Is the
University Traumatizing Generation Z?
TRIGGER WARNINGS
CANCEL CULTURE
VIRTUE SIGNALING
SAFE SPACES
SAFETYISM
WARNING!! THIS ESSAY DISCUSSES OFFENSIVE WORDS. DO NOT READ THIS
ESSAY IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED BY PROFANE WORDS
(but please ask yourself
why?)
As any
student or educator knows, words matter. Words represent ideas in the culture
and, without them, there would be no culture since the maintenance of society
is necessarily dependent on verbal communication, and this is especially true for
a species that relies so heavily on symbols and language to convey ideas
amongst ourselves.
Other
animals communicate vocally and with gestures and symbols too, but humans have
a unique capacity to communicate the culture through symbols organized into recognizable
patterns, and these patterns (words) can be strung together to convey extremely
complex sets of ideas in the form of sentences, either written or spoken. In
fact, our culture exists precisely because we are able to so easily transmit
these often complex ideas across generations in this way.
Sure, we can
and do communicate in non-verbal ways like other animals do, but our unique
ability to use symbols to communicate often lofty, complex and esoteric ideas –
in the form of words and sentences - is what distinguishes us from other
species, and it is also the reason why we have been able to evolve into such
complex, organized societies, and to create such amazing technologies and
solutions to modern social problems. No other species has ever been able to
evolve so rapidly and successfully because of this ability to communicate so
effectively - to pass along cultural attitudes, values, beliefs and the
entire history of our species, to the next generation, so that they can
then pass it along to their offspring. Remarkably, humans have also used this
symbolic skill to express our thoughts through art and music, allowing our
creative brains to stretch even further beyond the reaches of reality. It’s
quite an impressive feat, and we should not feel so egocentric as to not pause
for a moment to realize how far we’ve come and how much we’ve achieved as a
result.
But this
ability to communicate symbolically is also a big reason we have had such a
long history of social conflict because these symbols, it turns out, also
facilitate and foster tribalistic, in-group/out-group divisions, sometimes
leading to unimaginable acts of hatred and violence, usually in the name of
one’s identified race or ethnicity, class, religion, nation, gender, or sexual
orientation/gender identity. When our symbols reflect pride in a national
identity, for instance, those ideas are then in conflict with competing
national identities, forming the classic, in-group vs. out-group phenomenon that sociologists and psychologists
have understood to be a major driving force for developing personal or group-level
biases and prejudices, which are the main ingredients of cultural hatred and
violence in the world. So, for better or worse, our capacity to use symbols,
gestures, and words is the history of our evolution and, without them, modern humans
would not be the dominant species on the planet, if we were to exist at all.
For language
to be an effective means of communication, however, there needs to be
commonly-held, shared understanding of those words and what they mean. In the
realm of sociology and social psychology, there is a theoretical orientation
known as symbolic interactionism, which posits that, in order for a
society to take shape and sustain itself, individuals must know (to a large
extent) what others mean by what they say. There must be shared meanings among
members of a group, and when it’s lacking, that group or society becomes
chaotic and disorganized as people’s perception of things (their definition of
the situation) dictates what actions they will take – and these misperceptions
sometimes produce biased perceptions of reality which can easily lead to real
conflict and violence, particularly between dissimilar groups. So, it should
not be surprising to learn that intergroup conflicts and hostilities are common
among groups that do not regularly communicate with each other, or that do not
communicate effectively with one another, such as groups falling into the
separate (perceived) categories of race, class, gender, sexual
identity/orientation, disability, religion, political affiliation, and others.
So, for the
rest of this essay, I’d like to talk about the significance of words and their
meanings across generations of young adults since, in this class, we’ll be
talking a great deal about our society from the vantage point of both. Specifically,
let’s examine how older generations understand (or misunderstand) the latest
generation to enter college, Generation Z, and their unique experiences with
social media and technology, and the words and ideas they use to express that
experience.
To be clear,
when I use the term, Gen Z, I am referring to those born roughly
between 1997-2012, although some on the early fringes of these years may
identify as a “Millenial” (roughly 1981-1996) or may identify with a cohort yet
to be labeled.
But I use
the term Gen Z somewhat reluctantly, and with some irritation at the term
itself. How short-sighted and non-descriptive is this term, Gen Z! First of
all, since we live in the United States of Amnesia, we can forgive those born
so recently for not knowing why they were labeled with it. You see, once upon a
time there was a generation known as Generation X (initially known as the “Baby
Busters”). As a member of Gen X (born roughly 1965-1980), I can attest to the
fact that the previous generation, the so-called “Baby Boomers” (who I shall
ignore here, they get plenty of attention in the culture elsewhere) didn’t know
what to make of us. And we didn’t either. We were a lost generation, the first
‘latchkey’ kids who mostly came from divorced households and two working
parents. And contrary to what I’ve heard repeatedly in the media today, neither
Millenials nor Gen Z were the “first generation to earn less than their
parents”. No, sir. That distinction will always belong to Gen X, the generation
that brought you rap music, hip hop culture, new wave, punk rock, heavy metal, and
grunge music. You are welcome.
When Millennials
first began to appear on the streets, you might recall that we first called
them “Generation Y”, although nobody knew what the “Y” stood for. It was
just the letter that came after “X”. Which is why you are being called “Gen Z”
today. No other reason, just laziness. But if history is any guide, your label
will not stick. A label more descriptive will take its place. Already, labels
like, “Zoomers”, “NetGen”, “Homeland
Generation”, and “Post-Millenials” have been circulated by journalists,
magazine editors, and advertisers trying to be the first to achieve
“stickiness” of their label/brand. My preference is what some have tagged, “iGen”,
meaning internet generation, since yours is the first generation to have
been fully immersed by the internet your entire lives, never without a
computer, phone, tablet or headset. Always with a SCREEN. Even millennials did
not experience this daily saturation of screens, and the advent of modern-day
social media is simply a warp-speed transformation of the culture that nobody
saw coming, not even mentioning the looming cultural shockwave of climate
change that iGen will have to deal with (or die trying). For the sake of your
attention span, let’s leave that generational issue for another day. Let’s
focus on communication, media and technology here.
With the
advent of smartphones, social media and 5G Wi-Fi, coupled with the rising tide
of for-profit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) systems,
this new generation marks our entry into an entirely new era of social
interaction that will likely transform other major social institutions as well.
For example, what happens to education when AI system like ChatGPT begin producing high quality essays, reports, and research papers,
complete with citations, in seconds (no plagiarism required)? Well, get ready,
because it’s already here and students are using it, and talking about ways to
further refine and utilize other technologies via social media platforms like
TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, which are also iGen’s preferred sources of
news and information about the world. Have you designed your avatar yet?
But these
new and accelerating digital technologies in the Age of iGen have also brought
unforeseen problems for society, including increased stress and anxiety for
young people who spend so much time online, immersed in their chosen social
media platforms – platforms that use predictive algorithms to push products and
ideas, and that profit from taking advantage of the human tendency toward confirmation biases that can easily alter our
perceptions of reality, as we are fed full of stories that we want to see, hear
and read, and as we are simultaneously led away from counter claims that we
find distasteful or “offensive”. Added to this computer-generated psychosis is
a constant barrage of misinformation (unintended false information) and
disinformation (intended false information) that iGen must weed through daily.
So saturated with this digital selection bias, that today’s students cannot be
blamed for not having a complete picture of the world they live in, or of
having a complete picture of how to live in the world. They experience their
world on a screen, mostly. So, it’s understandable that they are so easily
influenced by what those screens are showing and saying to them. And since
social media is their primary server of reality, we should also not be
surprised that their overall worldviews can be misdirected as well, often
leading to hyper-tribalism, bullying, depression, heightened anxiety, and
suicidal ideation.
But is iGen
too saturated with computer algorithms that flood them with words, images and slanted
messaging that distort and tilt their perception of the world? Do these algorithmic
inundations really lead to heightened stress levels and increased mental
illness, alienation, depression and suicide? It seems so. For example, in terms
of the social science, here’s an abbreviated bibliography of a few recent
studies showing increases in depression, anxiety, suicide, and other mental
health problems associated with increased screen time and social media, adapted
from Lukianoff and Haidt’s recent book, The Coddling of the American Mind (a primary source for this essay).
Retrieve from this shared Google
Drive file
Surely, as
individuals, some are not disaffected in this way. Some iGen students are able
to navigate through the myriad of potential traumas that await them in the
digital landscape of social media and arrive at adulthood as strong,
independent thinkers and learners, fully aware of the pitfalls of accelerated,
obsessive, and biased media that can distort their perceptions of themselves
and of society. But many do not. Many succumb to the constant barrage of claims
and narratives that skew us into believing that the world is too scary, too
safe, or too flat. All of which shapes and reflects an
American culture of fear.
For some,
this fear of the world as it exists also includes a fear of the world as
expressed in words, since words can sometimes express cultural ideas, values
and beliefs that run counter to one’s perception of reality, and which can
threaten our core identities as an individual, group member, or nation. That is
the promise and peril of language, something our species has pondered for
millenia.
So when do
we censor certain words that might offend, in an effort to protect those
identities? When does the offense of a word spoken aloud become more than
offensive and become truly harmful to the individual or group? Do words even
have such power to scar us that deeply? More directly, can words
traumatize? I contend that they can’t, at least not in the context a
college classroom devoted to learning about culture and language itself. Sure,
your stepdad screaming obscenities at you while he’s kicking you out of your
home (or beating you) could be traumatizing, and you might recall a scene
similar to this whenever you are “triggered” by the words he was yelling at
you, but it wasn’t the words themselves that did you harm, it was the memories
and emotions it evokes.
“Sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words will never break me”
-Christian Recorder, 1862
If words
cannot break us, then perhaps we are granting them with a power that is neither
earned nor deserved. Although words are important expressions of human
emotions, motivations, and intent, they do not actually take the action
– people do. In other words, they can be used to describe human activity, but a
word is just made of letters, it cannot do anything itself, including causing
trauma. Words cannot traumatize you. Only your emotions can do that.
Like the philosopher Alan Watts, (1915-1975) has said,
You can’t get wet from the word,
‘water’
And lest we
forget the virtues instilled by overcoming adversity in life, by suffering
through hard times and reaching the next day’s dawn, and by learning from our
mistakes – mistakes that can only occur by immersing yourself in a world of
unknowns, a world full of diverse ideas, some of which you will find
frightening, offensive, or distasteful, at least at first.
That which does not
kill us makes us stronger
-Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols, 1888
After all,
how can you understand your own attitudes, values and beliefs if you are never
asked to confront them? Understanding that offense or trauma experienced from a
word(s) – regardless of how it is spoken or read - comes from within you, from
your brain’s perception of it, and not from any external source, means that you
have the power within you to interpret, ignore, or adjust your perception of
that offense any way you like. The word doesn’t affect you, only your
emotions can do that. And you always have the choice to turn that screen
off, or go somewhere else.
As Amanda
Gorman (Poet Laureate and spoken word artist who orated this
poem at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguaration) has expressed in her
poem, Good Grief:
The origin of the word, “trauma” is not just “wound” but “piercing”
or “turning”, as blades do when finding home. Grief commands its own grammar,
structured by intimacy and imagination. We often say “we are beside ourselves
with grief” we can’t even imagine. This means English can call us to envision more
than what we believe was careable of even survivable. This is to say, there
does exist a Good Grief. The hurt is how we know we are alive and awake.”
-Call Us
What We Carry, Amanda Gorman
As an
American sociologist who has been teaching classes like Deviance, Social
Psychology, Introductory Sociology, and Race Relations for 20+ years, I
regularly confront this issue in classroom conversation devoted to the question
posed by Gorman, Nietzsche, Watts and others: Can words traumatize?
Each year in
my Deviance class, for example, when discussing the power of language (as an
element of culture), I sometimes write certain offensive words on the
chalkboard (the only remaining practical use of this ancient, incarnate, tabula
rasa), including the “C-word” and the “N-word”. But I write the whole word, and
invite students to say those words aloud, in order to evoke the various
meanings of those words, so that we can consider the various cultural impacts
on various communities – to learn from one another exactly how these words are
received and interpreted by different groups of people – so that we might learn
from the mistakes we may have made in our own interpretations of those words,
or of their impact on others. This lecture, by the way, was inspired by the
feminist playwright and activist, Eve Ensler, who created the now-famous Vagina Monologues (where the audience is invited to
loudly proclaim “C—T!” in an affirmational part of the play called, “Reclaiming
Cunt”).
But Dr.
Laundra, couldn’t you have the same conversation by just saying, “N-word” or
“C-word” during your lectures, so no one will be offended?
Yes and no.
Yes, I could just say, “C-word” or “N-word” instead of spelling out the word in
full, and sometimes I do but, in doing so, I am contradicting the major lesson
of the day, which is that words have meaning, and that word, the
“C-word”, does not mean the same thing as saying, “cunt,” a word you can
feel. Shouting “fuck!” out loud does not mean the same
thing as shouting “fudge”, no more than shouting “the N-word!” is the
same thing as saying “nigga” or it’s more historical, derogatory pronunciation
and the weight and gravity of a shameful American history that makes it sting
so much for so many black folks.
How can you
fully appreciate the emotional, historical, or dynamically-evolving meanings of
these words without ever uttering them, especially since how you say them often changes their meaning? In a world where the college
classroom sometimes involves an actual trigger, do we really need to elevate
the mere offense of a word to a level akin to an actual physical trauma? I find
that to be disrespectful and insensitive to those poor souls who have actually
experienced a school shooting, or who have suffered such physical pain
elsewhere in the world. Is the trauma of hearing a bad world in a classroom
really the same kind of trauma experienced by students currently living in
Ukraine, taking their exams in the (relative) safety of a frozen bunker or
subway station in Kyiv, with Russian missiles exploding above their heads, and with
no heat or electricity? Should we NOT think of these experiences differently?
Perhaps we need a different word for the sort of ‘trauma’ experienced by merely
hearing words. Are you traumatized, or are you just offended? Did the word
bring back bad memories or associations that remind you of something that
personally affected your well-being, or of a time when you were actually
brutalized, or do you just think God won’t like it if the sound produced by
those letters reaches your ears?
Of course, none
of this means we shouldn’t be sensitive to others’ feelings, especially
whenever we speak or write publicly. It is a diverse world, so we should make
every effort to communicate respectfully and with prosocial intentions,
particularly in a classroom, knowing that some individuals come to the space
with different backgrounds and experiences with words, some of which have caused
real emotional harm. The woman who was raped, or the young black man who grew
up in a predominantly white, redneck, rural town, both have different feelings
about certain words that are often heard in public, and which cause little or no
distress for the majority of us. So we should be mindful of that fact and make
every effort to choose our words more carefully, especially in those social
settings. And this, my friends, is also why there are situations where you
should not utter an offensive word while others are allowed to (e.g. the
“N-word”). But it’s also the reason why we shouldn’t act as if those words
don’t exist in society, or to regard them as “off limits” for no other reason
than they might be uncomfortable to talk about in a college classroom. After
all, what better ‘safe space’ exists for young adults to have that kind of
conversation?
I try to
remember to provide a “trigger warning” prior to having those sensitive
conversations (about offensive words and their various meanings), but I’ve
chosen not to avoid the conversation since my students are exposed to those
words all the time out there in the so-called, “real world”, where no such
warnings are offered or expected. For example, just open your laptop or phone
and you can easily find famous celebrities like Dave Chappelle
or Trevor Noah using the offending “N-word” without censure (or even a
“bleeeep”).
Still, we
can and should take care when using loaded words like these in public. But it
is in the ‘safe space’ of a college classroom where students can expect to be
treated with fairness and dignity, and where we gather to respectfully listen
and learn from others with differing viewpoints. So we must honor those views,
including from those individuals who have experienced genuine trauma in their
lives due to acts of prejudice and hate reflected in those words (and, when
possible, allowing those individuals to bow out of the conversation). But we must
also honor the core values and purpose of academe, which is to learn how
to think openly and critically. That requires that we expose ourselves to views
that we might find offensive or distasteful, or that simply make us
uncomfortable. How can you even begin to comprehend the emotional or social
harm caused by misogynistic or racist ideologies in society if you are too
traumatized to hear the ‘offensive’ words used in everyday conversations that
represent them, let alone the voices of actual victims of these poisonous
belief systems? In the social sciences, we tackle these difficult issues head
on, because to avoid them in order to keep peace in the classroom only serves
to ensure those shop-worn attitudes and prejudices will be passed along to the
next generation, and the next. We must listen and learn, with minds open, in
order to form reasonable conclusions and to devise rational and effective
solutions to social problems. If you cannot tolerate hearing the words that
express racism or sexism in society, how can you ever fully appreciate the
effects of those words on certain individuals or groups? How can we be
adequately sympathetic to the plight of others without meaningful immersion into
those lives, and how it really feels to be that person?
Moreover, we
lose sight of the University mission of the pursuit of fair and open-minded
critical thinking whenever we engage in “virtue signaling” actions, such as
accusing others of ethical misconduct or “microaggressions” simply for using
words that some find offensive. This can produce a “chilling effect” on campus,
when students remain silent when sensitive subjects like racism and bigotry are
brought up, or when faculty (especially non-tenured, junior faculty) are more
concerned with being viewed as disruptive to the administrative will of Chairs,
Deans and Provosts, than with engaging in free and open discussions that reveal
underlying toxicities in the culture. We also lose sight of the constitutional
right to free speech in a free society.
Indeed, the
threat to free speech isn’t just coming from overly zealous ‘word nazis’ on
college campuses across America who are insisting on using correct pronouns
(she/her or they/them), removing public statues, and disinviting guest
lecturers who they are offended by. Conservative-minded groups have also seized
the moment to reshape the culture by banning certain books that offend their
political or religious sensibilities. In fact, using this same logic of
censorship, over 20 states have banned, or are in
the process of banning, books that teach so-called, Critical Race Theory, which is deemed to be any text that focuses on white
oppression of people or communities of color, to the exclusion of white
history, or that could potentially make white people feel guilty or bad about
white oppression. In their words, it could traumatize
these white kids! So,
talking about slavery from the perspective of slaves, since it might offend
certain folks in a college classroom, may not be a legal curriculum in many
states in the near future. And in other states, outlawing curriculum that
addresses gender identity or LGBTQ issues is also underway, and in some cases those books have been burned!
Is this the
kind of censored society we want to live in? Is it even possible? George Orwell thought so! Or perhaps we won’t need legislation or a
totalitarian government to dictate the new word rules. More likely, we will
engage in (intentional or unintentional) acts of self-censorship in the form of
only speaking and writing in ways that will offend no one, or by getting synaptically
stuck in our own self-affirming, bias-confirming, social media platforms, which
diminishes our capacity for critical thinking. Or maybe we can learn lessons from China’s new digital surveillance
society, where every
citizen is seen through a government lens, where the people ‘behave’ themselves
out of fear of governmental or corporate reprisals.
Wherever
society is taking us, for better and for worse, it is iGen who will be taking
us there. Where GenXers and Millenials can take pride in being part of a
cultural wave of diversity, openness and inclusiveness (and we must acknowledge
the Baby Boomers for their civil and human rights campaigns that spawned all
others), it is iGen who have made this ‘safe space’ their home. It is iGen who
have taken the ideals of their predecessors and are actually living their lives
accordingly, amidst the technological revolution that is upon us, one that is
accelerating and dramatically re-shaping how we will communicate in the future.
What an amazing time to be alive! To witness this sweeping transformation, and
to control its direction and scope, should be regarded as a privilege and an
honor. And all the generations before you are counting on you to take us in the
right direction.
So please
don’t fuck it up!
