How Should We Study Generational ‘Changes’—Or Should We? A Critical Examination of the Evidence for ‘Generation Me’

In this essay, we discuss some of the issues that are involved when making inferences about birth cohorts and we describe some of our work that has caused us to question the strength of the evidence for so‐called ‘Generation Me’ effects. In particular, we describe our analyses from the Monitoring the Future project using self‐esteem and respond to criticisms of our work. At this point, we believe that there is insufficient evidence to support the conclusion that the personalities and self‐beliefs of today’s young people are dramatically different from previous generations of American youth.