This is the second half of Andrea Zak's recap of last week's event...
The N-Word: Narcissism
Gen Y is frequently perceived as a narcissistic bunch, demanding praise for the most mundane workplace tasks. Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, asked, "What's the change in the culture. . .it's not like the ideas came out of nowhere. . .Young people have been told since they were very small do what's right for you....you shouldn't care what other people think." Lofty goals and expectations are so overblown that rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health measurements are on the rise. (As an aside, it's worth checking out Christine Hassler's 20-Some, 20-Everything for an overview of what she dubs "expectation hangovers.")
Narcissism is not a new trend. Twenge noted that the while 80s promoted materialism, MTV's My Super Sweet 16 is "beyond entitlement." Parents avoid saying "no," in an effort to be a friend, rather than an authority figure. (Think Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.) Nor is narcissism limited to American youth. Her peers in China report a disinterest in politics and a focus on having a good time. In India more and more teens talk about wanting to be famous.
This tendency towards self-absorption is affecting media consumption. Lee Brenner, Director of IMPACT at MySpace commented that, "Young people want to know about hard news, but more so how it will affect their daily lives. They have enough reading to do with their college; they just want to get to news that may affect them." Yahoo!'s Front Page Programming Director concurs that "this audience wants to see itself" and seeks to profile and feature individuals that Yahoo users can identify with, like the "fashion blogger who said never wear mom jeans."
A caveat: though youth wants to see the stories reflected through the lens of an equal, they don't want bombarded with puff pieces. Newsweek's Editorial Director of College Projects Samantha Henig noted that while "ad people wants more sex, drugs, rock and roll. . .those are the things that turn off the college students. . .[they say] 'We're not stupid, we don't want to read about sexual exploits, we want to read what's important.'" Gen Y is also engaged in election season and uploaded questions in record numbers for the CNN/YouTube debates. In the same vein, Meghanna, a college student on the final panel, commented that a Huckabee ad featuring Chuck Norris "undermined our intelligence."
Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse for the rest of this post.
Other interesting statistics from SurveyU
- On average a college female makes 7 phone calls to her parents each week; a college male makes 3.
- Though 80% of college students selected their mobile handset, just 38% select the network they use. Likely because only 26% pay their own cell phone bills (thanks mom!)
Side note: Remember Amp'd Mobile's demise? The company targeted the youth demo and by the very bitter end, 80,000 of their 175,000 subscribers weren't paying their bills.
- 43% of college students believe they are a convenient target for the greed of large companies
Values that are very important to college students:
- Standing up for yourself 94%
- Working hard 93%
- Developing new skills 92%
- Having a healthy lifestyle 90%
- Having a lifelong partner, Tolerating different viewpoints and cultures, Exploring new places, Protecting your privacy 86%
- Having a lifelong career 83%
- Being creative, Being informed about current events 82%
- Helping those worse off than you 77%
- Speaking out against injustice, Respect for the law, Making your community a better place 76%
- Living for the moment 75%
- Having kids 67%
- Getting married, Having a great body 64%,
- Being patriotic 53%
- Being stylish 51%
- Having sex 50%
- Being really rich 39%
- Starting your own business 30%
Food for thought:
- "We integrate into their day, we don't interrupt it." (Gaylene Nagel, Electronic Arts)
- Stephen Friedman of mtvU and MTV Networks asked "When was the last time you looked your company up on technorati," underscoring the importance listening to your audience.
- "We're the first generation to use the Internet before we had sex," noted Ricky Van Veen, Co-Founder College Humor.com.
- GOOD Magazine's Benjamin Goldhirsh: Is Facebook a community site or a utility employed by communities?
- Jason Schutzbank of College Tonight on FaceBook: It's nothing more than a rolodex and a photo album
- Twenge pointed out the growing trend of "Celebrations assistants" as workplace enabling of Generation Me.
Just for kicks:
- After reading DigitalMediaWire's coverage of CollegeHumor.com Co-Founder Rick Van Veen's talk, you can share in one of the funniest videos viewed at the smashup: The Yankee Prankee.
Posted by anastasia
Campus Marketing | College Mashup
Comments
Jean M. Twenge writes of young people, "GenMe is allergic to groups, so we're more nonpartisan."
Firstly, young people who join MySpace and MySpace groups apparently aren't allergic to groups.
Secondly, there isn't a significant difference in the percentage of young voters who identify as Independents and voters overall.
A survey cited by CIRCLE found
26% of 18-29 year-old voters considered themselves "Independent/Other"compared to 27% of voters overall (National Election Pool, National Exit Polls 2006 & 2004) page 3.
Posted by: Eric Jaffa | February 4, 2008 11:32 AM
Twenge is a twit. I'm not just saying that because she's wrong about my generation. And that's the first thing I should point out: Generations are not thirty years long. Someone is delusionally lumping themselves in with today's youth, gough, Twenge, cough.
It reminds me of when I had this crappy delusional fifty-year old boss. I pointed out to him that he was technically a Baby Boomer based on when he was born, and he swore we were in the same generation despite a 29 year age difference. Yeah, right, ok? I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. Fifty year olds are just NOT in the same generation as twenty year olds. Get over it. That's old enough to be my parent.
Twenge is an X-er, and the people she writes about are really X-ers, though later ones. She's disguised her insight as about "today's youth" because that's what sells - the people she writes about are no longer young. I love me some Barack Obama, but he's an X-er, and I accept that.
The differences between X-ers and Gen Y are huge, and make a heck of alot of difference in evaluating them. They both want generally the same thing, but X-ers generally don't get it until Y comes along. X-ers are frustrated, or slackers, or rebelliously waiting their turn. Gen Y-ers are transformative in their refusal to accept the world as it is.
Also, let's maybe take into consideration the fact that this is Gen Y's "coming out" into the workforce, and that people are NOT going to like us much because we change the game. We do not wait our turn, we demand to be treated like free agents, and we don't want to be treated as though we're stupid. This is basically what every generation does, the reason we get our way is because the choice is play the game our way or we won't play at all (we'll go home to our parents). This is not narcissistic, it's smart negotiation.
To sum: Twenge is a bitter X-er who twists facts, statistics and research to see what she wants to see. go ahead and believe her if you want to, just don't expect to have a positive effect on your bottom line where Y is concerned.
Posted by: Kristen O | February 5, 2008 10:58 AM
Gen Yers are being put into narrative that probably has little to do with reality. I’ve been very impressed with the Yers I’ve worked with and found them to be smart, hard working and creative.
You will need to write your own stories or accept the one the culture has written for you.
The difference between folks your age (20-somehings) and people my age (30-somethings) is that you have the critical mass – the sheer numbers – to affect change. The pop culture image of Gen X was always wrong and most everyone I know has made an effort to change the system. The thing was, there were always more of them (boomers) and they always silenced us.
There is less dividing Generation X and Generation Y ideologically than you think and we should be great allies.
One point, though. I understand your frustration, but it certainly doesn’t help the cause to apply a meta-narrative to us – as frustrated slackers – when you’re complaining that you’re being unfairly pigeonholed. This might be true of Twenge specifically, but let’s face it: She just wants to sell you shit. She’s probably not indicative of anything other than the marketeering class.
We forced advertisers to be ironic, sardonic and subversive and they want you to be easier, more supple and simple creatures. That’s part of the storyline that’s being written for you.
VM
Posted by: VM | February 7, 2008 5:19 AM
I guess what it comes down to is that I feel that being accused of narcissism is worse than being accused of slacker-ism. (I do, by the way, think that Gen X and Gen Y are mostly allies).
Being accused of being a slacker means you can combat it by working harder. Being accused of being a narcissist is about as combatable as being accused of being in denial (if you say "no, I'm not" it's denial, just as if you say "hey, stop calling me a narcissist," it's you get "oh, well, SOMEONE cares about their public image.")
To be honest, I'm mostly irritated because it'll be another five years before my generation is in a position to create its own story, and until then, it's 24 hour news coverage of Headline: "Gen Y! You guys are jerks!"
Posted by: Kristen O | February 7, 2008 1:00 PM
Aye, Kristen, I understand your frustration. Don’t forget, Gen Xers have been forced to the margins all our lives. We desperately want change, too.
The way this game works is that the harder you try to disprove the culture’s stereotype of you, the louder it yells back its assertions. None of the people I know my age have been slackers. But when we weren’t portrayed as lazy bums, we were portrayed as sharks. When we complained they said we whined; when we were angry they said we were spoiled…
Like a lot of you, we were hit by hard financial times coupled with predatory, financial practices that were largely generation-based.
(Boomers manipulated the housing markets forcing us to pay more for rent than they did for mortgages; student loan financial advisers and leaning institutions saw education as a blank check they could write themselves; they balanced their budgets by cutting aid to young mothers… the list goes on and on.)
In five years – maybe less – we will have enough political clout to start forcing our agenda. I’m very happy that you’re pushing back – I think my generation’s greatest weakness wasn’t that we were lazy, but that we believed we were powerless – and urge you to continue to do so, but I need to tell you that yelling at the machine won’t change anything.
It never worked for us and it won’t work for you, either. I believe folks are already moving more democratic medians – the Web – where it becomes difficult to assert the reality of the party line. Maybe this speeds up the process by putting you in a position to do as you’ve done here and speak for yourself. Now we just have to try to listen to each other…
VM
Posted by: VM | February 8, 2008 4:39 AM