Quotes from Jean M. Twenge

Every time I went to the library, it felt like a treasure hunt: somewhere amid those dusty books was the answer, and all I had to do was find it.

The purpose of school is for children to learn, not for them to feel good about themselves all the time.

Kids need to learn that you need to feel bad sometimes. We learn through experience, and we learn especially through bad experiences.

Yet GenX'er teens didn't slow down--they were just as likely to drive, drink alcohol, and date as their Boomer peers and more likely to have sex and get pregnant as teens. But then they waited longer to reach full adulthood with careers and children. So GenX'ers managed to lengthen adolescence beyond all previous limits: they started becoming adults earlier and finished becoming adults later.

Wanting to feel safe all of the time can also lead to wanting to protect against emotional upset—the concern with "emotional safety" somewhat unique to iGen. That can include preventing bad experiences, sidestepping situations that might be uncomfortable, and avoiding people with ideas different from your own. That's where things get dicey—both for iGen and for the older generations struggling to understand them.

All in all, in-person social interaction is much better for mental health than electronic communication.

Another study of adults found the same thing: the more people used Facebook, the lower their mental health and life satisfaction at the next assessment.

Adolescence--the time when teens begin to do things adults do--now happens later. Thirteen-year-olds--and even 18-year-olds-- are less likely to act like adults and spend their time like adults. They are more likely, instead, to act like children--not by being immature, necessarily, but by postponing the usual activities of adults. Adolescence is now an extension of childhood rather than the beginning of adulthood.

iGen'ers are more likely than any generation before them to be raised by religiously unaffiliated parents.

iGen is on the verge of the most severe mental health crisis for young people in decades. On the surface, though, everything is fine.

Fewer teens having sex is one of the reasons behind what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: the teen birthrate hit an all-time low in 2015, cut by more than half since its modern peak in the early 1990s.

By 2014, more 18- to 34-year-olds were living with their parents than with a spouse or romantic partner.

iGen'ers' drumbeats of growing up slowly, individualism, and safety all manifest themselves in their exceedingly cautious attitude toward relationships.

iGen idea: the world is an inherently dangerous place because every social interaction carries the risk of being hurt. You never know what someone is going to say, and there's no way to protect yourself from it.

The trends that have shaped iGen are the usual mix of good and bad, with a healthy amount of "it depends" thrown in.

only 28% of 12th graders in 2015 attended services once a week, down from 40% in 1976.

We protect children from danger, real and imaginary, and are then surprised when they go to college and create safe spaces designed to repel the real world.

In the next decade we may see more young people who know just the right emoji for a situation—but not the right facial expression.

A stunning 31% more 8th and 10th graders felt lonely in 2015 than in 2011, along with 22% more 12th graders

social media is not real life. Her photos, which looked like casual snaps, actually took several hours to set up and up to a hundred attempts to get right...

Reliable birth control, legalized abortion, and a cultural shift toward parenthood as a choice made them [generation me/millennials] the most wanted generation of children in American history.

Managers who can give them some security, along with some nurturance, may well find themselves with the hardest-working group of young people to come along in a decade or even two.

No matter what the cause, the result is the same: iGen teens are less likely to experience the freedom of being out of the house without their parents--those first tantalizing tastes of the independence of being an adult, those times when teens make their own decisions, good or bad.

If an activity involves a screen, it's linked to less happiness and more depression. If it doesn't—particularly if it involves in-person social interaction or exercise—it's linked to more happiness and less depression.