Summary Of Jean Twenge The Rise Of The American Mind
State of the American Mind Essay Contest
In Jean M. Twenge’s essay, “The Rise of the Self and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest” and her video touching on the same subject, she vividly demonstrates how the rise of increased self-image and narcissism has contributed to the decline of millennials’ intelligence and drive to care for their world. She mainly cites the American Freshman and the Monitoring the Future (MtF) studies as proof of her claims. The decline of intellectual ability is something that I have seen very clearly in my school environment. Students thinking that they are so smart and great at everything, yet their grades and performances do not prove their claims, or on the opposite side, there are the students who …show more content…
Some millennials now believe that as long as complete something, no matter how well or not well they did it, it should be valued as very important. In Twenge’s essay, she cites the American Freshman, or AF study, which has surveyed college students every year since 1966 and found that “39 percent [of students] rated themselves as above average in intellectual self-confidence in 1966, compared to 59 percent in 2014.” (Twenge) From this information, one could conclude that students are just smarter now and have achieved more, but that could not be further from the truth. While there are students that are most definitely above average in intellectual ability, the majority of students are not, thus making one wonder why this statistic is so much higher than it was in 1966. A heightened self belief system in students can account for this since students are now thinking higher of themselves making them believe they are smarter, but this idea goes even deeper than that. It starts with students’ childhood when they are exposed to every type of technology available to man and become obsessed with it. Laziness has become so problematic that the average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21 (Jorgustin). 10,000 hours that could have been spent studying, working, or improving oneself for the future. Laziness can then lead to extreme procrastination in millennials’ high school and college careers with 95% of college students claiming that procrastination is a problem for them (Gaille). With so many young students and millennials dealing with this problem, it is no wonder that they think they are above average in their abilities. They have grown up with contributing very little work to their exploits and still receive high praise on them. As Twenge stated in her essay, “students are
In Jean M. Twenge’s essay, “The Rise of the Self and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest” and her video touching on the same subject, she vividly demonstrates how the rise of increased self-image and narcissism has contributed to the decline of millennials’ intelligence and drive to care for their world. She mainly cites the American Freshman and the Monitoring the Future (MtF) studies as proof of her claims. The decline of intellectual ability is something that I have seen very clearly in my school environment. Students thinking that they are so smart and great at everything, yet their grades and performances do not prove their claims, or on the opposite side, there are the students who …show more content…
Some millennials now believe that as long as complete something, no matter how well or not well they did it, it should be valued as very important. In Twenge’s essay, she cites the American Freshman, or AF study, which has surveyed college students every year since 1966 and found that “39 percent [of students] rated themselves as above average in intellectual self-confidence in 1966, compared to 59 percent in 2014.” (Twenge) From this information, one could conclude that students are just smarter now and have achieved more, but that could not be further from the truth. While there are students that are most definitely above average in intellectual ability, the majority of students are not, thus making one wonder why this statistic is so much higher than it was in 1966. A heightened self belief system in students can account for this since students are now thinking higher of themselves making them believe they are smarter, but this idea goes even deeper than that. It starts with students’ childhood when they are exposed to every type of technology available to man and become obsessed with it. Laziness has become so problematic that the average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21 (Jorgustin). 10,000 hours that could have been spent studying, working, or improving oneself for the future. Laziness can then lead to extreme procrastination in millennials’ high school and college careers with 95% of college students claiming that procrastination is a problem for them (Gaille). With so many young students and millennials dealing with this problem, it is no wonder that they think they are above average in their abilities. They have grown up with contributing very little work to their exploits and still receive high praise on them. As Twenge stated in her essay, “students are