Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials

by Malcolm Harris

"The first major accounting of the millennial generation written by someone who belongs to it." -- Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

"The best, most comprehensive work of social and economic analysis about our benighted generation." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens

"The kind of brilliantly simple idea that instantly clarifies an entire area of culture."--William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep


Millennials have been stereotyped as lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and immature. We've gotten so used to sloppy generational analysis filled with dumb clichés about young people that we've lost sight of what really unites Millennials. Namely:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->- We are the most educated and hard-working generation in American history.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->- We poured historic and insane amounts of time and money into preparing ourselves for the 21st century labor market.

- We have been taught to consider working for free (homework, internships) a privilege for our own benefit.

- We are poorer, more medicated, and more precariously employed than our parents, grandparents, even our great grandparents, with less of a social safety net to boot.

Kids These Days, is about why. In brilliant, crackling prose, early Wall Street occupier Malcolm Harris gets mercilessly real about our maligned birth cohort. Examining trends like runaway student debt, the rise of the intern, mass incarceration, social media, and more, Harris gives us a portrait of what it means to be young in America today that will wake you up and piss you off.

Millennials were the first generation raised explicitly as investments, Harris argues, and in Kids These Days he dares us to confront and take charge of the consequences now that we are grown up.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Sociology, Politics, History, Audiobook, Psychology

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 2017

Reviews

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never been one to blame millennials or make fun of them. I interact with a lot of them as an educator and I've been nothing but impressed. They're better than my generation. This book is a bleak look at what millennials have to deal with, but that's not why it's relevant. It's important because the book takes a macro look at the economic trends that have resulted in this generation. That and the excessive policing and drugging, but Harris claims that all of that stems from the exploitation of labor by capital. I think he's mostly right--Millennials are going to be worse off than their parents and grandparents generations because wealth inequality has increased drastically. So the few that win will win big and the rest won't.

However, something else that is very millennial is the nihilism and pessimism of the generation. They have every reason to be angry, but Harris offers no hope of change at all. His "solution" section is the most depressing part of the book--neither voting or protesting or volunteering will work. Millennials are being told that they are screwed no matter what they do. So if this book is a Marxist criticism of capitalism, there is neither opiate for the masses or workers uniting at the end. Maybe because I am not a millennial, but I think that's wrong. There are solutions. He laments the end of unions--why isn't that one option? He says Sanders couldn't win because they will never let him win. Way too conspiratorial. He also peddles in the DNC stealing elections thing. I guess this is where I break from this group--I was not a bernie or bust and I still believe in the system. Maybe they are right and we are wrong, but what are the implications that this whole generation has completely lost trust and faith in institutions? Maybe they are right because institutions have let them down, but it seems like the options are checking out or fascism. This is an important book, but I hope there are more like it that are less bleak and conspiracy theory oriented.

[Jacob Fox McGuire · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://i.imgur.com/EWsNP3g.png

I enjoyed this book, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone. I would describe it as a series of essays about how capitalism overworks you and makes you crazy, and how millennials, born into our dysfunctional capitalism-in-decline, are overworked and made crazy. Harris doesn't seem to be an expert in anything other than the on-the-ground experience of Occupy. If you want to actually dig into the dysfunctions of public schools or independent contractor work or loan debt or the carceral state then he mentions books he's read about each. So I mean, maybe as a sort of bibliography?

It's a bit too much preaching to the choir for me. I dunno, in 2003 Immortal Technique wrote: "the time has come to realize your net worth in the market / and stop bein' a fuckin' commodity / and if you didn't understand what I just said / then you already waitin' to get fucked" and it's still true. If you're a millennial and you're not aware of this stuff then what are you even doing? Trump is in the White House and you're still not paying attention? Damn, dude. And then even if you are within the weird triangle of 1) uninformed and 2) liberal to centrist-Republican and 3) willing to read Marxist analysis of current events... go read Brief History of Neoliberalism, and some Current Affairs or Jacobin if you want to get mad. There just isn't much meat here.

The one useful point Harris does make is about the labor value of schoolwork, which I don't see other people talk about in quite the same way. We often discount the amount and value of schoolwork which children do, because it's unpaid, but it accretes utility. Kids who finish high school now have done more work over the course of the four years than, say, 30 years ago, because of factors like intensification of coursework and technology allowing for more efficient study. Because they've done more work on themselves during this time, they can produce more value for their employers. The implicit contract that you educate yourself more to get paid better has broken down over the years, because everyone is getting better educated and we're encouraged to compete against eachother, and also because labor protections have been eroded. This is not a new idea, but the emerging patterns of workers paying in labor and money to educate themselves and capitalists reaping the benefits are explored in a worthwhile way.

The book just doesn't go anywhere! There's no argument running throughout or call to action at the end. Things are bad and getting worse. You should know about it, and be mad. But there's no possible way to change things because they're too bad already.

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the most important book yet written on the subject. Any honest discussion of millennials ought to start here. In which we see ourselves as the inflection point of late capitalism, or western civilization in general. How will capitalism end? If we look to the daily habits and life prospects of the generation born since the onset on neoliberalism, we start to get an answer.

*
talkin' bout my generation...

Mom and Dad, I don't blame you. In retrospect, maybe seems unwise to procreate during this phase of capitalism, but I still love you anyway.

*
A properly historical materialist critique of social media - very, very impressive, & necessary right now. Don't believe curmudgeonly idealists. The media really is not the message in this case. For a generation born after the epochal shift from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, raised from birth as human capital, the kind of socializing facilitated by Facebook, Twitter, etc, is entirely adaptive. In the brave dystopia of our present, there is no boundary between the personal and the economic. Every aspect of life is an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage over one's peers. Life itself is a permanent popularity contest. Granted the kids can be pretty stupid with their endless pictures of food and so on, but to focus on this to the exclusion of any deeper social analysis really is a form of victim-blaming.

This book is a devastating punch to the gut. All due respect to Spinoza, knowing you're a slave doesn't really make you free.

[Audacia Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong argument that IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S CAPITALISM.

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seeks to get behind the stereotypes about the millennial generation to explain on the basis of research what is actually going on within the generation and what is not going on - to deconstruct the popular hype about millennials. Some of the prior comments on the book suggested that the author provided a more fact based and rigorous approach to looking at generational issues. Since I have continuing contacts with millennials in both my personal and professional life and have even been exposed to most of the stereotypes, I eagerly picked up the book and looked for enlightenment.

After finishing the book, I am still looking and the song “Won’t get fooled again” is increasingly playing in my head. My three star rating is generous and likely more than the book deserves.

I grant the central intuition of the book, namely that the stereotypes about millennial slackers are wrong and that if anything millennials are too focused and competitive rather than the reverse. I already knew this, however, and I long ago came to the realization that most if not all popular stereotypes are likely dead wrong - even the ones you agree with.

I will try to list my issues with this well intended and readable book. This list is not exhaustive.

First, the author assembles and comments on several lines of popular research in child rearing, education (both secondary and post-secondary), criminal justice, and popular culture. Think Malcolm Gladwell and you will get the idea. The trouble with this approach is that the author may not fully appreciate the nuances of the research that he/she is reviewing and may as a result draw oversimplified conclusions, even with the best intentions and care. That happens, from time to time with Gladwell (although I still read him). The alternative would be for a researcher to integrate a body of research for a broader audience, such as was recently done by Kahneman in “Thinking Fast and Slow”. Harris has a lot to say in this book, but he has such a broad reach that one starts to see signs of oversimplification - that was the case for the areas where I was familiar with the research and makes me wonder about the others too.

Second, I do not accept the overall narrative that is used to tie the different aspects of millennial life together. In effect, what is presented is a critique of post-industrial capitalism that complains about the monetization of everything, the transformation of most jobs and careers into low paying commodity gigs, and the overall oppression and exploitation of those who end up on the wrong side of the looming economic divide between the jobs and careers that can be automated and rendered obsolete and the small number of remaining elite professions and ownership positions. I am not disagreeing with the economic trends that Harris highlights. I am objecting to the deconstructionist watercolors that are used to cover most issues and turn them into exploitative instances. It would have been better if the author had given some indication that he had actually read serious arguments about human capital, economic inequality, or technological change rather than listening to the latest podcasts and reading blurbs in front of paywalls online. The details matter; the arguments matter. Invoking rage against the exploitative system comes across as argumentative flash powder. He could have even talked about Piketty’s arguments. I could follow the arguments but I had to fill in too much for myself and that made me wonder what the author was actually providing.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, generational arguments seem to correlate highly with lazy thinking. The idea that everyone in a birth cohort will share some characteristics is certainly defensible - it is obvious. The problem is to show that the shared generational characteristics add something to a consideration of the immediate issue. OK, so the middle part of the economy has been hollowed out leaving most low paying and insecure jobs for most people and a small number of lucrative plum situations for the elite overlords and their minions. This is happening to everyone, not just to millennials. It has been chronicled in various forms since before the millennials were born and these trends have been terrorizing older generations too. What does generation have to do with it? Again, I am not saying that you cannot find an effect for birth cohort in some statistical analysis. The point is in showing that such effects are important for understanding anything.

There are other problems with generational arguments. The first is that, by construction, you eliminate the need for policy prescriptions. You only see generational effects after they have occurred and long after any important causal drivers can be changed. Holy Cow - Hegel’s Owl of Minerva is back! Isn’t it great when you can bring up all sorts of problems and then blame the system, the boomers, or the capitalists for them and not have to offer any suggestions for change? Harris dances around this in a concluding chapter but it is more cute than informative.

With a generational argument, you can also lengthen you book at will, adding chapters and topics areas to taste. If it happened to that generation, then it is a generational issue! The material on education is an example. Helicopter parents, the professionalizing of college preparation, and the like have been around for quite some time. Tiger Moms and Excellent Sheep anyone? This is a problem with the book throughout - I did not see an area that was not better elaborated elsewhere.

Harris mostly employs meta analysis of survey studies to draw his conclusions. There are few cases presented to show how these trends come together in a real person. The cases presented are extremes that are used to further his points. Fair enough, except that the danger from outliers looms very large when the population of interest is tens of millions of people. It is also likely that the survey results thrown around in the book have not been well vetted to see which results are more supportable and which are not. Not all surveys are well done and well interpreted and popular surveys suffer from this. If you don’t believe me, look up recent efforts at replicating pop psychological study results and how they have turned about for the original authors. Given the variance that I am certain exists in this research, I am left wondering how thin the ice is upon which Mr. Harris is skating.

Mr. Harris is aware of many of the issues with generational research - he clearly says so at the beginning of the book. But then, he tosses the caveats in the trash and starts of on his meta-narrative on millenials. Some readers will remember what authors say in introductions.

A final issue that I will mention here is — how could I possibly show that the arguments presented by Harris are wrong? What findings would disprove what he is arguing? If there are not any, that is a problem with the argument in principle.

I had high hopes for the book but found it disappointing. Still, there is enough in the book, especially early on, to make it an enjoyable and quick read.

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so smart, so witty, and so fucking dead-on about everything that it could've only been written by a millennial. Here's what Harris proposes: how about we look at the Millennial generation the way corporations and governments have looked at them since the beginning-- as human capital to be relentlessly overworked, brainwashed into a hyper-competitive mentality, and underpaid. What he finds is so much more convincing and compelling that any stupid bullshit Atlantic thinkpiece about how lazy we are. The facts of Harris's story weren't all new to me (he discusses at length the NCAA players' strike, mass incarceration, the inflation of college tuition, endless student loan debt, the destruction of our environment, the over-prescription of pills, etc), but what was totally fresh was how Harris ties all of these things to our (do you mind if I use that pronoun?) age cohort. The "making" of his title is literal: we were fucking labrats, designed to be perfect social machines capable of producing (more than any other previous generation, I might add) at any time of the day. We're all sociopathic monsters, and if there's truth Harris's kind of hilariously bleak conclusion (where he basically says that conscious consumerism, protesting, volunteering, and VOTING are all bullshit), then we're only gonna get worse.

I can't remember identifying with a book so completely. Every other page I had to shout out some line to my warped millennial girlfriend. Every person from 20-40 must read this book. And every person above that age group should read it, too... Though I understand that it's much easier to just make up dumb shit and talk about napkins and pretend like you're morally superior because of a historical accident that made your generation the first to love the Beatles. (And then subsequently turn your back on Wings, because you wanted to hear more serious and artful stuff like Dan Fogelberg. Great job!) Keep murdering your children with outdated gun laws, boomers! You guys rule.

[Bill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Born 1985.

Malcolm Harris, it's not you, it's me. Well, maybe it's not entirely me and maybe it's some of you. Either way, I was clearly not the target audience for this book. I do not espouse the term "late capitalism", I did not stand with Occupy Wall Street, I did not vote for Bernie Sanders. Which means that a lot of your conclusions, I disagreed with. That's okay, but let's get a few things straight here that we can agree on:

1. Companies are not hiring women because executives can pay them less.
2. Bernie Sanders was not cheated out the Democratic nomination.
3. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) did not fall apart because of the police (or at least, not entirely)
4. ADHD it not a conspiracy created by teachers and parents to wanted to control children.
5. Not every millenial works for a tech start-up.
6. Voting happens more than once every four years.

This goes to one of my problems with the book. He would say something that I agreed with, but then he would follow it up with a sentence that would stop me in my tracks. Or, as happened more often, entire chapters would go by without a point. There was no central theme other than "things are bad". And then he would contradict himself. After chapter after chapter about how overworked and over supervised kids are, he then talks about the amount of time kids are spending on YouTube videos, Vines, and other enterprises. This would have been fine if he explained how these two ideas co-exist, but he never quite got there. The worst offender, the one that dropped the book from two stars to one was the conclusion. Harris says that "a book like this needs solutions, right". And you know what, it really does. However, Harris forfeits. He names possible solutions, and tries to say why they won't work. Without providing others that may work. One of this solutions is to "drop out of the system", whatever that means.

Overall, the book is too weak, too scattered, too (dare I say), whiney. I get it, as a Millenial, life sucks. I didn't need a book to talk about how bad life is. We need solutions.

[Rick Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hey millennial! Ever feel like your parents and other adults are speaking a different language when it comes to your life and career choices? Do you ever wonder why you feel a low grade paranoia about your job and future? Do you deeply relate to videos of hamsters running on wheels? Well, it’s not your fault, it’s society that’s fucked! This book will explain why.

This book is depressing as hell. It’s essentially a well researched sociological look at middle class millennials in the United States. The author touches on lower class experiences but I think that domain is better represented by books focused on it, like New Jim Crow.

Where the author does investigate, I agree with the analysis. It’s not a great look: growing job insecurity, student debt, increased competition throughout. All the usual suspects paint a bleak picture of the future for myself and my peers. But it does seem that the author, whenever possible, takes the darkest possible interpretation of what is going on. I don’t know that he was wrong, just cynical.

I see plenty of peers caught on the human treadmill that is mainstream culture: Spin class, Subaru, Soul crushing job. And while there seems to be no shortage of people who are willing to endure miserable bullshit for high status jobs, I also see some of my compatriots “tuning in and dropping out.” Tiny house in the countryside, seasonal work, or simply not getting caught on the hamster wheel of prestige jobs. It would be nice if the middle class “American Dream” still existed, but as more and more evidence of its death creeps in, more and more people seem to be going their own way. That at least gives me some hope.

I am disappointed there weren’t stronger takeaways. As it seems with these kind of books, this one has a strong research background, but with little actionable information other than to sit down and weep.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-crafted argument for why Millennials don't even remotely fit the stereotypes placed on them by other generations. I don't know that Millennials will learn anything new from this - we're overworked, over-tracked, high-performing, exhausted, depressed, anxious, underemployed, over-educated, financially worse off than our parents, etcetcetc. Even in the few years since this book's release, it seems the conversation around these aspects of Millennial-hood has gotten louder, as our generation has started fighting back against the capitalism and commodification and optimization of our every waking minute.

It'd be great if folks from older generations would read this. Millennials are not a lazy, entitled generation. The world we move through is not the same world our parents moved through, and any act of resistance is an attempt to make the rest of our lives better and leave a better world for generations that follow.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A passionate polemic that sheds light on the ways in which our society has evolved to make every aspect of the lives of our children geared towards forming them into better workers. The increasing structure of their so-called "leisure time," the ubiquity of social media, and increasingly rigid academic curricula are all, Harris argues, in the service of making children into "human capital."

Though much of Harris' analysis is convincing, there's a theoretical problem at the heart of the book. Harris on the one hand, approaches his subject with a decidedly Marxist framework, but on the other hand, a lot of his problem with the treatment of young people as human capital seems not to be the darkness of that proposition, but rather, the fact that late capitalism fails to deliver on its promises. In other words, at many points in the book, it seems like all of these problems would be made okay if only unemployment wasn't so high, or colleges were tuition-free. In a lot of ways, I think he underplays the darkness of some of the cultural changes he's describing.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bleak in both its conclusions and on the potential for escaping them, Kids These Days is still very much worth a read.

[Lawrence Grandpre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good extended essay style conversation around the economic social and psychological precarity facing the millennial generation. Well researched and yet accessible and very readable.

[Andrin Albrecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of all of Harris’s work, not just because of its political poignancy, but especially also because of its style. It’s rare to read something at once so meticulously researched and casually written. At times, that’s to the point of cockiness, but even then, the personality of his writing style is refreshing, the analysis flows so naturally that I can’t help myself being swept along, and each statistic, secondary reference or little quip is organically embedded into the whole. If you look for a prime example of how to make academic research engaging—even provocative—look no further.
At the same time, “Kids these Days” seems to be one of those books that was extremely relevant at a certain point in time and already rather outdated a few years later. Unlike Harris’s magisterial “Palo Alto,” which charts two centuries of American history and connects it not just to the present but to issues we’ll face for decades to come, this one is concerned with the emergence of a specific generation which by now … well, is done emerging. We know about millennials, and we’ve shifted our interest to those who come after that. Precarity and brutal competition, social media and the gig economy, child stardom and the economization as well as preposterous prize hikes of higher education, they’ve become a reality we don’t need warning about. Harris’s book might unearth some additional details, draw some more sinister connections, but, in 2025, it achieves little more than a good gaze out our living room windows (if you’re fortunate enough to even afford a place with a living room). It was published during the first year of the Trump administration, and I would be hugely interested in a sequel a decade later, which could explore how many of the trends (from mental illness among teenagers to preschool training, sexual behavior, and the actual odds of “succeeding” in a grueling labor market) have developed since. The benefits to learning in detail how all of that was ten years ago are limited.
In short: top marks for style and former timeliness, high marks for intrigue, medium for usefulness beyond the purposes of a Harris completionist. We definitely need more writers like him, and we also need more books like this one—just newer ones.

[Muffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book a lot. It breaks down in clear language exactly how things are different for millennials than for previous generations, and what that's doing to us. I really recommend this to older readers who aren't familiar firsthand with, for example, the ways student loans have changed. In the end, Harris is unable to point to anything to be optimistic about (which is a bit frustrating) but it is clear there's only one way forward: full revolution.

[Margit Wilke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most confrontational book I have read in a while. Very descriptive and informative but still extremely interesting. Would recommend to anybody around my age (20-30ish) but also basically to anyone who is curious about the future and how we fit into it (as a generation and as people in general). I don’t scare easily but this book did - it also made me laugh as well as cry as well as question what the fuck we are doing. A great read.

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to feel depressed about the state of affairs that have ground you down into the dust but also like hey at least you’re not alone in your misery and also soothe that part of you that feels like each point of pain in your life is 100% your fault and your fault alone, then boy have I got a book for you!

[Phil Overeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d like to assign this book to every old fart I’ve ever heard deride Millennials as “entitled,” one thing they demonstrably aren’t. Harris’ book is engrossing and exceptionally well-researched and argued, with a conclusion that’s a few steps away from a great American dystopic novel.

[Luke Hillier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a clear-minded, coherent articulation of the ways American culture has rapidly changed to shape the conditions of life for millennials -and- the ways that we're conditioned to navigate them. I appreciate that from the jump Harris dispels the tired, canned narrative about entitled, lazy millennials that we were gaslight with throughout the 2010s and then goes on to communicate the actual reality: Because of the rise of the internet and the increasingly all-consuming reach of capitalism, we're actually the most productive generation in history with the least time (or compensation) to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Harris is thorough in his analysis of the intersecting ways so much of our lives have been commodified and extracted for profit, beginning in childhood and extending into our leisure and entertainment. The Bop-It metaphor in the conclusion is worth the price of the book (though I borrowed the audiobook from the library) alone. In considering the various strategies for social change (Targeted Product Consumption, Voting, Volunteering, and Protest), he deconstructs the failings of each, and demonstrates how whenever one approach is suggested, we're immediately called or chided to "Bop-It" and re-focus our attention on another concern that is seemingly more pressing. Other reviewers have faulted this for failing to offer a more optimistic conclusion or applicable means of responding. It is true that this does neither, and I found myself continually falling back on a refrain of "Well shit, we're screwed." But it still functions as an exceptional data-driven unveiling of the myth of millennials in favor of the far more grueling, despairing reality, and that's a crucial start. You have to understand the problem before you can address it, and educating is often the first step in organizing.

[Michael Brosseit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having not read in awhile, this was a good book to restart with. In some ways, though, the book kinda spreads itself thin by addressing a wide range of issues without going extremely deep into any single one. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though because I never felt any topic fatigue. I am, however, ready for the next book on sociology/politics I read to be more concentrated on a single idea. What I disliked most about this book was the final chapter where he briefly discussed general solutions to the problems identified throughout it. At least once while describing each solution he, in some way or another, conceded that it would be ineffective. I agree. Volunteering for a nonprofit won’t do anything to curb the “professionalization of childhood”. Protesting won’t work if you can’t identify an enemy or specific issue because “everything is fucked”. The real solutions are deeply un-American.

[Omikun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty engaging, at least in the beginning. The idea of school work as a form of labor and that it has market value is one I've thought about but never put in to works quite that way before. Kids are basically forced to work for the benefit of society and it's couched in a language of self improvement or working for the potential of their future earning potential. In reality it's all a meat grinder meant to stratify the student population so schools can choose the cream of the crop.

It really wasn't until my senior design that I realized what learning could be, as opposed to being force fed names and dates and equations and regurgitate at regular intervals. I only wished it covered more about what learning could be, as opposed to how education is completely locked down (which it is) and how there isn't anything we can do to change it.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

"MALCOLM HARRIS is a communist".

That's in quotes because it's literally how the first sentence of the About the Author blurb at the back of the book begins. I don't think it was supposed to be, because going two blank pages past it gets you to the inner flap of the dust jacket, where the entirety of the three sentence blurb is repeated identically except "a communist" is replaced with "a freelance writer".

I had a good, long laugh at that. I'm dying to know if somebody at Little, Brown and Company was deliberately trolling Harris by somehow managing to slip it in or if it was an honest mistake.

Now, you'd've picked up the fact that "MALCOLM HARRIS is a communist" just from reading the rest of the book. It's filled with references to capital exploiting labor, owners exploiting workers, businesses exploiting consumers, the educational system exploiting students, the rich exploiting the poor, etcetera exploiting etcetera. His particular obsession is recasting literally everything anyone does as un- or insufficiently-paid work, from children attending school to people learning the violin to would-be PewDiePies making YouTube videos, and casting those forms of "work" as serving only to benefit the bourgeoisie usual scary old white male folk devils who supposedly rule the world. Harris is so desperate to twist everything into a secret plot by the wealthy corporate-controlling class to oppress the proletariat masses for financial gain that he actively contradicts himself at multiple points, sometimes from sentence to sentence in the same paragraph, just for the sake of throwing anything he can at the wall to see what sticks. He also seems to really hate the idea that individuals can succeed because they simply put in more time or effort than their competitors, railing against the idea that some people manage to become successful, famous, or are otherwise rewarded for their efforts. The idea that anyone's rap career (or whatever) would fail to get off the ground because they simply have no talent is cast as an unforgivable sin of modern society, as we're all entitled to internet fame at a minimum, apparently. There's no solution offered, but given that "MALCOLM HARRIS is a communist", one assumes that everyone would be apportioned whatever is deemed to be the socially acceptable level of money and celebrity, while those that excelled beyond Harris' view of what is appropriate would presumably be sent to a gulag. While ordinarily that would seem farfetched, the book does get progressively more hysterical as it goes along, ending with the suggestion that we're already most of the way into a transformation into a fascist corporate police state and our common interests require us to engage in some sort of revolt against our collective enemies ("the 1 percent" serving as the ultimate villains, obviously) that would involve destroying the entire capitalist system.

Whiny, paranoid, selfish, totalitarian, self-congratulatory, and unwilling to accept that personal choices could account for even even the slightest measure of any problems facing his generation, Malcolm Harris is inadvertently the perfect encapsulation of what's wrong with many millennials.

[Camille McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first glance, this book did not seem like it would be too serious, although it did seem like it would address some of the complaints about the Millenial generation and show how material circumstances are shaping the character of the Millenial generation, we're not just a bunch of lazy and demanding people. The book surprised me in its depth, its militant writing, and in its devotion to using data and historical materialism to talk about our generation and compare it to others.
I already had some knowledge of the differences in the pay scale, unionization of the work force, and the changing nature of work for our generation, but I had not thought about the way education has changed and how that has affected our generation. Harris writes about education as being a way of increasing human capital - a better-educated worker has more abilities and is able to produce more profit than a less-educated worker. We have essentially increased our human capital, but this increase has translated to higher profits for employers, not the workers, who are getting paid a pittance as wages stagnate. Our society has also foisted off the responsibility for increasing human capital onto individuals, and is draining people of money in order to get a college education.
One way this book differs from similar nonfiction books about problems we face is that his ending conclusions do not include a rosy picture of how we can change things. Instead, he talks about the "Bop It" game we play, trying to change things by electing different people, calling Senators, and protesting, and how each of these things has very little effect and just puts you on an endless loop of doing the same things over again. He is hinting here that we need system change, not just a quick fix of a few bits and pieces. The entire system needs an overhaul, or even to be scrapped altogether and built anew. I appreciate his honesty and his straightforwardness in this section.
His concluding words suggest that Millenials will either become fascists or revolutionaries, but something will have to happen, because we are headed down a path where we are faced with one or the other, even if we don't know when or how that choice will come about.
I am glad I picked up this book on a whim at the library, and highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the difference between Millenials and earlier generations of Americans.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely a popular assessment (i.e., not scholarly/peer-reviewed) of the overall network of conditions, trends, forces, etc. that have shaped the millenial mindset. And I think Harris is right about most of what he identifies. The key elements of millenial psychology actually have fairly little to do with us, they have much more to do with the dense networks of competition, isolation, pressure, and anxiety that have been imposed upon us by the increasing divestment of state social support, increased precarity of working conditions, social pressures that demand we compete at ever higher levels for fewer and fewer rewards, etc. Harris draws on a wide range of sources--both scholarly and more popular--to support his contentions, and he creates a comprehensive picture of millenial psychology that maps neatly onto the data.

The one major qualm I might have is with the downbeat ending of this book. The pessimism itself isn't unjustified, but in one section he predicts that millenials won't mount any serious political challenges to the neoliberal status quo, and that millenial politicians, in fact, might be more corrupt and self-serving than the current crop. I wonder whether Harris would rethink that prediction given the new batch of millenial age representatives elected in 2018, many of whom are overtly leftist or outright socialists. And they're incredibly popular. This notion that millenials are too atomized and isolated to engage in collective action doesn't seem to jive with the rising levels of support for socialism, the increased numbers of teacher's strikes, the collective activism of student lead gun-control movements, etc. (Of course, current student protests are Gen Z, but many of the numbers I've seen suggest that Gen Z is trending slightly more left than millenials, but that both cohorts share many fundamental values and ideals).

[Marilyn Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has laid out a fascinating account of what is happening today to youth in the areas of their work and their worth. He shows that the much maligned group of young people known as millennials are actually working harder than previous generations, yet getting much less for their work than any previous group. He traces the historic trends that have shaped them into 24/7 performers, better educated and less rewarded, beginning with the organized play dates arranged for them as children. The educational standards they have been asked to achieve are now a system of increasingly higher hurdles, all in the name of progress and preparing them for the demands of the 21st century job market which is, this far into the century, still largely undefined. Their futures are not promising, as they struggle to succeed within a system that has taken away their hope with the burden of student loan debt. He says that they don't have much choice, yet, he says, they have all the choice there is, and can choose to overthrow the current economic and political systems or labor within it. The author has an unrelenting voice throughout the book, asking questions and answering them with statistics that are presented in a way that is accessible and convincing.

[Jesse Summers · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book claims and illustrates how stressful it has been to grow up as a millennial, which is in fact compatible with the stereotype that millennials have grown up coddled and unable to deal with stress. In fact, I suspect the stereotype and the book’s position are both true and that they’re related.

But the book is flat out wrong on some major points, and the evidence is sometimes misguided and sometimes presented deceptively. Once I caught this a couple of times, the book stopped sounding like a worthwhile attempt to show what things are like for a millennial, and instead read as a polemic that things are universally hard for millennials, regardless of how good the (unbiased, balanced) evidence for that position actually is. Which is, unfortunately, kind of a whiny and entitled way of arguing—perhaps correctly!—that millennials aren’t really as whiny and entitled as you might have thought.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

My immediate gut response to Malcolm Harris' Final Words chapter, published with just 3 years of precedented, normal left: Who would have thought it would be a pandemic?

I feel like Harris could honestly write a second volume because the Covid19 Pandemic disrupted the entire world and its effect on millennials has not been great. It has made a lot of the issues he discusses in Kids These Days even worse.

[Daria · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. I listened to the audio version.
The narrator was quite good and some parts were very informative however it's very focused on the US and their infrastructure so I found myself having a hard time staying interested.
Overall I think it gives you some good insights into Millennials but it wasn't the easiest book to get through.

[lucien alexander “sasha” · Rating 5 out of 5]

grim but vital. i actually gained a deeper understanding of myself as a millennial and of generational phenomena writ large.

[Andi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thorough and engaging look at the economic and societal trends that have shaped today's young adults, and it is bleak but fascinating. The main theme is the shift from seeing kids and people more broadly as human beings to seeing them as "human capital", that is, a resource to be refined, managed, and spent, and he looks at this topic through several lenses including schooling, mental health, business trends, and more. There is a lot of information in here, a lot of which I already knew in some form or another, but the way this author gathers it and the connections he makes are enlightening.

My one major criticism is the shift in tone in the "Conclusions" chapter; every argument in the preceding chapters is thoroughly sourced and cited, but here jumps into the realm of predictions, and honestly, I don't see the point. The picture he has painted up to there is certainly bleak, but the predictions he chooses to make a) seem random, and b) come off as just needlessly pessimistic. I'm no delusional optimist, and yes, the system as it stands cannot continue without even more serious consequences than what we're already seeing. But he discounts political solutions entirely, which I think is a mistake — one round of good representatives won't immediately undo everything, but it can certainly start — and for someone who has done so much of it, he seems to have a very naive view of what protesting even is and how it works. He talks one minute about the advances made by the civil rights and anti-war protesters of the 1960s and 70s, and then claims that because modern protest movements like Occupy and BLM are met with violence that they cannot succeed. Has he not seen the footage of firehoses being turned on civil rights marchers? He knows what happened to MLK, right? Protesting isn't a magic wand that makes governments immediately roll over and do what you want; it's a long and often thankless slog and it can take years to have tangible political effects, and this has always been true. No one of the solutions he discounts by itself will do the trick, and change will not be fast or easy, but I hardly see how the solution then is to just roll over and die, metaphorically speaking. Maybe there will be revolution, as he suggests, but if so, I don't think it will be recognized as such until several years later. I don't think we're going to storm the winter palace or start guillotining the 1% (although who knows, I'm not saying I'd necessarily be opposed to that), but realistically speaking, my generation knows the game is rigged, and unlike the Gen X slackers, we've realized that dropping out and refusing to engage just supports the system. We haven't been taking it lying down, and I don't think we're about to start.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

YEET THE RICH

Some years ago, Jean Twenge wrote Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before. The book looked at how the current generation of kids these days were raised with the unholy combination of high expectations, a coddled upbringing, and low prospects for the future, and the psychological toll that was taking on us. It was really good, but it's getting a little long in the tooth. It was written at a time when the oldest Millennials were entering the workforce and the youngest were teens, now the youngest of that generation are old enough to be college grads. (Hell, it was written before the word "Millennial" had stuck, instead relying on the placeholder "Generation Me.")

A decade later, Malcolm Harris (himself a Millennial) revisits the cohort, this time through an economic lens. This gist of the book is that hypercapitalist market forces (enabled by Boomers and everyone before them) have fucked us over in a big, big way. This shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone with a clue, but everything is presented in a very accessible way. In bite-sized subchapters, Harris traces the life a Millennial, from overworked student to overworked and overpaying college student, to overworked and underpaid contributing member of society hurtling towards an uncertain future. Bleak, yes, but also important. It's the economic counterpart to the psychological Generation Me that we need.