‘The Dumbest Generation Grows Up’

An English professor Mark Bauerlein, saw what was happening to young people. In 2008, he wrote the The Dumbest Generation, arguing that millennials would become increasingly ignorant, vain, and immature because of their chronic use of digital technology.

Thanks to the Federalist for bringing this read book to the fore.

The Dumbest Generation Wallows In Mediocrity And Self-Pity.

By: Auguste Meyrat, The Federalist, April 18, 2022:

In Mark Bauerlein’s ‘The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,’ the notable English professor offers a bleak but accurate diagnosis of the millennial generation’s problems.

In the early 2000s, when millennials were coming of age, many people were optimistic about their prospects. They were growing up with the internet, entering a brave new world where everyone was connected, engaged, and more affluent than ever. All this awesomeness was compounded when smartphones came out less than a decade later.

During this wonderful time, few people dared to suggest that all these new high-tech amenities and continual indulgence would spoil millennials. Rather, many people really believed they would be the most successful generation in history.

However, there were a few voices in the wilderness, calling for sanity and a sober analysis of these innovations. One such voice was English professor Mark Bauerlein, who saw what was happening to young people. In 2008, he wrote the The Dumbest Generation, arguing that millennials would become increasingly ignorant, vain, and immature because of their chronic use of digital technology.

Thirteen years later, Bauerlein’s predictions have largely become true. As he explains in The Dumbest Generation Grows Up, a sequel to The Dumbest Generation, many of today’s millennials are not thriving as predicted, but instead are “ending up behind a Starbucks counter or doing contract work, living with their parents or in a house with four friends, nonetheless lonely and mistrustful, with no thoughts of marriage and children, no weekly church attendance or civic memberships, more than half of them convinced that their country is racist and sexist.”

And yes, they are still the dumbest generation, reading less than any previous generation and knowing next to nothing about the world they inhabit.

The Most Illiterate Generation

With an obvious desire to tell the world, “I told you so!” Bauerlein begins his book recalling the false predictions of success for millennials. Even though they had every reason to be concerned about the vast amount of idiotic online content young people were consuming, they preferred to see this as a good thing: “Lighten up, we were told, instead of fearing these kids who were passing them by, said the most progressive admirers of this new generation gap, the elders had a better option: ‘What Old People Can Learn from Millennials.’”

Realists like Bauerlein were berated as spiteful curmudgeons who failed to appreciate the many virtues of the internet. Curiously, it wasn’t the software engineers and programmers making this argument (many of them limit their children’s exposure to screens), but the humanities instructors who saw the new technology as a shortcut to developing critical thinking skills and being knowledgable.

Besides struggling with the basics of adulthood, Bauerlein also argues millennials are dangerous to civilized society. They are entranced with the idealized utopias and “can’t understand why that blessed condition shouldn’t materialize here and now.” This has resulted in a noticeable radicalization among young people, who violently protest any views that differ from their own. Although most of these self-styled social justice warriors justify their actions as a noble resistance to true evil, so much of it amounts to collective temper tantrums.

Baffled by these outbursts from otherwise privileged young adults, Bauerlein seeks to understand the underlying motive—assuming there is one. After making a few inquires and observing millennials in their natural habitat, Bauerlein settles on two vapid but nonetheless serious mantras: “Everyone deserves to be happy,” and “It doesn’t matter who you love.”

Even a cursory knowledge of literature would dispel these notions. As though happiness were something you could complain into existence. As though all forms of love always work out for everyone involved.

Keep reading.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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