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 full-fledged 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 "passive," as they frequently prefer to wait for instructions rather than be self-starters, while also opting to spend time in front of screens rather than socializing.

Peter Robinson, replying to Sasse, remarks that it is surprising this would be happening, "despite [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 history." To this, Senator Sasse responds, "You said, in spite of — maybe it's 'because of.'"

Sasse 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 well-being, 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 people.

But Sasse often made clear — when The Vanishing American Adult was frequently in the news in 2017 — that his goal was not to engage in finger-wagging 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 — the last point being, perhaps, the most important for our purposes. When "only one-third of U.S. adults know the three branches of the federal government," Sasse argues, it is time for people to become more intellectually and civically engaged.

Some 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 ("discovery" feature) on the popular messaging app Snapchat. It's 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 day.

Just browsing through the Snapchat news feed on a given day, one sees the stories offered to young people: "Sofie Paints Her Nails with Her Feet" or "What I Wish I Had Known About Sex Before College." Another day, the stories to choose from include: "How Hot Is He on a Scale of 1-10" and "What Porn Did to Teen Boys." Perhaps it's time to ask more of the "news content" put in front of young people on a daily basis.

Snapchat's 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 "What Porn Did to Teen Boys" story drew from reporting by The Washington Post. And "Have You Tried the World's Deadliest Drug?" came from The Economist. But, no matter the source of a particular story, nearly all the "news stories" have a shared base appeal to the prurient and outrageous, rather than anything even close to resembling thoughtful writing. And that's what our young people are seeing, day in and day out.

I still believe that, in its ideal form, journalism — along with the aggregators that feature it — 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 Snapchat's stories encourages.

In today's 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 Pluckrose's Areomagazine to Uncommon Knowledge itself. More prosaically, even Vox's concept of "explain the news" is a step in that direction. But, in news specifically catering to young people, this is far from the norm.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the longtime Democratic United States Senator from New York, was known to have maintained that, "the 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 itself." 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 ever-thoughtful appraisals of American society. But, regardless of where one currently sits on the political spectrum (Moynihan, for instance, has been called the "American Burke" 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, hard-working adults, perhaps we need to ask media to do its part — or, at the very least, refrain from constantly appealing to the indelicate in place of the aspirational.

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