Young people today are less concerned about social approval and society’s standards than their peers of generations past, says new research analyzed across six decades.
The analysis of responses from 40,745 children, adolescents and young adults who completed surveys between 1958 and 2001 finds less need to heed social norms and accepted standards of behavior.
“It goes beyond etiquette. It’s not just about manners. It’s more obliviousness that characterizes it – just not thinking about what other people think and other people’s feelings,” says Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University who will discuss her findings at a conference next week.
Among kids today, 62% of college students say they pay little attention to social conventions. In 1958, an average of 50% did. Among ages 9-12, the difference was even greater – 76% in 1999, compared with an average of 50% in 1963.
The research, based on the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, a social science measurement standard, is included in Twenge’s new book Generation Me (Free Press) about babies of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. She says her findings suggest the young don’t care as much about making a good impression or displaying courtesy as their parents and grandparents did when they were growing up.
Her study examined responses to questions such as “I am always careful in my manner of dress,” and “I never forget to say ‘please’ or ‘thank you,’ etc.,” in which a response agreeing with the statement is considered high on the need for social approval.
It also included statements such as “At times I have really insisted on having my own way” and “I am sometimes irritated by people who ask favors of me.” People who score high on social-approval questions display conventional behavior while those who score low are not as concerned with what other people think, Twenge says.
Nineteen-year-old Malcolm Henderson, a freshman at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., says when he goes to class, he often sees kids who seem to roll out of bed and wear sweatpants or whatever. He tries not to, but says he’s done it too.
“The only time I’d say people worry about what they look like is when they go to a party or a social event,” he says. “There’s no real need to impress a professor. There isn’t a need to dress how a member of an older generation would expect.”
But, he says, behaving rudely isn’t a universal trait of the young.
“I do know some people that fit that description exactly and I know a lot of other people who are polite and hold the door open for people,” he says.
Such changes don’t necessarily worry Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center, a social science research institute at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. He says other measurements of conformity to society’s accepted norms, such as teen drinking and teen pregnancy, are down, indicating to him that the need for conformity depends on which standards are being considered.
“We’re measuring them through the standards of what you could say are 20th-century manners rather than 21st-century manners. What this research may be saying is that social norms of 18- to 24-year-olds today are not as consistent with the adult norms of the culture as they were 30 years ago.”
Such an example of changing attitudes occurred last summer when a brouhaha erupted over flip-flops, the shoes generally favored for most every occasion by the younger generation but typically considered beachwear for those of a certain age. When some members of the Northwestern University’s women’s lacrosse team famously wore flip-flops to meet President Bush last July, photos of the event spawned a media frenzy as everyone from etiquette experts to political commentators weighed in about the appropriateness of the footwear choice.
Generational differences aren’t limited to attire. Almost 70% of U.S. adults believe people are ruder now than 20 or 30 years ago, with 93% blaming parents for not teaching kids manners, according to a survey last year conducted by the international polling firm Ipsos for the Associated Press.
In 2002, a survey by the non-profit research group Public Agenda found that only 9% of adults believe kids they see in public are “respectful towards adults.” Of kids they knew personally, 67% of adults said the kids needed to act “a little” or “a lot better” toward adults.
Twenge attributes the attitudinal change to society’s focus on the individual and individual rights in recent decades, which she outlines in her book. Even though she is 34, she includes herself in the generation often called Millennials, Echo Boomers or Gen Y; most researchers consider 24 the upper limit of that group. But she says her peers were raised on the same principles of individuality and promoting self-esteem.
Stacey Odenat, a mom of three from Aberdeen, Maryland, says when she watches kids on the playground, “they don’t know to say ‘Are you all right?’ When they interact, I don’t see a lot of caring for one another.” Her daughter Janae, 10, says some kids “talk mean to each other and some curse.” But she says more kids are nice than are not.