Are the kids all right? Not if you listen to some of our leading social commentators. To hear people like Juliet Schor and William Bennett tell it, today’s youth have been virtually brainwashed by marketers, advertisers, and a mushy-headed professoriate. But if your measure of “all right” is a group that is not just tolerant of but welcomes diversity, if it is young adults who march in lockstep with no political ideology, who in the majority are willing to think through the subtleties of some of the hottest hot-button issues of the time, if the measure is 18-to-29 years olds who take their cues globally, not just locally, then, yes, the kids are doing just fine.
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t make a claim of perfection for any age cohort, even one that includes my three great sons. Like young adults throughout history, these twentysomethings are prone to preen. Maybe more so than other generations, they also are conditioned to define themselves by the things they own. In researching her book, “Born to Buy,” Schor found that by kindergarten, children can identify on the average 300 logos. By 10, they have memorized some 400 brands.
We see the consequences of that endless marketing bombardment playing itself out in our surveying. In Zogby’s May 2005 Consumer Profile Poll, a third of 18-29 year olds told us “owning things” was “very important” for their self-esteem, far higher than any other are group. One in eight said that “appearing wealthier” was very important, and one in five said the same about “feeling more complete as a person.” Again, no other age cohort came close to those numbers. But it’s also important to note that two in three of the young adults we surveyed didn’t consider owning things to be very important to their self-esteem. To conclude, as Schor basically does, that today’s youth are robotic buying machines, programmed from birth to consume, is to capture only one small and blurry dimension of a multi-faceted group.
Likewise, I think Bill Bennett has half a point when he laments that relentless sensitivity training and political correctness have robbed students of their critical faculties and inquisitive spirits, instilling instead a kind of “we’re-all-equal” liberalism. I remember particularly a 2002 news release put out by Bennett and the conservative pollster Frank Luntz, citing their survey of college students that found a large majority of students did not consider American values superior to those of other nations and cultures. I’ve done my own polling on the subject with similar results. In our June 2007 Zogby Interactive poll, for example, we asked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: “I don’t support the concept of my country right or wrong.”
Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 44% agreed strongly with that statement, 11 points higher than any other age group. They also had the largest percentage of “unsure”: 14%.
But although my numbers echo those of Bennett and Luntz, I don’t read them the same way. To be sure, the youngest American adults are less inclined than their elders to defer to American values. But the question is why? What’s the underlying dynamic? I think the answer can be found in the high “unsure” percentage among the young. My belief is that it traces back to confusion over precisely what “my country” means in this day and age. More so than any other generation of Americans in history, they see themselves as citizens of the planet, not of any nation in particular.
Today’s youth have been exposed to clothing, games, and other products made all over the world. MTV and the Internet have brought Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Live Aid – the international rock concert series devoted to fighting global hunger – right to their home screens. Their musical heroes are global and internationally involved: Sting, U2’s Bono, the half-Colombian and half-Lebanese Shakira, and on and on.
Many young adults live globally as well thinking that way. In surveying we did for IBM in June 2007, 56% of respondents age 18-29 told us they had family or friends living outside the United States. No other age cohort approached that number. Better than one in three 18-24 years olds has traveled outside the U.S. once or twice in the past five years. Better than one in four has done so three to five times – and remember, these are people not yet halfway through their twenties.
On race, too, the nation’s youth are leading the way into a far more accepting future. It’s not that they have been significantly more exposed than the generations just above them to people of different races and ethnicities. Our June 2007 Interactive Poll found that adults age 18-27 and those age 28-41 attended integrated grade schools in just about dead-equal proportions. Intriguingly, the older age cohorts were more likely than the youngest one to say they have a close friend who is African American, while the youngest cohort was far more likely than older ones to have a close friend who was Hispanic (8 points more than 28-41-year-olds) or Asian (16 points).
On two fronts, though, the experience of young adults significantly outstrips that of older ones. They are twice as likely (23% to 11%) as those ages 28 to 41 to have an African-American supervisor at work, twice as likely also (14% to 7%) to have a supervisor who is Hispanic, and two-and-a-half times as likely (15% to 6%) to have an Asian-American supervisor, and for that matter, four points more likely (14% to 10%) to have a supervisor who is gay.
Part of that has to do with lower-level jobs, especially where African-Americans are concerned. One in four Americans earning less than $15,000 a year has a black supervisor, while only one in eight of those earning over $50,000 annually does. The chance of having a Hispanic supervisor increases as annual income grows, but only up to $35,000 annually. For Asians as for blacks, supervisory jobs are most common at the lower levels. Still, work relationships – even at the low end of the economy – teach lessons. They flatten the history of white dominance in American society. They inculcate that a work directive is a work directive, no matter from whom it originates. They are, in short, a start.
Intermarriages more than doubled between 1990 and 2000, to an estimated 7% of all American marriages. Meanwhile, approval ratings of intermarriage grew from 70% of all adults in 1986 to 83% in 2003, according to a study by Roper Reports. Credit younger Americans with leading the way. In a 2002 Gallup poll, 86% of adults age 18 to 29 approved of marriages between blacks and white, while only 30% of those over age 65 did the same.
To a large extent, this flattening of old taboos is the result of years of exposure, especially for whites in their teens and twenties, that was simply unavailable to earlier generations. Will Smith was their TV buddy and Bill Cosby their TV dad. Michael Jordan was their marketing icon and athletic hero; Oprah, their confessor. Even a politically astute 14-year-old probably doesn’t remember a time when America didn’t have a Secretary of State of color. And then there’s the case of the golfer Tiger Woods, interracially conceived, and one of the most popular sports figures in America and across the world.
In our June 2007 polling, a majority of every age group except those over age 80 and of every self-identified political ideology except conservatives (and they barely missed with a 49.5% approval rating) answered affirmatively when we asked if the nation was ready for an African-American president. To an extent, that’s only the complicated new demographics of American society playing themselves out in the electorate. Indeed, part of the strong appeal of Barak Obama is that he is an uncanny reflection of the new beige hue of the voting public: a mixture of races and ethnicities, with a strong dash of foreign exoticism thrown in for seasoning.
The same held true when we asked whether the country was ready for a woman president, although this time conservatives could muster only 45.5%, a reflection most likely of their deep antipathy to the most likely female candidate, Hillary Clinton. Overall, three in four of the youngest voters and even three in five of those age 62-80 either strongly or somewhat agreed that the nation was ready for a female president, compared (for example) to 1949 when fewer than half those polled by Gallup said they would vote for a woman president even if she seemed the best qualified candidate for the job, and 1969, when that number had barely crept over the middle line to 53%.
Are the kids politically “liberal”? That depends on whose “liberal agenda” you’re talking about. Are they liberal in a dictionary sense – that is, are they broadminded, free of orthodoxy, willing to think things through on their own, resistant to imposed answers? Absolutely.
Abortion is another one of those polling questions that sticks a finger into all sorts of issues: religion, politics, morality, gender (is it the woman’s right, or does society get a say?), law, history (the bad old days of back-alley abortionists), language (“late-term” vs. “partial-birth”), and much more.
Our 2005 survey for Hamilton College of high-school seniors suggests to me that the youngest adults – and those frankly with the greatest personal stake in the debate – are at the forefront of this still inchoate effort to find a middle ground.
At a time when a shrinking majority of all Americans identify themselves as “pro-choice” – 56%, about ten to twelve points lower than the figure a few years earlier – high-school seniors in late 2005 were evenly split, with 47% pro-life and 48% pro-choice. While a slight majority of this group (53%) said abortion should be “legal in all or most cases,” 46% felt it should be “illegal in all or most cases.” However, only 36% thought that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, while 62% said it should stand.
Maybe this is nothing more than another example of youthful inconsistency. Those of us who have lived through the high-school years with our kids know that they tend to be all over the place on many issues. But I look at the results and I begin to see a distinct nuance emerging, an appreciation of the real complexity of the issue, and a willingness to judge each element of the debate on its own merits, rather than providing a “pro-life” or “pro-choice” answer to every question.
Collectively, are those survey results the expression of a liberal political bent among high-schoolers or of a broader liberal mindset? I think the answer is the latter. For decades the abortion debate has skewed policy and politics without offering any hope of a solution. Now along comes a generation that is unwilling to impose a simple “always right” or “always wrong” template on questions that are terrifyingly complex. That’s hopeful, and it’s not lock-step anything – liberalism or conservatism, Democratic or Republican.
Not surprisingly, a group so ready to embrace multiculturalism and so willing to share even intimate details with a global community is multilateralist in its world view, too. The Kyoto Accords, the International Criminal Court, an activist role for the United Nations – these aren’t necessarily settled questions for any age cohort, but First Globals have staked out a position on all of them sharply at odds with the generations just ahead of them. By a 48-35 plurality, 18-to-29 year olds favor ratifying the Kyoto Accords even if that grants a temporary advantage to China and India. On the same question, 30-to-49 years olds go in almost exactly the opposite direction, opposing ratification by a 49-34 plurality.
The extra-border perspective of young adults is equally evident when we move the borders much closer to home. By a vast spread – 91% to 67% – young adults are considerably more likely than those over age 65 to see Mexicans as “hardworking.” By almost identical numbers, they believe that Mexicans are discriminated against in the United States. Three in five young adults think we should make our relationship with Mexico a “high priority.” Not only do they support NAFTA, they think free trade agreements should be expanded throughout the Americas. On all those scores, they differ dramatically with every age cohort above them.
First Globals want a foreign policy as inclusive and embracive as they are. They expect impediments to trade to be removed so they can shop anywhere, and they want developing countries and their peoples protected from predatory multinational corporations and fiscal policies that hold the world’s poorest people ransom. For First Globals, the American Century is already over, and the Whole Earth Century has begun.
Even a flattened world isn’t immune from the normal effects of passing time. Today’s First Globals will have kids of their own, want a house, a second car; eventually, if they aren’t already, they’ll become the quiet Investors Next Door, worrying about whether they will have enough resources to retire on. Such is the progression of life, but we are not going back to the world of our fathers or even the world many of us grew up in. With the globalized economy and corporations less loyal to employees and communities, young people have no reason to even suspect that they will be in the same job for the next half decade, much less for years to come, and they know for certain they won’t be handed a pension when they finally say goodbye.
That’s how you make contact with First Globals – by opening doors, not closing them; by stretching your borders and remembering that children are growing up in a globally based online world where distinctions like Red State/Blue State are increasingly meaningless. If you don’t keep all that in mind, the kids are going to leave you in the dust, whether you’re pushing a sport, a product, or a presidential candidacy. They know who has the upper hand. They know time is on their side. Like twentysomethings everywhere of just about every generation, they’re mostly convinced that they are in the right.
But don’t worry about them. They know their weaknesses as well as their strengths. When we asked First Globals if “high-school programs in the United States are adequately preparing our young people to understand current international affairs,” a staggering 93% said no.
Taken from John Zogby’s “The Way We’ll Be” (Random House), out this week.