Gen Z, or the iGen, born after 1995 through the first decade of the twenty-first century, had a difficult childhood in some respects. Kicking off with 9/11, followed by one after another mass shooting (Sandy Hook, Las Vegas), the endless wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, then Syria), refugee crises, and violence on individual black men and women, it has been a tumultuous time. Some say we haven’t had this much televised violence since Vietnam. So how did we parent through this? According to Lukianoff and Haidt, too protectively. Helicopter parenting failed to give our children adequate opportunity for free play and the freedom to explore and learn from lower cost mistakes. Couple this with extreme preparation and focus on college admissions resume building, and we appear to have created a very anxious and depressed generation. So say our authors, who lay out the disordered thinking these experiences produce: 1. What doesn’t kill me makes me weaker (inherent presumption of fragility), 2. Always trust your feelings (abandoning reasoning and truth seeking in decision making), and 3. Life is a battle between good people and bad people (denying the reality that good and evil are inherent in all of us.)

The authors lay down the conditions of childhood that made for this maladaptive set of beliefs, including over-protective parenting that eliminated free play opportunities undirected by parents or other adults, obsessive preparation for college admissions competition from an early age, and the lack of opportunity for children to solve their own peer disputes, minor problems, and practice prioritizing their work and other time demands. Schools have responded in kind to parental demands, making “safety” the most important concern. By protecting children from every possible form of discomfort, we teach children that they need adult intervention for every issue, big or small. By treating their negative feelings as a problem in need of solving, teachers and school administrators intervene in every small source of discomfort to children. This telegraphs that feelings are paramount, beyond any reasonable standard. Children have been denied the opportunities to advocate for themselves, practice negotiation and communication skills with peers to work out disagreements, making children internalize their self-perception of fragility and sensitivity, equating this with everyone who makes me feel bad is inherently bad.

Colleges and universities have picked up the baton as this generation started showing up in 2013-2014. Thus began trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, and safe spaces. Administrators are trying to make the students happy, their source of income, and are pressuring faculty to take every complaint very seriously, causing a chilling effect on any classroom debate, and a paranoid assessment of any assigned reading or lectures for potential upsetting content. Colleges should be the bastions of free speech and a diversity of opinions, opening students’ exposure to that diversity. Instead, colleges become an echo chamber of increasingly like-minded, left-leaning people, with any dissenters forced into silence, fearing toxic retribution.

This generation is entering the workplace, bringing their fragility, paucity of negotiation skills, and insistence on respect and accommodation for their every feeling. If this sounds like trouble, it should. I cannot imagine how we can work in teams and be productive when managers have to constantly worry about everyone’s feelings over everything else, walking on eggs to keep everyone happy. This is an important read for everyone, perhaps especially for parents of young children who can still change course and approach. Highly recommend.