This Decade of

Disillusion-
Why and how the young
rule our time.

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There are eras in history, like the 1950s, when older people set the cultural and moral terms for the
young. And there are eras, like the 1960s, when it’s the other way around.

The current decade has been in the latter mold. Its true beginning was Dec. 17, 2010, when a 26-year-old
street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire, setting off protests that quickly toppled
governments across the region. Now it approaches its end with the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist
Greta Thunberg named Time’s Person of the Year.

In between, the decade has been fundamentally shaped by the technological creations of the young, in
the form of social media and mobile apps; by the mass migrations of the young, from Africa and the
Middle East to Europe and from Latin America to the U.S.; by the diseases of the (mostly) young, notably
addiction and mental illness; and by the moral convictions of the young, from the #MeToo and Black Lives
Matter movements in the U.S. to mass demonstrations from Cairo to Hong Kong.

Why and how did the young dominate the decade? Let’s narrow the focus to America.

Demography first. What history usually thinks of as “the sixties” (beginning around 1964 with the Civil
Rights Act and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) coincided, in the United States, with the coming-of-age of the
baby boomers, roughly 75 million strong. Our current decade coincides with the coming-of-age of
millennials, another generation of about 80 million. More people, more power — or at least more
influence. By comparison, my generation, the underwhelming Generation X, numbers only 65 million.

Next, anger. History is often a series of reactions and counterreactions. We remember the nonconformism
of the 60s as a response to the conformism of the 50s. This decade, too, has been a reaction to the last:
to two wars that began in moral fervors and ended in strategic fizzles; and to a financial crisis whose
victims numbered in the millions and for which nobody accepted blame.

Not surprisingly, this decade has been marked by the intense hostility of the young toward truisms that
once governed our thinking. As they saw it, the liberal international order didn’t uphold the peace — it
bled us dry. Capitalism didn’t make the country rich — it made the rich richer. Silicon Valley didn’t
innovate technology — it mined our data. The Church didn’t save souls — it raped children. The cops didn’t
serve and protect — they profiled and killed. The media didn’t tell the news — they spun it.

This hostility isn’t manifest just on the progressive left. It also accounts for the rise of the populist right.

As for tech, not only did the young invent and shape social media, social media shaped and reinvented
the young. This was the decade when algorithms meant to cater to our tastes succeeded mainly in
narrowing those tastes; when the creation of online communities led to our Balkanization into online tribes
and the dissemination of disinformation and hate; when digital connection deepened our personal

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isolation, vulnerability and suggestibility; and when the ubiquity of portable screens with infinite data
meant there was always something more interesting to do than interact with the person before us.

One result has been a kind of shallowing of our inner life: of time spent wondering, wandering, reading,
daydreaming and just thinking things over. Another result has been a shallowing of our political life via
the replacement of wit with snark and of reasoned arguments with rapid-fire tweets and hot takes.

Technology had another effect: It vastly accelerated the speed with which previously outlying ideas
became, in the hands of their mainly youthful advocates, moral certitudes.

Some of those ideas, like marriage equality (the single greatest moral victory of the decade) were long
overdue. Others, like intersectionality, gender fluidity, new standards of sexual consent or the purported
centrality of racism to American identity, are much more debatable. Moral certitude isn’t the exclusive
posture of the young. But it is an easier one to hold when life hasn’t yet given you sufficient time to leaven
idealism with experience, second-guess yourself and learn that the things you once thought were most true
aren’t quite so.

As with any decade, this one contains paradoxes and countercurrents. One paradox is the election of the
oldest president in history. Yet Donald Trump, a baby boomer, embodies the spirit of the time as much as
he rejects it, not least in his mastery of social media and the cynical, suspicious and angry nature of his
politics.

One countercurrent is that some movements that have animated the decade are, at bottom, old-fashioned.
So-called third-wave feminism contains a powerful streak of Victorianism. Similarly, the “resistance” to
Trump is partly founded on the belief that moral character matters to presidential fitness, and that this
president falls radically short.

Pedantic readers of this column will note that the decade won’t really end until Dec. 31, 2020. They’re
right. We have a year to go before we can render a more final judgment on this decade of disillusion,
and to begin to sense what comes next.

(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/opinion/decade-millennials.html)

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