you're listening, is it your divorce or your adult child's divorce? Let us know. And for the rest of you that send us your questions, make sure to speak clearly. All right, let's get started. Kirsten's going to introduce our guest.

Speaker 3: 2:04

Thank you so much, denise, and I'm so excited about our Q&A episode. I think it's coming together nicely, despite your travels and all the difficulty. We're very, very happy that you are here with us. Oh, and welcome, jan, I don't want to leave you out.

Speaker 3: 2:21

Today we are thrilled to introduce Jeff Arnett. He is a research professor in the department of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, massachusetts. He was the first to originally propose the theory of emerging adulthood to describe the lives of today's 18 to 29 year olds. He is the founding president and executive director of the society for the study of emerging adulthood. We might note that we have an interview with one of the past presidents of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood, dr Larry Nelson. Check it out if you have time. That's season one, episode nine.

Speaker 3: 2:53

So back to today's guest. Among his many books is an advice book for parents of emerging adults and in honor of the 10th anniversary of the book, he's releasing an updated version of Emerging Adulthood the Winding Road from the Late Teens through the 20s. What will be interesting in this latest version is how he believes that things have changed, but also we are excited to learn how his perspective may have changed from having young children of his own when the first version was released and now how he feels, as his children are young adults and, frankly, research is research, but walking the walk is another story, so be curious to hear if there's some changes. Welcome, jeff. Is there anything that we missed in the introduction that you would like to add?

Speaker 1: 3:37

Well, I'd just like to say that when I first started studying people in their 20s, I was just past my 20s myself, and so I not only learned about it as a researcher, I felt it because I was just beyond that age period, and now I'm feeling it again because I'm the parent of twin 24-year-olds. It's fascinating to see them go through it. I sympathize with all the parents who are going through it. I mean, it's wonderful in many ways for us, but it is challenging and I think the thing that makes it the most challenging is that you don't have the same authority that you used to. Your whole time that your kids are growing up, you're loving them and you're protecting them and you're arranging things for them.

Speaker 1: 4:35

If you are an involved and good and conscientious parent and you feel that anxiety that I think most parents feel about making sure they're doing all right and you can protect them and kind of make things go well. But when they become emerging adults, you lose that power and they're doing so much out in the world at least if all is going well, if they're out in the world and making a life for themselves great but it's in some ways tough because you just can't protect them from the world anymore. The world can be a pretty harsh place and you never knew it was that tough when you wrote the first version. Huh no, I kind of sailed through it myself, my poor parents. But when I was 22, the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I went on a hitchhiking trip 8,000 miles from my home in Detroit to Seattle Washington, down to LA and all the way back, and I had a grand time. But it's only now that I'm a parent of kids in their 20s that I realized how excruciating that was for my mother.

Speaker 2: 5:53

Now there's no cell phones. We talked about this in another episode tracking your kids. This young woman has all adult kids and she continues to track them all the time. I was shocked that she knew exactly where they were on her phone.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Yeah, that's something modern technology can do. When I took my hitchhiking trip, I walked outside of the house. I stuck out my thumb. I came back a month later. I think I might have called once my poor mother again. I really I wish she were still around so I could apologize profusely.

Speaker 2: 6:28

So let's talk about your new book and why you decided to do it, and what are the major things that have changed. Our audience is all parents of adult children. What kinds of things do they need to know right now to understand where their adult kid is and what they can do to be better in building that healthy relationship with them?

Speaker 1: 6:47

Great question. I think the big change of the last 10 years is the changes in the rise in mental health distress, anxiety and depression. It's happened across age groups actually, but it's especially among 18 to 29-year-olds. That may surprise you, because there's a lot written about teen mental health these days adolescence, 14-year-olds, and how they're struggling and blaming it on social media and so on but it's actually highest in emerging adulthood and that's something that I'm trying to understand now. I'm doing research on it. I honestly don't feel like anybody has a good explanation for it yet. I think social media is a good boogeyman these days to blame pretty much everything on, but I'm not persuaded by the research. That's the cause, or the main cause, or certainly the only cause, of their mental health distress.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Well, I want to go back to other things, but I want to ask about this mental health. What concerns me about this? When you say 18 to 29, this is after they're out of the house. So once again we go back to what you said at the beginning. You lose your authority or you're able to protect them. So you've got a kid that's maybe 20, 22 in college and you can't see this happening.

Speaker 1: 8:17

No, you can't, and that is a lot of it. The fact that they leave home and they don't yet have a new constellation of social relationships. It's usually in adulthood, it's a spouse or partner and it's kids. And they don't have that yet, at least for most of their 20s, for most of them, and maybe not until their 30s. So it's no surprise that they have high rates of loneliness. They report more loneliness than other age groups.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Well, of course you leave your family of origin and if you had a good relationship with your parents, you leave that cozy cocoon of love and now you're out into the rough and tumble of the world and hopefully you have friends. But friends come and go at this age period. This is the age period 18 to 29. It's the age period with the highest rate of residential change. So in a given year they move more than any other age group and that means they're constantly making and breaking friendships because they move away. They have to start all over whatever new place they go, and I think that's a substantial reason for their anxiety and depression. But it doesn't explain why it's gone up in the last 10 years. That was true 10 years ago too, and 20 years ago and 30 years ago.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Well, what can parents do? Are there questions? And, kirsten, I know you have a question. You go first and then I'll ask. Well, I was going to ask in relation to your own kids.

Speaker 3: 9:55

You've got a set of twins that are in this age range. Have they been able to provide any insight as to what they see? I would think you might use them as research material from time to time.

Speaker 1: 10:09

Well, they are not having these issues. They are in this age period, but at least so far they're not having much of this. My son has always had a very buoyant temperament, and still does. He's in graduate school and having a grand time living in Philadelphia on his own. My daughter there's some of it. They both graduated from college about a year and a half ago and she's now just roaming the world. She's doing this thing called woofing, where you can work on an organic farm.

Speaker 2: 10:45

I've heard of this.

Speaker 1: 10:46

And you don't get paid but you get room and board so you can choose some cool place in the world that you want to live for a while and see what it's like. You work 20 hours a week on the farm. She's been doing this for most of the last year and right now she's in New Zealand. Right now she's in New Zealand. She's having a great time, but she's definitely experiencing some anxiety about her future. She doesn't know what she wants to do. That's a big issue in this age period. I talk a lot about it as identity issues, identity struggles. Who am I? How do I fit into the world? This is very much a question on my daughter's mind, didn't we do that?

Speaker 3: 11:30

the same thing though?

Speaker 1: 11:32

Did, but not for as long, and things were not as wide open. I mean, for my generation at least, I'm 66. So I'm at the height of the baby boom. I graduated from high school in 1975. I got my college degree in 1980. At that time the median marriage age for women was 22, and for men it was 24. You may have had a year or two after college, or maybe you didn't go to college and you had a few years of different jobs, but by the time people got to 25, most people had the stable structure of an adult life. That's no longer true. Now. It's 30, 30 at least for most people or more or more, and it makes it makes it different.

Speaker 1: 12:31

It makes it a lot different. It's not just a brief transition. That's why I decided to declare it a new life stage, because I feel like it's not just a transition to adulthood anymore. It can last, and usually does last, 10 years or more, so it's longer than any childhood life stage. It's longer than adolescence.

Speaker 2: 12:52

I never thought about that.

Speaker 1: 12:55

It really helps, I think, to recognize it as a new life stage in between adolescence and a more established adulthood, and a more established adulthood. During that time they have fewer responsibilities to others, fewer commitments to others, but fewer supportive social ties than they ever did before or will ever have again.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Are there anything that parents of these young adults are? There questions they can ask in a non-threatening way to see how their kid's doing? A lot of kids aren't going to call and say I'm really lonely or I'm really depressed or I can't seem to make friends. They may be embarrassed of it or they might feel uncomfortable about it or don't even know they're feeling these things. What can parents of these kids do?

Speaker 1: 13:43

I think you can listen and I think you can respond to the child that you know. The thing is, you can't really give a blanket prescription about it, because kids differ a lot in this way. Some of them they're super close to one or both parents it's especially moms, honestly but sometimes dads. They're really close to their parents. They talk to them about everything. They have no trouble opening their hearts to them and it's something that both sides feel comfortable with. But a lot of them they don't want their parents to know. They don't want their parents to look too intently inside their heads or inside their lives.

Speaker 1: 14:31

It's a big theme when I interview emerging adults. They want to protect that privacy that they have. They want to protect their autonomy, they want to protect their freedom. Even if they're suffering, Even if they know their parents could give them very good advice, they may not want to hear it, because the issue of becoming an independent and self-sufficient person is in our culture at this time, at the heart of this age period, so much so that many would rather suffer more by not confiding in their parents than confide in their parents.

Speaker 1: 15:16

You have to respond to what your kids will respond to and what they want, and they will let you know. I will tell you one thing that my wife and I make a practice of doing that's worked really well is when the kids come home. If they're home for more than a couple or three days, we each take them out to a meal one-on-one. We have a great time together, the four of us, but as you know, as everybody knows, you have a different kind of conversation one-on-one than you have with just one other person at it, so that has really been beneficial in keeping us close.

Speaker 2: 15:58

You decide who's going to go with who. I have a friend who does this with his four sons. He actually has a call like once a month with each of them and then does a dinner whenever they're in town or seeks them out sometimes for a dinner.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Good for him. That's a great idea.

Speaker 2: 16:13

One of the things your research says, and I'm going to read this in contrast to previous portrayals of emerging adults, they are particularly skilled at maintaining contradictory emotions they are confident while still being wary and optimistic in the face of large degrees of uncertainty. What exactly does that mean, and how can us, as parents, understand this in understanding their journey?

Speaker 1: 17:14

Well, it's a fascinating time of life that way, isn't it that for them, many of them, I would say most of them, most of the time, it seems like anything is possible. All doors are still open, at least a crack. That's how it feels, especially in their early 20s. I could still change my mind and do something else. I could move to a different part of the country, in the world. I could pursue some kind of education I haven't pursued before. My daughter was just home, before she left for New Zealand and mulling over her different possibilities, she thought that maybe she'd get more education in environmental science, because she's always loved the environment, she's always loved science. Her college degree is in french, and so she. She took exactly one class in science astronomy so she doesn't exactly have a background in environmental science. But that's the thing it's still possible. She could go back and may go back this next year and start working on a degree in environmental science. It's still pretty easy for her to do because she's 24. She doesn't have any obligations to anybody.

Speaker 4: 18:34

But it seems that so many of the students graduating really have no idea what they're going to do. Someone has paid a fair amount of money for them to go to college and they still come out and the only thing they know is they either want to move to New York or they want to move to Boston.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Yes or Philly. Philly is actually cool, Philly.

Speaker 4: 19:00

My mother said you are never coming home, which was cool in that I knew I wasn't coming home, so I had to earn some money. But it just seems like this realm of possibilities has put so many people that it's okay that they're drifting.

Speaker 1: 19:10

Yeah Well, there's an old saying that youth is wasted on the young. I don't know if that's true, but a college education is often wasted on the young. I think expecting people to know at 18 exactly what direction they want to pursue is not realistic, honestly. I mean, it may have fit an earlier time, when people didn't look for something that was a source of fulfillment, they were just looking for a job. A man had to support a family, so you needed some kind of education or training in something that would support your family. That was true for my dad. He became an engineer. He never talked about love and engineering, but my parents had five kids and he put them all through college and got them all to adulthood. And my mom never worked a day, she was never employed a day.

Speaker 2: 20:07

She worked I was going to say you better watch that.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Five kids, no. So people look at work differently now. They're looking for what I call identity-based work, something that is personally rewarding and meaningful and that they look forward to doing every day. That's a new invention. It wasn't how people ever thought of work until about 50 years ago. Given that work is now identity-based, we should be giving them more time to figure out what their identity is before we expect them to go to college. In Europe, it's typical for young people to take a gap year or two or three before they go to university, and I think that's very wise. They do their woofing phase or ski bump phase or waiting tables in Paris phase before they go to university, and when they go, they have a lot better idea of what they're going to do. And they have to because they go to study one thing. It's not like here, where you got two years of general education and then you decide Across European universities, you go to study engineering or you go to study French or you go to study environmental science. But we don't do things that way.

Speaker 2: 21:34

You go into medicine in Europe, you start medical school right away, so they're becoming doctors 10 years before our kids have even decided whether they're going to medical school.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Yeah, it's true of all professions.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Yeah, I want to talk a little about spirituality. This is close to my heart. Kids are taking a totally different route and that's hard for parents, whether it be becoming a vegetarian, not having any religion in their life, deciding I don't know lots of things. They don't want to get married, they're just going to live with their partner and have children. It goes against a lot of what we were raised with, possibly, but on the other hand, we've got to go with the flow. Any advice for parents when they're dealing with these different trajectories their kids are taking?

Speaker 1: 22:15

I think you've really identified an important change over the last 10 to 20 to 30 years. It's accelerated in the last 10 years. You were asking earlier about what's changed in the last 10 years. This is a really liberal generation of emerging adults, especially the women. Compared to even their supposedly liberal Gen X or boomer parents, they're a lot more liberal. For example, they're much more accepting of diversity and sexual orientation and gender orientation in ethnic or national background. Most of them have friends who are from a wide range of different groups, like this.

Speaker 1: 23:05

My son's best friend is gay and they roomed together along with a couple of other people in college. It's never something they really talked about, it was just something like you know he'd like to have pancakes for dinner sometimes. It wasn't something that it would look down on him for and both my kids when they went to high school here in Worcester Mass. They went to a high school where the kids were from families that spoke 78 different languages. I didn't even know there were 78 different languages. My son's best friends in high school were from Vietnam, albania and Kenya. I didn't even learn this until after he'd been friends with them for like a year. It was just another interesting thing about them. That's a big change.

Speaker 2: 23:59

I think that's really positive. I don't think kids see sexual orientation or color in this upcoming generation as much as our generation did.

Speaker 1: 24:09

I don't think they see it as much and they don't stigmatize it as much when they see it.

Speaker 1: 24:14

But there are a lot of people in this country that do, obviously, but there are a lot of people in this country that do. Obviously there's been a huge backlash among older people to this change, this generational change in values, and, honestly, there's a substantial proportion of white young men who are part of that backlash. I mentioned earlier that it's the women who are especially liberal. There's a huge gap that's developed between women and men. I just saw a report on this the other day. On political orientation. They used to be very similar with women, just slightly more liberal, and now there's a huge gap. It's a huge gap. They've become much more liberal and men have been about the same over the last 30 years and it's causing tension in a lot of relationships because women will start to date a guy and they'll find that he has all these attitudes that they just find repellent because they have different political orientations and he no finds her liberalism repellent. It goes both ways, but it's making it somewhat more difficult sometimes between emerging adult couples.

Speaker 2: 25:26

Why do you think this is? Do you think there's any reason for this change?

Speaker 1: 25:29

I'm not sure. Honestly, I could not tell you. I think it's probably partly because of the reality that they live with, which is we've had a huge amount of immigration, just to take the ethnic part of it huge amount of immigration over the last half century. And until about 10, 15 years ago, there was a bipartisan consensus that immigration was a great thing for the US. Legal immigration I mean illegal immigration has always been more contentious, but there was a bipartisan consensus that it was great to let in people from all over the world. That's what gives America its vitality.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Ronald Reagan was a huge proponent of immigration. He was a Republican hero for decades. Proponent of immigration, he was a Republican hero for decades. But now that's changed and there's been a big backlash, partly in response to the fact that we've had so much immigration, legal and illegal, over the last 20, 30 years. But now people like my son and daughter in their high school they're around people of 70-some different ethnicities and backgrounds. When I went to high school I don't know about you, but I never met a single person I can remember who was not a white middle-class person. There was not a single person in my high school who was Black, asian, hispanic. There was not a single person in my high school that I can remember who was from an immigrant background. Actually, I remember one girl who was from England. She had a very charming English accent.

Speaker 2: 27:11

Where did you grow up? Where did you grow up? Oh, detroit, suburban Detroit. I want to go over the four things that you talked about sex, wrong turns and dead ends, from conflict to companionship and the digital world. Those were four things that you identified that are really making changes in our adult kids' lives. So can we go through those and can you tell us what's happening in those areas?

Speaker 1: 27:36

Sure, absolutely so let's start with sex. Let's start with Absolutely so let's start with sex. Let's start with sex.

Speaker 2: 27:40

Yeah, let's start with sex.

Speaker 1: 27:41

It's a really interesting one because I was part of that baby boom generation that initiated the so-called sexual revolution, and it really was a sexual revolution because premarital sex went from being taboo and forbidden to being almost mandatory. I mean, if you weren't sexually active by your late teens, you were considered behind the curve and what's wrong with you and you better get out there and get some. It was a lot of fun, honestly in some ways, but it was a real mess in some ways too. It was not only sexual adventures and sexual fun. It was also high rates of unintended pregnancy, especially teen pregnancy. It was high rates of sexually transmitted infections sexually transmitted infections including HIV when that came along in the 80s. So it was not just fun.

Speaker 1: 28:45

Eventually the tide turned right about. In the early 90s. The tide turns and the percentage of young people who are having sex by age 20 starts to decline and it's been on a pretty steady decline for 30 years. So that now a lot of people in their late teens, early 20s, mid 20s, are not sexually active and they've never had sex before, They've never had a sexual relationship and it doesn't bother them. I I find this astonishing. I thought of it constantly from age 12 till well, I won't even say till when, but I was a constant preoccupation for me and every another, every other boy and young man I knew and had as friends. We talked about it all the time, all day long.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Why do we hear about all this hookup culture in colleges and stuff? I thought everyone was sleeping with everybody now.

Speaker 1: 29:47

It's complete hogwash. It's because journalists need something titillating to write about, so they write all sorts of nonsense, and this is part of the nonsense that has been written about this generation of emerging adults, and it's not true. Yes, some get drunk and have sex like the old fashioned mode of doing it, but overall, as a generation, they are much less sexually active, even though they're more sexually diverse, interestingly enough. So you have more gays, lesbians, bisexuals, people who identify as bisexual or transsexual or asexual. There are all these new identities and sub-identities that have developed. But overall, but overall, they honestly have a much more sensible and mature view of sex. They much prefer it to occur in the context of a loving relationship. They're much more likely to use contraception when they begin their sexual lives and talk about it with their partners. Teen pregnancy has plummeted since the early 1990s.

Speaker 1: 31:05

It's less than half what it was in the early 1990s, and pregnancy throughout the 20s has steeply declined. There's still relatively high rates of abortion and single motherhood in the 20s because that's the decade when people are most likely to be sexually active but not married, and so there's still a lot of unintended pregnancies. I don't want to paint too rosy a picture. We still do a really poor job in this country of teaching young people about their bodies so that when they become sexually active they know about sex and they know about contraception, so that they can avoid unintended pregnancies. We do a really poor job, but the fact is rates of unintended pregnancy and single motherhood and abortion have all gone down steeply in the last 30 years.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Okay, so what about wrong turns and dead ends? What does that mean exactly?

Speaker 1: 32:07

Well, I think emerging adulthood is generally a good time of life for most people. They struggle with identity questions, they struggle with loneliness, they struggle sometimes with anxiety and depression, but there's a lot of joie de vivre, there's a lot of exuberance, there's a lot of optimism. This is striking to me. It has been since I started this research 30 years ago that most of them are struggling in one way or another and hardly anybody has any money. And they all struggle with that. And they struggle with a lack of relationship. They struggle with the life direction, but almost without exception, they're really optimistic. Life is not necessarily good now, at least it's not unambiguously good, but life is gonna be good Eventually. One of the questions that I put on my surveys after I did my initial interviews because I heard this theme so much was eventually, I am going to get everything that I want out of life. Wow, 90% of them agree with that statement. Eventually, I will get everything I want out of life. Wouldn't you like to believe that?

Speaker 2: 33:24

Yeah, I would. I would like to.

Speaker 1: 33:28

We by now. If I could be presumptuous to say this, we as adults, we know that's not how life works at all. Almost nobody gets everything they want out of life. Adult life's all about compromises and it's all about learning to love what you got and accept that you didn't get what you didn't get, and accept that some things are imperfect and they're never going to change. That's a huge part of adult life and none of them believe it. At 19 or 23 or 27, they see a life to come where they're going to get everything they hoped for. It's touching and it's also a bit tragic too, because you know that eventually they're going to have to deal with reality and they're going to have to accept that life didn't smile on them in all the ways they hoped.

Speaker 2: 34:30

Do you think there's more or less materialism? Are they looking to be rich? Are they looking to be happy?

Speaker 1: 34:35

Well, I think they're looking for both. You know, I think they vary a lot. I do think that, in terms of work, this theme of identity-based work is really strong. So almost all of them would rather do something they love for relatively meager pay than do something they hate for a really high level of pay. That is a really strong theme. It's not everybody, Obviously. People are willing to do things they hate for a lot of pay. Otherwise we wouldn't have any lawyers. I say this knowing and loving many lawyers.

Speaker 1: 35:24

I've just learned to see that as a profession where, wow, people make buckets of money and I have yet to meet somebody who's really loving it.

Speaker 2: 35:31

Okay, digital world. And then I want to move to that article we saw in the Los Angeles Times, because then we'll start wrapping up. But I want to know about their digital world, because you said everyone's blaming social media. You don't think it's all social media, but it is a whole new digital world for the young adults.

Speaker 1: 35:48

It's a whole new digital world. They're often spoken of as digital natives, which is a term that I love because it really reflects how they grew up with it. It's second nature to them. Because it really reflects how they grew up with it, it's second nature to them. We, on the other hand, or if I can speak for myself, I am a digital immigrant, and most people in my generation are digital immigrants in the sense that we did not grow up with it. We can learn it. We have to learn it.

Speaker 1: 36:14

I, after many years of reluctance, finally got a mobile phone, and even then, though, I resisted getting any social media. I don't have any social media. I don't see the value of it. I see everything people say about it makes me think that I don't want to do it. I'm a digital immigrant, and they are much, much higher users of everything from TikTok to Snapchat, to Instagram, to whatever is coming tomorrow. Whatever comes tomorrow, they'll be the first on that and we'll be the last, and we'll be dragging our feet Because it doesn't come natural to us the way it comes naturally to them.

Speaker 2: 36:55

But how does this impact their life us?

Speaker 1: 36:58

the way it comes naturally to them. But how does this impact their life? It's a huge impact because it takes up so much of their time. All day long they're texting, they're WhatsApping, they're posting on Instagram, they're Snapchatting, they're watching TikTok videos, they're making TikTok videos. It's a big part of every single day for them. It's important to recognize just how important it is to them and just how it affects their consciousness all day long. They almost never have, say, a nice meal with a friend or loved one or parent that they don't look at their devices. I mean, we have a family rule. It's mostly implicit that we have family dinners every night when they're home and we have conversations. But my son at least still keeps his phone there. If we're having a conversation and somebody suddenly is wondering about the capital of Mongolia, he looks up the capital of Mongolia.

Speaker 2: 38:03

I personally could wait to hear the capital of Mongolia. Yeah, I can't wait.

Speaker 1: 38:07

I'd rather not have the conversation interrupted, but they are so used to having that at their fingertips that they want to know now, so we allow that. But I'm not crazy about it because I like, and I somewhat miss, the days of long conversations uninterrupted by technology.

Speaker 3: 38:29

Kirsten, yeah, I think this goes perfectly into this LA Times article that was titled Millennials Gave Birth to Generation Alpha. Are these Kids Already Doomed? But to the point about technology what an incredible gift we are also giving to them and actually they'll be giving to us later. I'm sure they're going to be able to do things that we couldn't even imagine because of the technology. So while I think that there is a negative side to certainly the social media piece of this, there's also some other incredible advantages. So I'm curious what you think about this article and how it relates to some of your experiences.

Speaker 1: 39:12

I haven't read the article, but I do think it would be a strong contender for an award for stupidest headline. Agree, I mean, my God, these kids are just born and you're raising the question are they doomed? That's just stupid on the face of it. I have sympathy for journalists. They're trying to get people to read stuff, but, come on, that's just absurd on the face of it. But it does point to this question of the moral panic over new media that we're experiencing now in a big way, and it's widespread.

Speaker 1: 39:55

There's a lot of nonsense written about it, not just by journalists but by academics who should really know better. What they have to show for their so-called evidence is a modest, actually a low, correlation between using social media, like time spent on social media, and reports of symptoms of anxiety and depression. So there's a low correlation. Pretty much everybody I've read wants to interpret that as causation. Oh, they are using more social media. They're reporting more anxiety and depression. Therefore the social media caused them to be anxious or depressed. The most elementary rule of science is that correlation does not imply causation and these irresponsible researchers and, I think, just publicity hogging researchers who want to get their names in the media themselves are doing something they know they shouldn't be doing. They're interpreting correlation as causation. Yes, I have no doubt that social media caused some people some degree of anxiety and depression because, as we all know know, people are posting things that make their lives look fabulous. And I did this wonderful thing, and look at this thing I bought and look at my great vacation. Yeah, there's some social comparison there that makes people that feel insecure. It's another reason for me never to get Snapchat or Instagram or these other things, or Facebook even. But that low correlation is just as likely, if not more likely, explained by people who are anxious or depressed going on social media to make connections with people who care about them. Isn't that just as plausible an explanation? And remember, you're talking about billions of people sending billions, hundreds of billions of social media messages and texts and videos every day. They're not just doing one thing with it and they're not just responding in one way. They're responding in billions of ways. So we need to attend more to that variability and realize that these media are just media. They're modes of communication. They're used in all kinds of ways.

Speaker 1: 42:39

Here's the other thing to remember this is just part of a long tradition of moral panics that goes back more than a century over new media. In the first decade of the 20th century there was a moral panic over believe it or not dime novels for their lurid themes of sex and violence. This according to G Stanley Hall, the founder of the field of adolescent psychology. This was a grave danger to the youth of his age. Then, of course, there was radio in the 20s and the jazz age. That was going to be the moral ruination of the youth of that generation.

Speaker 1: 43:27

And then movies. Of course that was going to lead people to just prefer a false version of life to their own lives. Tv was going to make us all idiots. The vast wasteland was going to make us all idiots. And then there was heavy metal, which I actually my first book was about in the early 1990s. Then it was heavy metal, then it was hip hop and now it's social media. I just feel like people have been crying wolf for so long about new media that at some point the rest of us ought to say you know, call us when the apocalypse is outside the door, but you've lost so much credibility, your forebears, from crying wolf about new media that there's no reason for any of us to believe it unless you come up with some really persuasive evidence and you know what, they never have Interesting, because these are all media that are used in millions, if not billions, of ways by billions of different people, and so for me it's a difficult thing to respect or take seriously.

Speaker 2: 44:39

We just interviewed the lead researchers on the Pew study. They just did the Pew research study on young adults. You probably saw that. So what we realized was yeah, but the media picked up the wrong stuff. I think it was with 18 year olds to 30 year olds or something. They said X percent are still relying on their parents financially. Well, it was the 18 to 21-year-olds that were relying on their parents financially, but that was the headline of the Wall Street Journal. I want to go back to this LA Times article. Just so our listeners know, this article was about our grandchildren. I think it was kids born between 2010 and the end of 2024. They call them Generation Alpha so sad. Beige kids, it's said. Fisher-price is changing all their toys to be more beige so that there's no gender exposure. 10-year-olds are buying retinol. It's Sephora. They call them Sephorites or something. Do you think this is all just way out of proportion?

Speaker 1: 45:37

It's all errant nonsense. Honestly, this generational stuff is also in something that's been going on for a long time. When I first began doing research on emerging adults in the early 1990s, you may remember that Generation X was in their 20s at the time and they were going to be a mess, right. They were so cynical and they didn't care about anything or anyone and they were contemptuous of all adult things. They were going to bring about the ruination of American society. Then they grew up and guess what? They took on adult responsibilities, just like every generation does. They married and they had children and they got jobs and they mowed the lawn and they paid their taxes, just like every generation before them. So that was that.

Speaker 1: 46:40

And then there was this big hysteria in the early part of the 2000s. This was going to be a selfish generation. They were Generation Me and they were so egocentric, they were contemptuous for their selfishness. They too were never going to grow up properly and they now were going to be the ruination of American society. And guess what? It's now 20 years later and they grew up and they got married and they had kids and they held jobs and they went to PTA meetings and they paid their taxes, and that's exactly what's going to happen to Generation Alpha. There's my prediction, right there.

Speaker 2: 47:28

All right. So before we wrap up, we always ask our guests for a couple of takeaways, so I want you to think about our listeners. What pieces of advice would you want to leave? Parents of adult children, emerging adults, so 19,. I go to 35 now with these emerging adults because I think they're still finding their way to be honest with you. Hopefully we're not supporting them and I know you gave. Everyone should get his book and we'll put a link in our episode notes and he talks about the whole journey and the different stages, but I think those stages are lasting longer. But anyway, tell us what you would tell our listeners.

Speaker 1: 48:01

Well, I would mention a couple of things. First of all, if you're a parent of emerging adults or if you're an emerging adult yourself, I can tell you that there's so much good about it Between parents and emerging adults. Yes, emerging adults sometimes want to keep their parents at a certain distance and they want to be able to make their own decisions, and parents sometimes helpfully try to intrude on those decisions and so there can be some tension there. And, yes, there is quite often tension over money through most of the 20 between many parents and emerging adults. But overall they get along much better in their 20s than they did when the kids were in their teens.

Speaker 1: 48:54

The stereotype about adolescence being a difficult time for parents is not entirely false. There's a lot of variation, of course, but it tends to be a low point in parent-child relations. But in emerging adulthood things almost always get better. Conflict almost always diminishes, in part because they don't see each other so much. It's a lot easier to get along with somebody you only see a handful of times a year. Or, from the emerging adult's perspective, they can control how much contact they have with their parents. Their parents can text them 20 times a day. They don't have to answer 20 times. They don't have to answer once and their parents can say, oh, when are you going to come home? And they can come home when it suits them, and so the fact that they are not around each other as much makes their hearts grow fonder, and that's a nice thing for parents, for parents you parents, you will suffer a lot of sleepless nights when your child goes woofing to New Zealand or whatever their version of it is, and you're wishing in some ways you were one of these families in India where the kids never leave home, or at least the sons never leave home. They just bring the wife in and the whole family lives in the hut next door. I can see the real appeal of that, frankly, but you know, god bless them. They're out there doing their thing and making a life for themselves. We'll adapt because we have to adapt, and we'll be all the happier to see them next time we see them.

Speaker 1: 50:34

Here's one more thing. This is a really great generation in many ways. I know that wouldn't sell much in the way of books, although maybe I should write a book. There's so many Connor narratives. This is a really great generation of young people in so many ways. They are so tolerant and open and loving toward people who are different than they are, more than any previous generation. I personally think that's a great thing. They care about the state of the world. They deplore what we honestly have done to it ecologically and they're very engaged with that issue. If the world is going to avoid ecological ruination, it's going to be this generation that makes that happen. It's not going to be ours. It's too late for us to fix what we broke, but they, I think, will have the potential to fix it.

Speaker 1: 51:33

This is in so many ways, such a great time to be a young person entering the adult world. I mean, let's not forget that. Let's not forget that through virtually all of human history, women have been allowed to do nothing, even when literacy became common among societies. When literacy became common among societies, it was mostly boys, and often girls didn't even get to go to school. When boys were going to school, even through the whole 20th century, young men went to college and university at far higher rates than young women. But now women are just kicking butt out there all over the world. They're more likely to get a bachelor's degree than young men are.

Speaker 1: 52:24

Gosh, we should not take that for granted. They can literally become anything they want to be, and that's never happened before in human history. So let's celebrate that. For young men, let's celebrate that they can be loving and affectionate to their parents and their partners and to their kids in a way they never have been allowed to before. I was in a family of five kids and I barely knew my dad until I was in my 30s, but I took an equal role in the family and my kids are as attached to me as they are to my wife, and that is the best part of my life and has been since they were born. That's a wonderful thing, too, that men are getting to be more fully human than they used to be. So in between listening to the bashing and denigrating of this generation, let's all appreciate for just a moment what a great time this is to be a young person and growing into adulthood.

Speaker 2: 53:32

I love that. That's very positive. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 53:35

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the interview.

Speaker 3: 53:39

So that was really a great interview A lot of different information than what we've previously heard, with a little bit of a twist.

Speaker 2: 53:46

I found him really interesting. I do love he's right, all the researches and what it's set out to be.

Speaker 3: 53:52

Right. I thought that was very interesting. The whole media piece, that media panic when he went back through the history, is fascinating. He's right.

Speaker 2: 54:01

I want to ask Jan, what'd you think of being on your first podcast?

Speaker 4: 54:04

Oh, I, loved it Hard not to talk, since I usually want to talk to you when you're doing the podcast, right?

Speaker 3: 54:10

So thanks everybody for listening today. It's a very fun episode to do and thank you to Jan for being here with us today. I love having a guest. Thank you also to Connie Gorin-Fisher, our audio engineer, and I once again would like to remind everyone to support our work by going to our website at biteyourtonguepodcastcom and hit support us for as little as $5. You can help keep us going, thank you.

Speaker 4: 54:34

Thanks everybody, but sometimes you just have to bite your tongue. Thank, you.