Time to stop talking about ‘my generation’?

In 2018, the US military found itself in an unexpected place. It had assumed that the children growing up in long shadow of the 9/11 attacks would come of age and join up in their droves. But instead of an influx of 17-year-old recruits, the US military saw some of the lowest sign-up rates in its history.

The US Army's assumptions had been partly based on generational thinking. There's all sorts of advice on managing multiple generations in the workplace, and the US Marines had even provided a course on 'Managing Millennials'. But how scientifically rigorous are ideas around generation? How useful is the concept? To answer these questions, the military brought in the big guns – the US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences commissioned the US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to gather together experts in psychology, sociology, management and other disciplines to investigate and produce a consensus report.

Dr Cort Rudolph, associate professor of industrial and organisational psychology at St Louis University in St Louis, Missouri, gave evidence to the commission. He says: 'To what extent should the Army be concerned about this idea of generational differences affecting its ability to recruit new members? That expands into recruitment in general.' Here in the UK, organisations ranging from the National Health Service to private companies have sought out research on generations in the workplace with a view to better understanding their recruitment, retention, training needs, all with an eye on 'intergenerational cohesion'. A 'deep dive' report for NHS Health Education England in December 2019 [tinyurl.com/57c959xc] states that: 'It is supposed that variation between generations' role priorities and overall satisfaction in the working environment could have an impact on the rate of recruitment and retention of healthcare practitioners in the NHS.' Drawing on UK literature from 2008 to 2019, the report concludes: 'Workforce data provides evidence that the UK working population is made up of five different generations working together across industries.' It notes some 'convincing' literature about the needs of different generations, e.g. Baby Boomers preferring face-to-face communications, while Gen X and Millennials are happy with online training.

However, this particular NHS report also noted that despite 'a common public conception that there are generational differences which are expressed in the working environment… there is evidence in numerous research reports that differences are as much a factor of personal circumstance, individual choice and the social and economic environment surrounding an individual acting as the main drivers for change.'

Fast-forward to the present day, and the public discourse has changed again. The world has coped with coming up to three years of the Covid-19 pandemic. The mental health effects on everyone, but particularly in children and young people, have been well-documented. For those born into these strange times, or those just emerging into the adult world, will the pandemic be transformational? Will we – as the popular press, and even government reports, seem to declare – see the emergence of a new generation: 'Covid Kids', or a 'Covid-19 Generation'? Is it helpful to give them such a moniker, or could it even be harmful?

A mechanism for social change

Generational labels have a certain cachet in popular culture. Perhaps you've heard of Baby Boomers (born after World War II and before 1960), Generation X (born 1961-1980), Millennials (1981-1995) or the more recent Gen Z or Zoomers (post-1995). Some are now talking of Generation Alpha, born after 2012. There are however, no universally agreed time frames, which adds to the complexity of defining generations. But the interest in them is reflected in research: the National Academy of Sciences report, published in 2019, found that generational studies have burgeoned in the last 20 years.

If there were no generations, if everyone sort of stayed the same age or there were no new successive cohorts, if there were no new ideas brought to bear to society, would society change?

In particular, organisational and workplace psychology is full of it. My quick search for 'millennial' on PubMed at the time of writing yielded 1,274 results, including a whole 2019 special issue of The Journal of Social Psychology devoted to Millennials in the Workplace, with its editorial 'Millennial research on fleek'. Google Scholar had a whopping 410,000 results, with generational terms used widely in psychology, but also across fields including sociology, demography, economics and management. But how did the very idea of generations take root?

The modern use tends to refer to the idea that groups of people born within a certain window of time may have similar behaviours and outlooks, characterised by shared social and historical events during their formative years. But historically, the idea of generations was more tied to the concept of social progress. In the 1800s, French philosopher Auguste Comte theorised that social progress was driven by the turnover of generations, with each new one bringing fresh ideas. The basis for more modern usage stems from a 1928 essay by German sociologist Karl Mannheim called The Problem of Generations. Mannheim saw major events at a particular time and place as influencing those born into and aware of them.

'My intellectual inspiration is Karl Mannheim,' says Dr Jennie Bristow, a sociologist at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent who, along with colleague Helen Kingstone at the University of Surrey, runs the Generations Network – a Wellcome Trust funded project set up to provide an interdisciplinary forum to investigate the concept of generations and how it should be used. 'His interest was in "how does generational consciousness come about?" How do we make meaning of our existence?' Bristow, who co-wrote a book, The Corona Generation, with her teenage daughter, adds: 'Generation is interesting because it is about when we come of age, and the historical moment that we grow into. Arguably, that gives us a distinct view of the world to people who've been born before or afterwards. We are products of history if you like, and we also shape that history.'

However, Cort Rudolph cautions that Mannheim's idea was never meant to be a theory, and 'nor was it ever meant to be tested'. Instead, it's a thought experiment. 'If there were no generations, if everyone sort of stayed the same age or there were no new successive cohorts, if there were no new ideas brought to bear to society, would society change? That really blends the idea of social change, dynamics and development.'

Some 20th century studies seemed to bear out generational ideas – for example, Glen Elder's 1974 book Children of the Great Depression is regarded as a classic text which documents his longitudinal studies of children born in 1920s California, and how they fared over several decades. But Professor Brent Roberts, a personality psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that 'in retrospect, if you look at the data, that at the time was used to infer cohort effects, the data are surprisingly thin and relatively unconvincing… problematically so.'

The challenges

The original idea of studying generations, then, grew out of functional sociology looking for a mechanism for social change. Rudolph cautions that although now used widely in psychology, 'it's not a psychological concept', and 'there is not one necessarily agreed upon definition' of what a generation is. Studying generations is therefore complex, and according to Roberts extremely long-term studies are needed. 'What you need is ideally the same measure given to the same people, preferably people who represent whatever culture or country you're interested in, over a very long period of time – and that just doesn't happen,' partly because funding bodies are reluctant to invest in long-term research without obvious benefits.

The British Household Panel Survey and the US Health and Retirement Study may, Roberts adds, go some way towards this.

Professor Terrie Moffitt, chair of social behaviour and development at King's College London, agrees. 'We all know that there are clear effects on a cohort of the historical time they live through, like the people who were children during the Great Depression back in the 1920s and 30s, and people who were children during the Vietnam War. But it's incredibly difficult to do actual research on them,' she says. 'If you think about the data requirements, you need a cohort study done at the right time, and then you need other cohort studies that are done with a similar methodology that you could then make a comparison.'

Millennials are not any more narcissistic and spoilt than any previous or subsequent generation.

You also need to disentangle genuine generational effects from age effects, which relate simply to development or the life course. Some psychological research has suggested growing levels of narcissism among those born in the 1980s and 90s, or Generation Me, says Roberts. 'If that were the case, that means we're just becoming this black hole of narcissism because we have a linear trajectory of increasing narcissism.' But many of these studies are not robust in what they compare. 'If you actually do a systematic job, which some groups have done with what data you have, there's no evidence that the US youth, for example, increased in narcissism.' Rather the results might suggest that 20-year-olds are narcissistic, but this may be no different to 20-year-olds throughout history.

'Millennials are not any more narcissistic and spoilt than any previous or subsequent generation,' says Moffitt (who is also on the NAS' Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences and is an associate director to the Dunedin longitudinal study in New Zealand, which has followed people since their birth in 1972). 'It's just that when they were young they were narcissistic and spoilt. But so were Baby Boomers when we were young. When you're in that uncertain period of life, when you're trying to make your way from your parents' home to establish your own home and family, you tend to be self-absorbed. I think it's very healthy and normal.'

Same as it ever was

Many longitudinal studies show these clear patterns of personality change throughout life, says Roberts. The young may be more prone to self-absorption, but are also generally more anxious than older people. 'Thank God. It's one of the few good things to be old – you're not as stressed out as you were when you're younger, if you're lucky enough to go through the moment of development.'

As we age, humans also tend to forget their own experiences, he adds. This, plus genuine cultural changes such as the advent of cell phones, may lead older people may make 'attributional errors'. This phenomenon of older people denigrating the young partly through their own misremembering was demonstrated by psychologists Dr John Protzko and Professor Jonathan Schooler, both at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a paper published in Science Advances in 2019. The 'Kids these days effect', as they dubbed it, was also discussed by the NAS report, which highlighted quotes going back to the ancient world. As Aristotle put it in Rhetoric in the 4th century BC: '[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances… They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.' Or Roman poet Horace in Book III of Odes in 20 BC: 'Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.'

Period effects

The other phenomenon that often gets conflated with generational effects are 'period effects'. These are events or social changes that affect everyone in society. 'While young adults today are more likely to have a cellphone than young adults 20 years ago, it also is true that all adults are more likely to have a cellphone today than was the case 20 years ago as a result of technological and societal shifts,' notes the NAS report.

Separating age or period effects from cohort effects is difficult. 'Most studies of generational differences make no attempt to separate generation effects from age and period effects, making it difficult to draw strong conclusions about generational characteristics,' found the NAS.

In fact, the US Army's assumptions about the effects of generation on recruitment could be seen as a good example of this conflation, says Rudolph. 'After September 11 there was an influx of people who were 18 at the time signing up for the military in the United States – that can't be a cohort effect because those people have to be at least 17 in order to enlist. If there was a cohort effect that would have to be people born in 2001 after 9/11. But in 2019 when those people turned 17 or 18 and became eligible to enlist, the Army had one of the lowest rates of enlistment of all time. That's been a declining trend that has nothing to do with generations. The Army was trying to make the argument: "after 9/11 people signed up, so it must be generational". But that's a fundamental misunderstanding of a period effect versus a cohort effect.'

Actively harmful?

It's not looking good for generations research. In fact, bandying around labels such as 'Boomer' or 'Millennial' without a solid evidence-base could even be harmful, some argue (see also Box, 'Sex and carbon emissions').

'Generationalism is dangerous in practice, because it legitimises broadly sweeping generalisations about people based upon assumptions that are made about their status in one birth cohort, or range of birth cohorts, versus another, while ignoring individual differences within cohorts,' wrote Rudolph and his colleague Professor Hannes Zacher at the Institute of Psychology at Leipzig University. In their commentary 'The Covid-19 Generation: a cautionary note' in Work, Aging and Retirement, they went on to warn: 'Generationalism is a form of ageism, that when left unchecked, can result in age-based discrimination.'

Indeed, such is the strength of feeling against the use of generational labels in research that some 150 sociologists and demographers wrote an open letter in May 2021 to the non-profit, influential US thinktank, the Pew Research Center in Washington D.C., asking them to stop using the terms. They argued that generations have 'no scientific basis' and 'their labels undermine important cohort and life course research'.

The UK may be 'a bit behind' the USA in challenging the 'simplistic myths and stereotypes' that have grown around these terms, says Professor Bobby Duffy, professor of public policy and director of the Policy Institute at King's College London, and also author of Generations: does when you're born shape who you are?

A special case

But perhaps we shouldn't be too hasty in discarding the concept of generations. 'It's early days to say, but if you were looking for something that has the power to be generation-forming then the experience of the pandemic is clearly one of those types of events,' says Duffy. 'There are pros and cons of specifically calling it a Covid Generation. Yes, how you have experienced Covid depends at least in part on your age – but it also very much depends on your resources and existing disadvantages. Covid has definitely accentuated the vulnerabilities of particular groups in society. The huge value in having a generational analysis perspective is that it does flag this as a particular issue. And it may be that it brings more attention to the long-term effects of Covid.'

Others point out that some historical events are such seismic shifts that they may have both period and cohort effects – affecting all strata of the population, not just those coming-of-age. Rudolph and Zacher argue in their paper that 'at this point, Covid-19 is about as close to a homogenous and constant period effect as we could ever observe', as its reach is so broad.

The real issue, Roberts says, 'isn't generation so much as who are the people who have suffered? How best can we help them and support them? If you laid a developmental framework over that, from my perspective, of course you still want to invest in kids, especially when it comes to the cognitive and skill-based losses that occur by not getting to school. But the more hopeful story would be that they have a better chance of bouncing back as long you continue to invest in them.'

Will we see the emergence of a new generation: 'Covid Kids', or a 'Covid-19 Generation'? Is it helpful to give them such a moniker, or could it even be harmful?

Roberts says that adolescents and young adults up to the age of 30 may be particularly vulnerable because their stage of life means that they may have higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism. 'What you want to do is add the other groups to that list. They might be at similarly key, and maybe even more critical, junctures or transitions in their life.'

Labelling a purported new generation after a disease may also have its dangers. 'There is the potential for stigmatising and defining a whole cohort of people in relation to a disease and a pandemic – is that a positive thing for that generation?' asks Duffy.

Rudolph and Zacher go further, discussing a possible 'Pygmalion effect' – where expectations may actually shape outcome. 'For instance, if scholars, journals, and policy-makers broadly characterize the "Covid-19 Generation" as, for instance, insecure or socially challenged, this may not only lead to age-based discrimination of individuals assumed to belong to this generation, but may also have "self-fulfilling prophecy" for these individuals' in terms of their attitudes, values, and behaviors,' they write.

Ultimately, whether a new 'Covid' generation will emerge, and what that means, remains to be seen. 'Do I believe there's a Covid generation?', says Moffitt. 'Yes. Can I show it with any data? No.' She adds that 'in this era when we have a huge amount of societal polarisation, I am reluctant to add yet another group label. However, generational labels do give us a handle for expressing something – a shared language that we can use. In that way, it's a nice shorthand to get discussion going.'

Engage and do better

So given all the caveats and complexities around generations in psychology and more widely, is there any use for the concept?

Duffy maintains that there are benefits to studying generations, if done properly. Crucially, there has been a genuine change between successive generations in the UK, he says, in that socioeconomic inequalities within Millennial and Gen Z generations are much wider than within previous generations. Various factors, including government policies and wealth taxation, mean that it's harder to become economically successful now through earning an income alone. Accumulated wealth such as home-ownership, investments and pensions matter. In effect, this means that those without inherited wealth have very different life chances than those with family assets in the most recent generations.

'That's the risk in the coming years where it will be cementing privilege intergenerationally much more,' Duffy says. Family resources will become more important in people's abilities to cope with societal shocks like Covid. This makes it all the more important 'to understand intergenerational transfers of wealth and life chances'. 'It's still really important to have a generational frame but realise that there's huge diversity within each generation.'

All of this has what Duffy calls 'some really big generational implications'. 'What the diversity of experience in Gen Z or Millennials means is that it's very hard to galvanise younger generations as a coherent group, because they are in such different situations. If you know you are going to be inheriting a lot you're not going to group together with your peers to insist on change in wealth taxation.'

Duffy is pragmatic about terms like 'Baby Boomer' or 'Millennial' already being 'out there' and used in marketing or 'fluffier research'. 'Our job is to try and engage and do better analysis, rather than abandoning the analysis to myths and clichés,' he says. 'Horoscope-type descriptions of generation' won't go away, he adds, so 'our job is to improve the quality of it'.

Bristow agrees: 'The concept can be useful, but it's often so sloppily used… that's what causes the problems. You'd also need to look at other factors that shape people's experience, such as social class and gender. But don't throw the baby out of the bathwater. As long as you are clear about what you are talking about, generations capture something about your place in time, which is potentially significant. We are living through history, and history matters.'

BOX: Sex and natural resources

Experts are wary of generational labels being mis-used in a discriminatory or stigmatising way. Generational stereotypes can be used to stoke intergenerational conflict. In the UK, Baby Boomers have been flagged up as a 'social problem' says Bristow (who is Gen X), who also wrote a book examining this.

'There was an overwhelming sense of envy and resentment in the media narrative about this cohort that allegedly had this wonderful life. For example, one article I quoted in my study claimed they'd used up all the sex, as well as the planet's natural resources!' she says. 'This idea was that these lucky kids have used everything up and now every other generation is suffering.'

When it comes to the pandemic, Rudolph is concerned that generationalism could be used the wrong way. 'Let's pump the brakes a bit on this idea of it being one generation versus another,' he says. His commentary with Zacher highlighted some of the inflammatory intergenerational rhetoric stoked by social media including the virus being referred variously as the 'Boomer pruner', 'Boomer remover' or the 'Boomer doomer'.

In contrast, different generations have actually cared for each other during Covid: Rudolph and Zacher note anecdotal reports of young people helping older people during the pandemic in their paper. Duffy points out that many younger people do their bit to support pensioners, and many older people worry about younger people's life chances during these times.

About the author

Shaoni Bhattacharya is Deputy Editor of The Psychologist.