Inventor of the Generation Me concept: Who is Jean Twenge?

Jean M Twenge, born August 24, 1971, is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Chicago and her doctorate at the University of Michigan. Her extensive research in social psychology is published in many journals and newspapers. She participates in many programs, local television channels, and radio programs. Twenge has many scientific publications and books. She currently resides in San Diego, California.

Jean Marie Twenge (born August 24, 1971) is an American psychologist researching generational differences, including work values, life goals, and speed of development. She is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, author, consultant, and public speaker. She has examined generational differences in work attitudes, life goals, developmental speed, sexual behavior, and religious commitment.

In the literature, there are various studies on generations, generations are classified with various scales, and X, Y, and Z decomposition are frequently used. Those born between 1927-1945, who differ in the way they perceive the world, are called the "Silent Generation", those born between 1946-1964 are called "Baby Boomers", those born between 1965-1979 are called "X Generation", those born between 1980-1999 are called "Generation Y" and those born after the 2000s are called "Generation Z".

Although the generation born after the 1980s is conceptualized with different names such as "The Ambitious Generation, the Millennium Generation, the Online Generation, and the Wireless Generation", the term Generation Y is widely used in the literature. A serious break between all generations has taken place between Generation X and Generation Y, and technology, the internet, and social media have played an important role in this break.

The concept of Generation Y is expressed by Jean M Twenge as “Generation Me”. Twenge conceptualized the generation that was born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in the United States, focused on individuality, was always most important to be satisfied with oneself, and used the words me, myself, and me very often, as the "Me Generation".

Jean Twenge publishes the book "Generation Me – Revised and Updated: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before" in 2009.

Jean M Twenge, in her book The I Generation, examines the mental health trends of those born between 1970 and 1990, namely Generation I, which we can call a process of mass degeneration starting from the USA and spreading all over the world, in different time periods.

In her book iGen, published in 2018, Jean Twenge investigates the effects of the information rain that floods us through the internet, especially on adolescents and young people. This generation was born in 1995 and the following years. They grew up with cell phones, they had an Instagram page before they started high school. They are very different from the generations that came before them.

In their book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, co-authored by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell, they claim that one in four teenagers in the USA, where narcissism spreads like an epidemic, especially among college-age youth, shows narcissistic symptoms.

Although narcissism, which is defined as the fast food of the human soul, seems to make the person happy in the short term, sooner or later it causes depression, social corruption, and even global economic crises. Based on detailed statistics, case stories, and public opinion polls, the book draws attention to the fact that narcissism is as common a disease as obesity.

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https://www.jeantwenge.com/