Psychologist and author Jean Twenge will speak about the effects of mobile and social media during a lecture at Ithaca College on Thursday, September 27. Free and open to the public, her talk will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Philips Hall’s Emerson Suites.
Doors will open approximately 30 minutes before the event. Students enrolled in the Media for Social Responsibility course will be seated ahead of time, as this lecture is part of their course.
A professor of psychology at San Diego State University, Twenge’s research focuses on generational differences. She argues that today’s traditional-age college students — the first generation to spend their adolescence with smartphones — are growing up more slowly, spend more time online and less face-to-face time with their friends, and are more likely to experience unhappiness, anxiety, depression and sleep deprivation. Her talk at Ithaca College will focus on how mobile and social media have changed society, as well as people’s personal and professional lives. She will discuss ways to find a healthy balance between technology and humanity.
Twenge is the author of more than 140 scientific publications and books, including “iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood,” “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” and “The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement.”
Twenge’s research has been covered by news outlets such as Time, The New York Times and The Washington Post. She has also been featured on television news programs including “Today,” “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” “Fox and Friends,” “NBC Nightly News” and “Dateline NBC.”
She frequently gives talks and seminars on teaching and working with today’s young generation based on a dataset of 11 million young people. Her audiences have included college faculty and staff, high school teachers, military personnel, camp directors and corporate executives.
Twenge's visit is a part of this year’s Media for Social Responsibility course in the Roy H. Park School, focusing on the issue of distraction and addiction of social media. She will speak to students enrolled in the course prior to her lecture.