Episode 97: Hollowed Out Youth with Jeremy Adams

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This is The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes.

Tom Wheelwright:

Welcome to the WealthAbility Show where we're always discovering and make way more money and pay way less taxes. Hi, this is Tom Wheelwright, your host founder and CEO of WealthAbility. We're all entrepreneurs. We're all looking to be entrepreneurs. And as entrepreneurs, we know that we're going to have employees, we're working with young people and we have a generation of young people that is unlike any generation before. So how do we work with them? What can we do? What are the issues going on there?

We have an expert with us. Totally an expert. Jeremy Adams. Has written a brilliant new book about this generation, Hollowed Out: A Warning About America's Next Generation. Very excited to have this conversation with Jeremy. Thank you so much for being with us. And if you will, just give us a little bit about your background. I know you have an amazing background in education.

Jeremy Adams:

Thank you so much, Tom, for having me on. I have to say, in all of the interviews I've done for the book, this is the first one when it comes to finance and entrepreneurship and all of that. So I'm very excited to be here.

I've been a public school teacher for 24 years. I've also taught at a university for 15 years and because I, for some reason have a pension for self-loathing, I decided to start writing 10 to 15 years ago about these issues. Again, if anybody out there wants to publish a book, it can be very difficult. It's kind of an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege the first few years you trying and get it done. But I'm really excited about Hollowed Out. I think it's really, really important that people from all walks of life hear this message because it doesn't matter if you are in the public or the private sector, it doesn't matter you're a parent or a non-parent. You really need to understand that in America, we're only one generation away from losing these blessings that we have. So we really need to understand what's coming our way with the young people in our classes today.

Tom Wheelwright:

Thank you. Just, if you will, what do you mean by hollowed out? And what group of people are you referring to?

Jeremy Adams:

I'm really talking about my current and my former students in the last five to 10 years. One of the things that people try to do when they want to excuse the book, or just kind of wash it away is they'll say, “Well, every generation think the next one is going to hell.” And this is really just a book that's screaming, “Get off my lawn.” And what I'd really like to say is, “No, it is not.” There is something unique and troubling going on with our young people that I've noticed in the last five to 10 years. Again, I've been teaching long enough, almost a quarter of a century to tell you that something very troubling and something very worrisome is emerging in the life of young people.

And just to kind of distill it all down, the things that make our lives worth living, the connections to our families, to our country, the idea of having marriage and family, reading, learning, all of these things that fill in the human soul and give us a sense of purpose, they're not there for these young people today. They are literally hollowed out of these connections. And you see it.

Our young people are not like young people from the past. They are uniquely miserable. If you look at the rates of suicide in the last 10 years, they've gone up, Tom, by over 60%. If you look at the rates of self harm, I mean, of suicide, it's gone up as well. So suicide, self harm, isolation, loneliness, the way that young people look at religion, the way they look at family life, the way they look at their country, their financial literacy is all historically low. This is not like any other generation before us and we need to get a handle on it.

Tom Wheelwright:

In your opinion and in your research, why is this generation so different from the preceding generations?

Jeremy Adams:

Well, great question. To a certain degree it's kind of a chicken or an egg. Is it social media? Is it the loss of religion? Is it a kind of postmodern relativism that tells everybody that they're the center of the universe, and that the only way to reach happiness and fulfillment is to only worry about yourself? I think all of these things are happening concurrently at the same time. And when you have all of these things that encourage young people to only worry about themselves…

Let me just say this, a lot of people, it's interesting, Tom, a lot of people think this book was written about the pandemic, about all the problems that we see in our young people as they come back to school, the fact that they're not connecting, they're not paying attention. Their attentions spans are destroyed. What's interesting is, this book was written before the pandemic and these problem problems are being accelerated and amplified in everything that I'm seeing as they've come back to school.

Tom Wheelwright:

One of the things that makes this human is social and connectedness. How are you seeing this manifest outside of the obvious statistics of self harm, depression, et cetera? But when you look at the school kids, how do you see this manifesting itself?

Jeremy Adams:

Great question. When you and I went to school, imagine when there were two or three minutes at the end of the period, the teacher would say, “Okay, everybody put your stuff away and just don't get too rowdy.” What would we do? We'd talk, we'd flirt, we'd gossip, we'd run around the classroom a little bit. If you went to high school parties, they were loud and rambunctious. And what's scary, what's terrifying to me, and I guarantee all of the teachers out there who listen to this podcast, are going to nod their heads when they listen to it, silence. When you give kids time to do whatever they want to do, they don't talk, they don't engage. They get on their phones and they self-medicate.

I come from a part of central California where you have church and you have football and they're pretty coequal. What's interesting, I've noticed, is young people don't date, they don't go to football games, they don't go to the movies, literally the kind of connective tissue that makes childhood fun and engaging and special. I think most people kind of romanticize about their childhood, about how innocent it was and falling in love for the first time and doing crazy thing with your friends.

I want people out there to understand, imagine a childhood where none of those things are happening? I literally asked my students, “Why don't you come to homecoming? Why don't you come to the football games anymore?” And you know what they said? They said, “Oh, well, we still socialize. We still hang out with our friends. We just do it at home by ourselves.”

Tom Wheelwright:

Wait, wait, wait a minute. Do they say why? Here's the thing. To me, a lot of times when they go to their screens, et cetera, that's an escape. I mean, they're escaping to something. My first question for you is, “What are they trying to escape?”

Jeremy Adams:

Well, they're very honest about it. I mean, this is the great thing about being a teacher is that, you know you don't get famous and rich, but sometimes you do see these trends a little bit before everybody else does. And one of the things I've noticed and I write about this in Hollowed Out a bit, is that they will admit that look, “It's just very messy, the actual in-person engagement. When you go to a football game, you don't know who you're going to encounter. Are you going to see a teacher there? Are you going to see the parent of the girl you're trying to date or you're flirting with?” How do we deal with all of these messy, ambiguous social situations? I found that, we all remember how awkward it is, right? To go into a room where you don't know anybody. And because of their devices, they can talk to who they want to talk to. They can do the things they want to do without dealing with the messiness of human relationships.

What scares me is that, yes, it's easier, but the difficulty is the good stuff. It's learning how to date somebody, it's learning how to fall in love. It's learning how to be a friend with someone. One in five millennials say that they don't have a good friend in the entire world. Half, half of all 18-34 year olds. I mean, those are the kids that I teach now and the people I've been teaching for the last 15 years. Half of them don't have a romantic partner. And they say it's because they just don't know how to handle that kind of a commitment. I mean, consider that; family love friendship going out. It's not there for a lot of young people.

As a teacher, I'm a romantic about books and about reading. And one of the things that I've learned as they've come back to campus is they have no attention span. They literally cannot follow a text beyond a few pages. I gave a test last week and most of the test was on the lectures that I give. I gave two articles, short articles, and I said, “Okay, guys, you have to read these articles and there'll be some test questions about them.” And I didn't lecture on them. “You just have to read it on your own.”

Well, guess which questions they all missed? The reading questions, where they actually have to engage something with some time and focus. It's very disturbing.

Tom Wheelwright:

Well, so let me ask you this. I always tell my staff in my company that there are certain things you can't do by email. They like to do everything by email. And I'm going, you cannot have a conversation. It literally is impossible to truly have a conversation by email because you don't get the physical, you don't get the tone is always different. To me, it's, you're bailing out on the relationship when you do via text or whatever. So what do we do to help these kids, get them, allow them to be messy, allow them to make mistakes, allow them to get in and get their hands dirty?

Jeremy Adams:

Well, actually, I'm going to answer this question with a question for you to be perfectly honest. So many of the things that I see in my really young people, my 18, 19, 20 year old students, it's interesting. When I follow my older students, my students who are now in their early thirties, I noticed that a lot of them in the wake of the pandemic, they don't want to go back to work. They don't want to go back to the office. My wife is an attorney, one of my best friends is an investment banker in Chicago, and they're just pulling out their hair because they're trying to get these people in their… these millennials and these genziers to understand, “Look, it's really hard to mentor you if you are not in the office with me.” It's exactly what you are talking about. That there's a kind of organic joy that you get of being in the same room.

I'll be honest, Tom, I would much rather be in a studio with you right now, doing this, right? Not that I'm not enjoying this, I'm enjoying this very much, but I think there's a vibe. I think there's an energy it's hard to describe to people who've never experienced it. I'm seeing this in people who are, the generation behind me. I don't know what generation you're in. You look really good, whatever your age is, but I'm a gen exer. I'm in that generation that the first time I ever saw the internet I was 19 years old. So I grew up, I fell in love, I learned how to go to church. I learned about my nation way before all of these things. And I understood that being in the classroom…

And this is the thing, I mean, let me answer the question from my perspective. I hated last year, Tom, I hated it because that magic… There is a, my, I don't have a vocabulary big enough. Maybe grandeur, enchantment, whatever the word is of being in the classroom with another human being, you know that you are teaching them something that they will take with them, the rest of their lives.

Tom Wheelwright:

I don't think there's any question. I do a lot of speaking, and speaking over virtually is not nearly the same. Because you don't get the same energy, you don't get the same connection, you don't see that light go on like you do when you're there in the room with them, right? For me, sometimes I'm in front of five or 10,000 people, but you can still see it. And it doesn't matter if it's five or 10,000 or 15 or 20 to me, you still get to see that. You don't get that virtually.

I've got to believe, I mean, I feel bad for the teachers. For me, it meant I didn't have to travel and I got to spend more time with my grandkids. So that was all good. But the reality is, my wife says I was like a caged tiger that I couldn't wait to get back to being on stage and to being with people. Because there is that connection. And just so you know, I am in that, hey, boomer generation.

Jeremy Adams:

Do you hate that though? I would-

Tom Wheelwright:

I don't care. I honestly don't care. I actually love millennials. My partners are millennials, my staff's millennials, and I love them. They're hard workers. I don't have that issue with them. There are lot of boomers too. I know that we're a whole very… I thought of this of my parents.

Jeremy Adams:

Exactly. Yeah.

Tom Wheelwright:

My parents were the greatest generation, and we had the same issue with them. But let me ask you a question. If you could, just give us a couple of ideas. I want to talk briefly about what we can do from an education standpoint. But before we get to the actual education side, what do we do as far as helping our children, our employees, et cetera, socialize so that they don't get disconnected, really from humanity?

Jeremy Adams:

I think that one of the things that we have to do, because I'm sure that the business world and the realm of what you do with commerce and investment and all of that, I do think that there's a lot of similarities to the classroom. And I think that we have to be completely unapologetic about the limits of technology. One of the things that I see with a lot of people who are kind of older is that they're so embarrassed to say to millennials or to gen-ziers or to young people, “Look, technology is a tool, it is not a panacea.” Technology should help us with the humanity of what it is we're trying to achieve. I'm trying to educate my students, I'm trying to raise my children. You are trying to inspire the people in your audiences. You're trying to give them education to have financial literacy so that they can do what it is they want to do in their lives and meet their financial goals. And I think that we have to be able to embrace traditional connections. Don't worry about apologizing about the limits of technology.

I see this a lot with the kind of the younger people on my staff sometimes, is that they think that the latest and the greatest gadget is going to be the solution. That there's a solution out there, we haven't invented it yet, and if we could just wait on the Silicone Valley to come up with it, it's going to be the solution. Let's stop with the solution. Let's stop with the idea of technology being the panacea. It's never going to be. Nothing can supplant the humanity of your business practices or my educational classroom teaching.

Tom Wheelwright:

Well, let me suggest that education is a perfect example of that. I find that if you take a teacher who's not a great teacher, and you put them on video, it doesn't make them better. They don't get better by doing it online. It actually gets worse because at least when they're in front of people, they can adjust and try to adjust someone and kind of conceive people are drifting, et cetera. And it's very tough to see that when you're on a Zoom call or something like that. But let's talk about some of your solutions.

I like some of your solutions in Hollowed Out. I think they're very practical. For example, you mentioned the idea of just sitting down to dinner together. How important is it to get people in the same room?

Jeremy Adams:

Great question. One of the things that I think would really surprise most people who aren't teachers is the extent to which young people today live their lives completely detached from adults; adult values, adult expectations, adult relationships. And so when you live your life with maybe a single parent who's working three jobs, in the last year and a half, you haven't been around your teachers. Young people, they don't go to church, so, those kind of adults as a pastor. Again, they don't really have older friends.

So what happens is young people spend nine or 10 hours a day… that statistic shocks people and I'm not making it up. And it's pre pandemic. Young people spend nine to 10 hours a day on their devices. And what are they watching? They're watching other kids and what young people think, and what young people say. So that lack of connective tissue to adults.

I would argue if I could change one thing, it's the fact that young people today don't have those adult role models in their life. I would argue, and I know that you agree with me here, that we all, as human beings, we learn by the examples in front of us, and we're going to absorb values. Young people are going to absorb values. Some people say, “Well, they don't have any values.” Yes they do. They're just not the values that are going to lead them on a path of success. And so you have got to put yourself in the actual physical space, the emotional space, the intellectual space.

And as a civics teacher, I would tell you the political space of young people today, that is I think, solution number one. I know you mentioned the fact that I wrote about how we don't eat with our families anymore. That's not just poor people who are working three jobs, that's also wealthy families who are keeping their kids so busy all the time. Tom, we now spend in this country more money on fast food than we do on groceries. When I read that, it's one of those statistics that you stop reading, and it tells you how busy we are and how unhealthy we live.

Tom Wheelwright:

I think one of the shocking things to me the other day, my wife and I, we go out to dinner together regularly. And we're out to dinner at this restaurant. This family, two kids and their parents come. And the kids promptly take out their iPads and they are on their iPads, and the parents are on their cell phones. And I'm going, “Wait a minute. This is not a family dinner. This does not count.” My wife is insistent that we have family dinner. Sunday night, everybody comes. Everybody comes. There are no iPads. There are no cell phones, not allowed. You don't turn on the TV. This is our time together. And it just seems to me like… What I'm hearing is that generational connection is really important.

Jeremy Adams:

So true, and it doesn't happen. One of the things that I would say, it's funny, the way you were talking about what you saw at the restaurant, is that we have to learn. We usually learn this in family meals, and we used to learn this in the classroom. We have to learn how to disagree with one another, right? We have to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. That every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. And when you're constantly on your phone, you don't learn how to have discussions. You don't learn how to have conversations.

One of the things that I really… I mean, none of my students will probably watch this podcast. So I'll just be really blunt and really honest. I've learned in the last five or six years, I have to be really careful about the things I talk about in the classroom. That young people have a real difficult time hearing ideas and arguments that they don't agree with.

And to me, again, I'm going to get really personal right now. My father just passed away a few weeks ago. And in fact, we're having his funeral tomorrow. I've been overwhelmed the last few weeks because he was a teacher. He was an amazing teacher. And I've been overwhelmed by all these emails and notes from former students who are now in their forties and fifties. And it's interesting because they all talk about what a tough teacher he was, but his toughness, his high expectations, that is what made him great. And yet I think about all the things that made my dad great, and I wouldn't be allowed to do any of that today, Tom, none of it. The kids would find it off-putting, they would be uncomfortable. The parents would call them and say, “You're challenging my kid in class.” Well, that used to be the whole point of an education, is to learn how to entertain perspectives and ideas that you've never been exposed to. And God forbid, you actually realize, “You know what, I'm 17 years old. I don't know everything.”

Tom Wheelwright:

Oh, that would actually be the definition of education. I remember, I was a Mormon missionary in Paris, France.

Jeremy Adams:

What a great place to go [crosstalk 00:22:01]-

Tom Wheelwright:

It was great.

Jeremy Adams:

Oh my gosh.

Tom Wheelwright:

I learned how to get rejected in French. It was awesome. But here's what I learned. I learned about the seven course meal, because the French invented the seven course meal. But here's what most people don't understand, why is there a seven course meal? So that you can have an argument without the food getting cold, because you only have one little course at a time. That's literally where that came from. We would have 4-hour dinners. And the four hours wasn't because we were that hungry, they're small portions. But what happened is, what I learned over there is that an argument is how you learn.

Jeremy Adams:

Yes.

Tom Wheelwright:

The French are very passionate, but they're not emotional. In other words, they don't take it personally. You could have… I remember saying to somebody once over there, I said, “Well, in the US, all we ever talk about is sports. We can't talk about religion or politics. And I remember them training and saying, “If you're not talking about religion or politics, why are you talking?”

Jeremy Adams:

Yep.

Tom Wheelwright:

That's the whole point of having the conversation is to learn from each other.

Jeremy Adams:

And by the way, you just said something, I'm going to rip you off. Just so you know. They are passionate without being emotional. I'm going to rip you off the next time I write something, just so you know.

Tom Wheelwright:

Do it, do it.

Jeremy Adams:

And I'm not going to give you any credit for it at all. But what you're describing is so well, are these like beautiful Parisian salons from the enlightenment, right? They're bringing all these intellectuals and these artists and these philosophers. I think one of the famous ones was Baron d'Holbach. And he would bring in people who he knew would go at each other. Because that's what was fun, that's where everybody learned. And you leave the evening feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I understand something I didn't understand before.”

Tom Wheelwright:

Right. It's all about the argument. Last direction I want to go is, let's look at technology from an educational standpoint. Because I'm a big believer that technology could serve education my much much better than it does. What do you think needs to change? Because we've got all these entrepreneurs out there. I believe that if true change is going to come to education, it's not going to come within the school systems. It's going to come from outside the school system, which is going to be entrepreneurial. So if you had a magic wand, what would that online education be? Now, granted we want the in-person education. What would that online education look like that it's different than what's available today?

Jeremy Adams:

I agree with you, I think, up to a point. It's interesting. When people come from foreign countries… You were talking about being a missionary over in France. And it's interesting, when people come over to the United States and they go into our education system, there's two things that I hear from them over and over again. Number one is, “You guys are obsessed with sports.” We're not obsessed with sports over in Europe, football or their soccer, we're not obsessed.”

But the second thing they say we're obsessed about is technology. If you look at other school systems, they are not looking for the latest gadgetly or technology to bail them out. So here's where we maybe slightly disagree a little bit. I agree that the solution is going to come outside of the school system, but the research is very clear. From the time you are five years old to 18 years old, you spend 91% of your time, not in school. And we all know that the variables that dictate your value system. Do you want to go to school? Do you want to go to college? Do you object to homework? These influences happen before you get to the classroom. And that what's one of the things I always say is that it's very difficult to make me responsible for how my students do in their lives, when I actually spend a very little amount of time with them.

I would argue, and this is what I would say to the people who are listening to your podcast, anything that can get the adults, the parents involved more intimately in what's going on in the classroom is going to be the solution.

One of the things that I do on parent night is I always tell the parents, “Look… ” When you're teaching seniors, you guys have these children and they go home and you ask them, “What did you do today?” And they're going to say to you nothing.

Now, let me just tell you. That's not true. I'm teaching hard every single day, but they're 17 or 18. They don't want you involved in their schooling. But let me tell you something, when they were kindergartners, you knew that they needed you to do well. But let me tell you something, they still need you.

So I always invite parents come into my classroom, watch what we do. Don't tell your student, by the way, just show up one day. It's really funny to watch them because they walk in and mom or dad are there. So do that from technological standpoint, get the parents into the classrooms. That's what's going to be the solution.

Tom Wheelwright:

I like that. Final question for you. This is a real world business question for you. Here it is you. I don't know if you heard, but one of the big accounting firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers just announced the other day that all 55,000 of their workers can work from anywhere they want. They don't have to come into the office. They can work from anywhere they want. Here's my question. If you are saying to an employer, “Okay. You're employing these kids,” because that's what they are. All of my employees are younger than my children. Everyone is younger than my children with maybe one exception. I'm employing these kids. How important is it for them to come into the office? Is it something we just need to make sure they come into office once in a while? How do you create that interaction? Because I agree with you.,I don't think you can do it entirely via remote.

Jeremy Adams:

I would say a few things. Some of these things I write about and some of these things, by the way, I don't write about because finance is not my specialty. But what's interesting, Tom, is I do teach advanced placement economics in the second semester, every year. So I teach government in the first semester and economics in the second. And what I've noticed, and this will answer your question, what I've noticed about young people, and I know a lot of people who are my age who they've worked really hard and they're doing well. And so now they're kind of mentoring these young people. One of the things they've noticed is number one, young people are not institutionalists. They are not romantic about joining a company with a big name. They would much rather go be an entrepreneur than join IBM, They'd much rather create a new social app than to join Apple computer.

So that's the first thing is you've got to learn how to teach institutional pride. I've noticed at my own school, there's not school spirit the way that there used to be. That kind of institutional sense that I am a link in a broader chain that has done extraordinary things. If you can do that as a business owner say, “Look what we are doing. Look what you are a part of, that is so essential for young people.

The second thing they don't like to wait. I've noticed that a lot of my students who have gone on to be lawyers, they want to be a partner in about three years. They're like, “Well, what's that difference between being an associate, a partner and an equity partner.” We want to go to that equity thing really, really fast. And I think we need to teach them, there is virtue, there is value in taking your time. Teach institutional pride, teach that it's okay to take your time.

And the third thing is, I'll be honest, as much as I can sit here and talk about the value of being in-person, I do kind of feel like the genie's out of the bottle there. That, we're just not going to get back to that again. And we can go back and… I wish that we could go uninvent Twitter to be perfectly honest with you, but that's gone. That ship has sailed. I'm not exactly sure how you balance that, other than to say, there has to be a balance between working in Hawaii and at least insisting that sometimes we are together.

Tom Wheelwright:

Awesome. Okay. Final words, two or three things that you think top of your mind, people can do to help the young people connect better.

Jeremy Adams:

Yeah. Number one, make sure with your workers put yourself in their space. That is so essential for doing. And one of the things that I would do, when I look at my former students who are doing so well, one of the things that I noticed is, my best former students were not the ones who necessarily got the 98% in the class. They're not always the A student. What I've noticed is that my best former students in the marketplace are kids who never expected things to be easy. In education, we call that a growth mindset. The idea that things are not set, that you can grow that. Just because you haven't jumped over the wall, the first 20 times you did it doesn't mean that you won't get over there the 21st time. That idea that you should expect things to be difficult.

And not only that, by the way, but what is real achievement? Real achievement is when you do something that other people aren't willing to do. I'm a Californian. I love Jerry Rice, greatest football player of all time, sorry, Tom Brady. But Jerry Rice has this great quote where he says, “I can do extraordinary things today because I was willing to do things yesterday that nobody else was willing to do.” And I think we really need to teach that ethic no matter what our job is, and no matter what task we're trying to get them to do.

Tom Wheelwright:

I love it. The book is Hollowed Out, Jeremy Adams. Jeremy, thank you so much. Where can people get more of you?

Jeremy Adams:

Absolutely. First of all, you can get the book pretty much anywhere. Go to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble, go to your local bookshop. It's pretty much anywhere. But as far as me, you can follow me at Twitter. I know I just said we should get rid of Twitter, but you can follow me @jeremyadams6, J-E-R-E-M-Y-A-D-A-M-S-6. And I'm all on Instagram @JeremySadams1976. I don't overwhelm with silly posts and minutia, I only post about interesting things every now and then. So please give me a Follow and please buy the book.

Tom Wheelwright:

Awesome. Thank you so much. And I echo that. We need to connect with each other. We need to connect with people. We need to connect with our employees. And I love the idea that we need to connect inter-generationally. And when we do, and we really get back to connection, my opinion is we're always going to make way more money and pay well taxes. We'll see you next time.

 

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