The X, Y, Z Factor

Professor J,

You raise good questions about the Millenials (or as you prefer the more specific Y and Zers). Of course your initial reaction would be a list of questions I don't have the answers to. Which may mean I should break down and read the book on this subject.

While the authors were hopeful, and I have to say in many ways I am as well, We do see lots of negatives as well as positives. Corporations don't quite know what to do with a new generation that is so markedly different from the previous one. Several major companies are hiring consultants to help teach them how to manage this generation. The work ethic for a generation that is use to getting a trophy for just showing up is much different than their parents'. I wonder how many college professors and human resource departments are happy to field calls from parents concerning their "child's" performance.

You made a good point about any generation being called "The Greatest" when the standard for that, in this country anyway, is the founding one. In both of those examples we could point to hardship, sacrifice, and high standards expected for behavior as reasons that they were able to accomplish what they did. I wondered aloud to my kids at the WWII Museum in New Orleans if those fresh young faces staring back at us from display photographs would have been able to go out and save the world if their characters hadn't been forged by the deprivation of the depression. Did they think they and their friends would be up to such selfless sacrifice? An entire generation that has rarely been uncomfortable yet alone, hungry, cold, afraid? I got knowing looks back from them. The 18 year olds in those photos were adults. In contrast it seems we are only being nice today if we call a college freshman a "man." Adolescence edges toward thirty.

So while our offspring and their peers have let all kinds of narrow mindedness drop by the wayside and refused to embrace prejudice, we notice something else. Their connectedness and devotion to friends, which can at times be admirable, also means that we can see them nearly addicted to their gadgets. The number of young mothers I see staring down at I-phones instead of engaging the tiny person across from them bothers me. But if you watch long enough you are likely to see the baby or toddler Instagrammed, so mommy can post to FB. That brings up all kinds of questions about the importance of face to face interaction and speech in early childhood development. But judging from the number of  toddlers and young children I've seen whine for the I Pad or I Phone and then proceed to use it, we may see an even further breakdown of civilizing the next next generation.

They are indeed, as you pointed out, growing up with a very new and very different sense of privacy, or even what should be private, if anything. I am amused however at some of the sour commentary by the older generations. "We wouldn't have thought of putting pictures of ourselves on Facebook." When of course the fact of the matter is that we can never know whether they would have or not. It's possible that society's mores would have curbed some of that behavior, but would those standards have been changed by the technology? Which came first? The exhibitionism or social networking? 

Still, for all their faults (and let's face it most of that can be laid at the feet of parents and pop psychologists) they have enough good traits, I hope, that they may be able to work together, compromise, and share enough to actually tackle some tough problems and bring about much needed change. Only time will tell.