We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City, just across the street from Washington Square Park. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.
Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.
The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.
ARE GENERATIONAL THEORIES BUNK?
INTRODUCTION:
In this meetup, we'll discuss the scientific validity of generational theories & the accuracy (or inaccuracy, as the case may be) of generational stereotypes. This is an interesting topic from the viewpoint of scientific skepticism because it lands in the grey area between obvious pseudoscience and plausible social science. On the one hand, many of the sweeping claims about generational cohorts like "Boomers", "Gen-Xers, and "Millennials" in the news media often seems akin to astrology, where the time of one's birth is supposed to play a major role in determining one's personality & one's fate. However, generational theories are inherently more plausible than astrology, since they generally just claim that growing up in the same general time period leads people to share some similar formative experiences & cultural touchstones, whereas astrology makes much more dubious claims about the effects of the stars & planets on human beings.
Originally, I planned to base our discussion around a 25-minute talk that Adam Conover, the host of the skeptical TV show "Adam Ruins Everything", gave at the Deep Shift marketing conference in 2016 entitled "Millennials Don't Exist":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ
In this talk, Adam dismissed the entire concept of "generations" as a social construct — saying "they're not real things that exist in nature" — and he pointed out that the breaks between generations are arbitrary. He argued "generations" are a confused way of looking at different age groups, and he said that to the extent that we see differences between teenagers, the middle-aged, and senior citizens it's probably because they're in different phases of their lives and thus want different things (i.e. this is what sociologists call a "life cycle effect"). To the extent that cultural shifts affect people's political views, Adam said he thinks these probably effect everyone in a society (i.e. what sociologists call "time period effects") and that differences between how much people of different age groups vary in their opinions (i.e. what sociologists call "cohort effects") are probably so minor that it doesn't make much sense to draw sharp lines between different "generations".
I originally figured we might also look at an hour-long episode of Adam's podcast from 2017 where he & the psychologist Jean Twenge discussed their differences on generational theories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIBGJzMQjA
Adam started his podcast with Jean Twenge by admitting that he had poked fun at some clips of her public talks about Millennials in his Deep Shift presentation, and he wanted to give Jean a chance to respond & explain why she thought he had distorted her research findings. Jean started her rebuttal by saying that "in short, generations exist because cultures change... And as cultures change, younger people – who have never known another world – take certain attitudes and worldviews for granted." She argued that even though we can't draw sharp lines between generational cohorts, there are still differences between people of different age groups that can't be attributed merely to being in different stages of life or societal shifts that affect everyone – i.e. "cohort effects" are not always reducible to "life cycle effects" and "time period effects". She pointed out that data from several long-running surveys (e.g. General Social Survey, American Freshman Survey, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) indicate that young people in the 1960s-1970s had very different views on a range of issues than young people in the 2000s-2010s. Jean argued this must be the result of these two generational cohorts having different life experiences & being exposed to different influences in their formative years. Adam conceded that Jean's ability to cite datasets that support her arguments suggests she's probably onto something, but he still insisted that a lot of the media hype about "Boomers" and "Millennials" relies on sloppy stereotyping rather than careful research — and Jean agreed with that.
While these two talks are worth listening to if you're really interested in generational theories, they represented a bigger time commitment than I usually ask our members to make, and Adam.& Jean didn't cover quite as much ground as I had hoped. So instead, I've linked some shorter video clips below, and I've divided our discussion into 4 sections to aid with clarity.
In the 1st section, we'll discuss one of the major generational theories, the "pulse-rate hypothesis", which posits that a society's entire population can be divided into a series of non-overlapping 20-year cohorts, each of which develops a unique "peer personality" because of the time period in which each cohort came of age. The movement of these cohorts from one life-stage to the next supposedly creates a repeating cycle that shapes the history of that society. We'll focus on the most prominent example of pulse-rate hypothesis, the "Strauss-Howe generational theory". It's named after public policy consultants William Strauss & Neil Howe who rose to fame with their 1991 bestseller Generations, and followed up with another book every few years with titles like 13th Gen (1993), The Fourth Turning (1997), and Millennials Rising (2000). Strauss & Howe claimed their study of American history uncovered a pattern of 4 recurring generational archetypes (Hero, Artist, Prophet, Nomad), each of which unleashed a new era — called a "turning" — lasting around 20-22 years, in which a new social, political, and economic climate exists. These "turnings" are part of a larger cyclical "saeculum" equal to a long human life, which usually spans between 80 and 88 years. The theory states that after every "saeculum", a crisis recurs in American history, which is followed by a recovery or "high". During this recovery, institutions & communitarian values are strong, but succeeding generations attack & weaken institutions in the name of autonomy & individualism, which ultimately creates a tumultuous social environment that ripens conditions for another crisis. Strauss & Howe's bold thesis has fascinated political pundits & journalists to this day and is an important part of the "popular wisdom" of marketing gurus, but it has fallen flat with academic scholars.
In the 2nd section, we'll discuss the other major type of generational theory, the "generational imprinting hypothesis" (or the "imprint hypothesis" for short), which states that generations are produced by specific historical events that cause young people to perceive the world differently than their elders. This is the school of thought that Jean Twenge belongs to, along with most other social scientists who study generational cohorts in academia and at think tanks like the Pew Research Center. The "imprint hypothesis" dates back to a 1928 essay by the German sociologist Karl Mannheim entitled "The Problem of Generations". Proponents of the "imprint hypothesis" tend to reject the rigid 20-year cycles coming from the "pulse rate hypothesis" and try to determine the chronological boundaries of generational cohorts through empirical analysis. They also use empirical analysis to try to determine the social & psychological tendencies "imprinted" on generational cohorts rather than assuming, as Strauss & Howe do, that a "generational archetype" can be deduced a priori from a cohort's position in a historical cycle. As we'll see, even though Mannheim's essay was written more than 60 years before Strauss & Howe's work, he appears to have formed a more empirically accurate concept of "generations" that anticipated recent research on collective memory & group identity.
In the 3rd section, we'll address some of the generational stereotypes about "Millennials", such as being overly entitled "narcissists", or overly sensitive "snowflakes", being addicted to their computers & smart phones, and/or being a "Boomerang Generation" that has failed to fully transition to adulthood. We'll try to determine to what extent these generalizations contain any truth, and to the extent they do, whether they are the result of "generational imprinting" during their formative years in the 2000s or something else.
In the 4th section, we'll address some of the generational stereotypes about "Baby Boomers", such as being hippies who "sold out" and became yuppies, being a self-centered "Me Generation", being bad with computer technology, and being cranky & impossible to please in their old age. We'll try to determine to what extent these generalizations contain any truth, and to the extent they do, whether they are the result of "generational imprinting" during their formative years in the 1960s or something else.
RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:
While we've never focused on generational theories in past meetups, we have touched upon some topics that are related to generational effects, such as social conflict cycles, parenting methods, and peer effects from growing up in good or bad neighborhoods:
In March of 2017, the Philly Political Agnostics had a meetup entitled "The Tactics & Patterns of Political Violence" and in the 2nd section we looked at "Strauss-Howe generational theory" & why its rigid clock-like cycles often lead to it being dismissed by scholars, as well as the still controversial but more reputable "structural-demographic theory" of Peter Turchin which is based on more flexible oscillations & feedback loops. Turchin posits 3 intersecting social cycles that drive social conflict within societies (i.e. popular immiseration, intra-elite competition, state bureaucracy expansion), and he thinks American society has an uptick in social conflict about every 50 years.
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/239786314/
Back in June of 2018, the Philly Political Agnostics discussed the research on different parenting methods such as the overly involved "helicopter parenting", strict & demanding "tiger parenting", the kinder & gentler form of "attachment parenting", and the more hands-off "free-range parenting" approach. The best evidence we have suggests that genetic inheritance explains most of the similarities we see between parents & children and that parenting effects are much smaller than most people think. Identical twins raised by different parents resemble each other much more in adulthood than biologically unrelated children raised by the same parents. This suggests we should be skeptical of stories that claim today's young people are very different from previous generations due to differences in parenting methods; for example, the idea that Millennials are narcissistic & overly sensitive "snowflakes" because they were raised by overly indulgent "helicopter parents" who gave them "participation trophies".
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/251066458/
Back in May of 2018, the Philly Political Agnostics had a meetup entitled "Does America Offer Equal Opportunity?" and in the 1st section we looked at the economist Raj Chetty's work on the Clinton-era "Moving to Opportunity" program. It turns out that moving to a middle class neighborhood improves the educational outcomes & lifetime income of underprivileged children, suggesting this occurs through being socialized into middle class norms. One of the most interesting finding was that being raised in a neighborhood where most families had fathers present was more important to a child's development than having a father present in their own household, which suggests parenting may have a collective effect (i.e. "it takes a village to raise a child") and may interact with peer effects.
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/xvbrznyxgbtb/
We've also had 3 meetups that looked at the psychological impacts of new technologies, and this is especially relevant when we talk about Millennials & Gen-Z...
Back in April of 2018, we had a meetup entitled, "What Is The Internet Doing To Our Brains?" where we discussed some allegations that the internet may be having a variety of negative psychological & neurological effects on heavy users including internet addiction, digital amnesia, information overload & multi-tasking syndrome. While all of these hypothetical dangers have some evidence to support them, we also noted that Susan Greenfield's "mind change" theory that blamed digital technologies for rising rates of ADHD & autism in younger generations was roundly rejected by most scientists & scholars.
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/248928846/
Back in March of 2019, we had a meetup entitled "Is Social Media Destroying Our Social Fabric?" where we discussed claims that social media: (1) fuels narcissism & status anxiety, (2) creates echo chambers that worsen political polarization, (3) distracts users from face-to-face interactions & harms relationships, (4) provokes anger & depression by subjecting users to endless debates, trolling & cyber-bullying. While all of these hypothetical dangers have scholars who can muster some evidence to support them, we also noted that other scholars see these threats as overstated and resembling a "techno-panic", i.e. a moral panic about new technologies.
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/ffkqkqyzfbfb/
Back in July of 2019, the Philly Political Agnostics had a meetup entitled "Has the Internet Ruined Romance & Relationships?" As we saw from the articles linked in the discussion outline, there's good evidence to suggest that fears about porn sites, hookup apps, and sexting has NOT caused younger people to become more sexually promiscuous and less interested in relationships than other generations. In fact, teen pregnancy & teen abortions have declined, and younger people appear to be dating later & reporting less sexually activity than previous generations. Millennials have been marrying later than previous generations, but their divorce rate is lower and they appear to have a lower rate of marital infidelity.
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/txqhxqyzkbsb/
