Unpacking the Generational Trauma of Teenage Dystopias

How did a generation of teenagers who were raised on novels about revolution grow up to become Trad Wives and crypto shillers and BetterHelp paid partners? Was the 2010s YA dystopia craze all just a fad, or did it actually make a dent in the zillenial mindset?

This year, we’re seeing some new teen dystopias crop up like The Testaments, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping and Klara and the Sun. But this isn’t our first rodeo! When we were in high school, the teenage zeitgeist was uniquely shaped by The Hunger Games and approximately four thousand other YA dystopias (Divergent, Maze Runner, Matched, Uglies, The 100, The Giver, etc. etc. etc.) In this episode, we talk about the cultural factors that could have led to this explosion.

According to a researcher called Melissa Ames, one major factor was authorship. The adults who wrote our YA dystopia novels grew up in the Thatcher/Reagan era reading 1984 in high school, spent their whole youth braced for nuclear war, and then just... lived pretty nice lives. They projected their unresolved fears about authoritarianism onto their work. And because these authors still held 20th century fears, they wrote distinctly 20th century dystopias.

Ewan Morrison wrote a piece for The Guardian pointing out that a lot of these dystopias share the common theme of a well-meaning government that tried to make things good and equal and went too far. The dystopia is constructed by some corrupt social planners who decided to eliminate inequality through mandatory plastic surgery or sorting people into Harry Potter houses based on a personality test.

Uglies focused on how s**t it would be if the government forces everyone to be the same, but were we ever really at risk of this in the 2010s? YA dystopias warned of the dangers of governments having too much control, during a time of welfare cuts and the slow privatisation of the NHS. In these stories, inequality is always imposed by the hyper-controlling state, not by capitalists who benefited from the government having less control.

We also discuss the limitations of teen dystopias. It’s easy to get swept up in grand narratives about exceptional teens saving the world, but they often make change feel fantastical. Sure, yeah, fine we’d all overthrow a dictator but would we stop shopping at Zara…?

Many 2010s YA teen dystopias were bad at real world politics but great at representing the extremity of the teenage experience — the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school football. The guy who wrote Uglies has this quote where he says, “Life as a teenager can feel like living in an authoritarian state.” Presumably he hit a kick flip afterwards, but that doesn’t stop him from having a point.

Your whole life as a teenager is controlled by external forces. You take an exam that determines your future forever. You’re put into social groups you wouldn’t necessarily choose. You’re surveilled constantly (stop reading my diary, Mum). Because you’re experiencing everything (heartbreak, love, the pressure of a huge decision) for the first time, it all feels huge. It feels like the end of the world.

To hear our thoughts on 2010s YA dystopias (including Matched, The Hunger Games, and Uglies), as well as a deep dive into their inception and legacy, please enjoy this week’s episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen!

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Further Reading:

* Ames, Melissa R., “Engaging “Apolitical” Adolescents: Analyzing the Popularity and Educational Potential of Dystopian Literature Post-9/11” (2013). Faculty Research & Creative Activity. 11. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/eng_fac/11

* The Rise and Importance of Dystopian Literature for Young Adults, Ooligan Press https://www.ooliganpress.com/ya-dystopian-fiction/

* YA dystopias teach children to submit to the free market, not fight authority, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/01/ya-dystopias-children-free-market-hunger-games-the-giver-divergent