Thursday, 18 June 2009

Thoughts on the Me Generation v. Generation Me

(extended thought from blog post on the McKenzies page entitled Online Catharsis)

The baby-boomers were at one time thought to be the most self-absorbed generation in American history, and carried the label of the Me Generation. In recent years this title has been appropriated, twisted and reassigned to the babies of those same boomers - born in the 80s and 90s - now called Generation Me or the Look @ Me Generation.
Author Jean Twenge, an Associate Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and herself a member of Generation Me - spent 10 years doing research on this group's sense of entitlement and self-absorption. She attributed it to the radical individualism that was engendered by baby-boomer parents and educators focused on instilling self-esteem in children beginning in the 1970s. American and Canadian youth were raised on aphorisms such as "express yourself" and "just be yourself."

To further illustrate her point, Twenge also found a large increase in self-reference words like "I," "me," "mine," and "myself" in news stories published in the 80s and 90s. These words replaced collective words such as "we," "us," "humanity," "country," or "crowd" found in the stories of similar nature in the 50s and 60s. This generation may be the least thoughtful, community-oriented and conscientious one in North American history.

-Information gathered from Adbusters Magazine, Nov/Dec 2008 - #80 - Volume 16, Number 6


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