Kids these days, amirite?
That, of course, has long been the rallying cry of old fogies everywhere. But in her new book iGen, psychology professor Jean M. Twenge doesn't just complain about the generation coming up behind the Millennials. She painstakingly documents their values and behaviors relative to the generations that came before—finding some healthy developments but also a whole lot of troubling ones.
Separating one generation from another is arbitrary. It's not as though people born in 1979 (the youngest slice of Generation X) are fundamentally different from people born in 1980 (the earliest Millennials). But broadly speaking, various personality traits and habits among the young—such as individualism and drinking—do rise and fall over time, giving each cohort its own personality to some extent. And while these changes are usually gradual, what Twenge calls iGen, those born starting in 1995, has started some very abrupt trends.
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