Snapchat and "The Vanishing American Adult"

Sitting for an interview with Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge in 2017 the junior United States Senator from Nebraska Ben Sasse discussed his book The Vanishing American Adult Sasse begins with the premise that a growing number of younger Americans are delaying becoming fullfledged adults For Sasse this is exemplified by younger people marrying later in life being more likely to drop out of school than those of past generations being more inclined to habitually change jobs and delaying financial independence from their families Sasse also suggests that the adjective that best describes many young people is quotpassivequot as they frequently prefer to wait for instructions rather than be selfstarters while also opting to spend time in front of screens rather than socializingPeter Robinson replying to Sasse remarks that it is surprising this would be happening quotdespite this generation having grown up during a period of peace and by and large economic expansion in the richest and most powerful nation in human historyquot To this Senator Sasse responds quotYou said in spite of amp8212 maybe it39s 39because of39quotSasse goes on to suggest that perhaps it is abundance itself that has given rise to a culture of consumption rather than production For Sasse the ease that accompanies so much prosperity may cause people to forgo hard work and genuine intellectual engagement in favor of taking the path of least resistance This is similar to a criticism often leveled against writers such as Matt Ridley who are steadfast believers that humanity will be delivered by economic growth alone His critics argue that despite record levels of economic wellbeing people are not responding on the whole by becoming happier For example levels of depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing recently across Americans of all ages particularly among young peopleBut Sasse often made clear amp8212 when The Vanishing American Adult was frequently in the news in 2017 amp8212 that his goal was not to engage in fingerwagging at younger generations or to pine for an era gone by Rather it was a call to action for younger people to take greater responsibility for their lives financially socially and intellectually amp8212 the last point being perhaps the most important for our purposes When quotonly onethird of US adults know the three branches of the federal governmentquot Sasse argues it is time for people to become more intellectually and civically engagedSome of the media that young people habitually consume is hardly helping them become more academically curious or intellectually on point In my mind the most glaring culprit is the news aggregator quotdiscoveryquot feature on the popular messaging app Snapchat It39s an app used daily by 78 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 and 71 percent of those users visit multiple times a dayJust browsing through the Snapchat news feed on a given day one sees the stories offered to young people quotSofie Paints Her Nails with Her Feetquot or quotWhat I Wish I Had Known About Sex Before Collegequot Another day the stories to choose from include quotHow Hot Is He on a Scale of 110quot and quotWhat Porn Did to Teen Boysquot Perhaps it39s time to ask more of the quotnews contentquot put in front of young people on a daily basisSnapchat39s aggregator draws on a diverse range of sources from the Daily Mail to TikTok some of the stories even come from sources often considered particularly reputable For example the quotWhat Porn Did to Teen Boysquot story drew from reporting by The Washington Post And quotHave You Tried the World39s Deadliest Drugquot came from The Economist But no matter the source of a particular story nearly all the quotnews storiesquot have a shared base appeal to the prurient and outrageous rather than anything even close to resembling thoughtful writing And that39s what our young people are seeing day in and day outI still believe that in its ideal form journalism amp8212 along with the aggregators that feature it amp8212 ought to have an aspirational quality Journalism should ask its readers to mentally exert themselves ever so slightly It should ask them to think and consider rather than laugh or grimace as the emotional quality of Snapchat39s stories encouragesIn today39s media landscape there certainly are efforts to fuse an element of the educational with the journalistic This lies at the heart of various current media projects from Helen Pluckrose39s Areo magazine to Uncommon Knowledge itself More prosaically even Vox39s concept of quotexplain the newsquot is a step in that direction But in news specifically catering to young people this is far from the normDaniel Patrick Moynihan the longtime Democratic United States Senator from New York was known to have maintained that quotthe central conservative truth is that it is culture not politics that determines the success of a society The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itselfquot Given that Moynihan died in 2003 just before the birth of social media and its enormous impact on the younger generations I have wondered at times how he would have factored this development into his everthoughtful appraisals of American society But regardless of where one currently sits on the political spectrum Moynihan for instance has been called the quotAmerican Burkequot for drawing simultaneously on practices associated with both the political left and right it is worth expecting more when it comes to the quality of news put in front of young people If we want younger generations to become thoughtful hardworking adults perhaps we need to ask media to do its part amp8212 or at the very least refrain from constantly appealing to the indelicate in place of the aspirationalClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not 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Snapchat and "The Vanishing American Adult"

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Erich J. Prince

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Snapchat and "The Vanishing American Adult"

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