Tech Tools Fostering "Mini Generation Gaps" 322
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has an interesting report on the iGeneration, born in the '90s and this decade, comparing them to the Net Generation, born in the 1980s. The Net Generation spend two hours a day talking on the phone and still use e-mail frequently while the iGeneration — conceivably their younger siblings — spends considerably more time texting than talking on the phone, pays less attention to television than the older group, and tends to communicate more over instant-messenger networks. 'People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology,' says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. 'College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.' Dr. Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, says that the iGeneration, unlike their older peers, expect an instant response from everyone they communicate with, and don't have the patience for anything less. 'They'll want their teachers and professors to respond to them immediately, and they will expect instantaneous access to everyone, because after all, that is the experience they have growing up,' says Rosen." Read below for another intra-generational wrinkle.
Another intra-generational gap is the iGeneration comfort in multi-tasking. Studies show that 16- to 18-year-olds perform seven tasks, on average, in their free time — like texting on the phone, sending instant messages, and checking Facebook while sitting in front of the television; while people in their early 20s can handle only six, and those in their 30s about five and a half. "That versatility is great when they're killing time, but will a younger generation be as focused at school and work as their forebears?" writes Brad Smith. "I worry that young people won't be able to summon the capacity to focus and concentrate when they need to," says Vicky Rideout, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
I thought multi-tasking didn't really work (Score:2, Interesting)
The lack of attention span is certainly true! (Score:3, Interesting)
The instant-gratification bit in the article regarding messages is certainly true, but it goes much further than that. Many of these people born in the 1990s feel that the entire world should instantly respond to them and they get extremely impatient when it doesn't. They also tend to have the attention span of a gnat. I see a lot of people in this age range at work and I swear that most of them can't sit still for more than 30 seconds before the phone comes out and they're texting away. Some will even just start texting right in the middle of a conversation.
There are really two big problems with their behavior. One is that they are extremely impatient and rush through everything, acting like huge spoiled brats in the process ("what do you mean I have to wait two days for this package to get here! I want it nooooooooooowwwwwwwwww!!!!"). The second is that their tiny attention spans and easy distractability are recipes for disaster if they are ever in a potentially hazardous situation that requires their full attention, such as driving or operating equipment or machinery. I think that their parents had an "epic fail" in allowing them to grow up in this manner.
Bogus (Score:3, Interesting)
Firstly, I think the designation of birth decades is completely bogus. Somebody who was born in 1980 is likely to have had a very different technology experience to someone born after 1985, but they are all lumped together. Someone born in 1980 would be 18 by the time the internet started to see mass adoption and computers started to become cheap, while someone born in 1985 would only be 13, and have their formative high-school years ahead of them.
And talking about the tech habits of people born in the 00s? They aren't old enough to have any entrenched tech habits yet! It will be the next decade that shapes them, not the past one.
Multi-tasking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I'm wierd, but if I am talking to someone, it uses 100% of my wetware. I have to turn off the TV, ignore the computer, and stop having IM conversations. However, I can routinely have IRC open with a flowing conversation, several IM windows open, browse the net, read slashdot, and be watching discovery channel, as long as the vocalization center of my brain is not engaged. That may account for the rise in "multi-tasking" seen across generations as speaking is such an inefficient (in terms of resource usage per task) means of conveying information.
Where does this leave old Gen-X farts like me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bullshit level: High - Storm likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess I'm Net generation. Except that doesn't sound right for anyone I know of my age group.
Furthermore, I've always adopted the best tools for the job, and ignored blatant fads such as twitter.
For work issues, I don't even answer email immediately, because I have no intention of serving as a brain trust for people who will not think. I let them age. The more I get from a single source the more I let them age.
For recreational use, I still prefer an email for anything other than the "What time will you arrive" question via text.
Thinking carefully, I can not come up with a single person I care to follow on twitter, but it is nice for breaking news issues if you are a news junkie.
I think we are breeding the first generation of the BORG. People who can't think and can't act without first checking in with the collective.
Stop the worries - it's pathetic (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where does this leave old Gen-X farts like me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. Thanks for making me feel old.
The tube-tester-at-the-grocery part really got me, I totally remember those. Imagine asking someone today to open their television or stereo, remove a component, and go test it.
Re:Bullshit level: High - Storm likely. (Score:5, Interesting)
'Texting and facebook updating is a leisure activity, and doesn't mix with work at all.'
I wonder how many of the other supposed differences are really down to the younger generation being, well, younger? A text message is probably cheaper than a voice call, which is handy if you're on a limited budget with a PAYG phone. A school or college age kid may have a wider social network than an older person in a full-time job, so online networking tools could be more useful. There be may less tendency to veg out in front of passive TV entertainment like an exhausted wage slave if you're out enjoying yourself all the time. Multitasking could be less difficult for a younger brain, etc. Of course, these are just the senile ramblings of an ageing mind, so take them with a pinch of salt. And get off my lawn.
kids these days..spoiled (Score:2, Interesting)
Try, a wooden box on the wall with the speaker on a cord, the mouth piece on the box, and a crank handle to get the operators attention. That was one granny had that, I remember talking on it. My other granny had an icebox, and some dude would trot down the alley with a horse and ice wagon and come in and put a huge chunk of ice in it. We had a rotary at home though, think it was made out of cast iron.
We had the first TV in the 'hood, a 9" philco IIRC, and a buncha neighbors and relatives would come over and sit around and watch TV, not a whole lotta channels though and it all went off at night.
Lemme see...35 cent indoor movies, that was the only place with air conditioning, nickle cokes, nickle candy bars, and a real five and dime store that had tons of stuff for a nickle or a dime.
I don't remember all the prices on stuff, but a lot of it, like hamburger 5 lbs for a buck. Lot of cars still under a grand brand new. A portable radio was half a suitcase with heavy batteries in it.
Oh man, my fav, REAL army navy stores that had all the great stuff, just everything, you could go nuts in there poking through the junk, they had everything including surplus rifles. Dang giant rubber rafts hanging from the ceiling, old torpedoes, tons of neat stuff like that.
Bicycles were like harleys with no engines., about the same amount of steel.
Wimminks all still wore real stockings all the time...err..that was major cool.... ;)
Dang, ain't a year goes by I don't regret losing my baseball cards, comic books, all my early sci fiction paper backs, stuff like that.
A lot of tech and some aspects of society today are a lot better, a lot isn't though. Leaving keys in the car was common, never locking the door, etc. No school massacres, but we could carry our .22s to school to go shooting after school, etc. It was no big deal at all, stick 'em in your locker.
Back then, most everything was fixable, and did get fixed, now..not much, it works or it is junk.
Would I trade..uhh "timezones"? Nope, not a straight swap, but I would if I could pick and choose various things from then and now.
An old foggy speaks.... er, types, er posts, (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, this a post, right?
Ok, i'm 57. My family had a telephone when I was a kid, we were on a party line and had to learn our ring so we wouldn't pick up calls for other families. OTOH, we knew who was getting a call and we learned how to listen in...
I remember when we got our first TV. it had no color, and a bunch of tubes inside. We got one channel. When it got to hot outside she would call us in and let us watch TV until it cooled down. The only show I remember was Liberace prancing on the keyboard painted along one edge of his piano shaped swimming pool. Mom kept saying "there is something odd about him..."
Skipping forward more than 50 years.
I use email all the damn time. I've had an email address continuously since '81. I have a cell phone. Unlike most of my friends I only use it to make calls. I keep it turned off. I only turn it on to make calls. I have linkedin and facebook accounts and I even have my kids as friends on facebook. I love facebook. I tolerate linkedin, because it is required for business. I run several web sites and have a blog. I have pretty much every channel the cable company provides (except sports, I never understood sports) and I have a PC with a broadband connection and a wireless keyboard hooked up to it so I can watch youtube and hulu and what ever from the comfort of my living room. Oh, yeah, I have *great* karma on slashdot.
The thing I have noticed is that my use of social technology is much more conditioned by the fact that I am a serious introvert than by my age. On the Myers Briggs I nearly peg the Introvert scale. I see that a lot. Introverts use social tech differently from extroverts. You just don't see them doing it because they are *introverts*. I've noticed that introverts are much more extroverted online than in person. It is much easier to act like an extrovert when you don't actually have to be around people.
Also, I was diagnosed in my early '40s as having ADD. These days they call it ADHD-PI. (In the '50s, 60s, and well into the '70s they called it "lazy" if you had mild to moderate levels and "brain dysfunction" or even "brain damage" at higher levels.) People like me do everything we can to minimize distractions. Even with medication (which can be *wonderful* when it works) I do not seek out distractions. BTW, my observation is that a lot of introverts have some form of ADHD. Another unsubstantiated personal observations is that those people with ADHD who don't wind up as career criminals, tend to wind up as engineers and computer scientists i.e. as geeks.
Watching the way social technology has changed the behavior of cognitively normal extroverts leads me to conclude that their lives are so boring that they will do nearly anything to be distracted from them. OTOH, there is so much exciting stuff going on in side the head of this cognitively different introvert that I am never bored. :-)
Stonewolf
P.S.
The meds I take to not make me anything like normal. They just make it a lot easier to function around all you weirdos :-)
P.P.S
Yes, check it out, the prisons in the US are full of people with ADHD.
Re:Bullshit level: High - Storm likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
Networks that used to have interesting programming has shifted to more crap. Discovery is more about blowing stuff up than explaining science, the History channel seems to be nothing more than WWII and explosions.
How could you have missed the rotting carcass that is now rebranded sifi or whatever, but may as well be called the Ghosts -n- Wrasslin Channel? Also, isn't History the "Jesus" channel now, with about half the documentaries being "biblically inspired" like true stories of the prophets, etc? No, I'm not talking about EWTNor daystar, I mean Disc or TLC or Hist or one of those which seem to be filled with "christian documentaries" some weekdays.
There is an internet related reason for the decline of quality TV... First, anyone intelligent enough to read wikipedia, or search google, does so instead of watching TV, which explains the ever declining intellectual level of TV, they have to aim at whats left of their audience, primarily fans of the "ow my balls" program. Secondly, all modern documentaries must alternate copying and hating the internet, for example in copying we have horrendous artificial "shakey cam" footage to "make it feel urban and gritty like youtube" alternating with expensive yet useless dramatic historical reenactments because thankfully wikipedia doesn't include much if any video footage.
Re:Bullshit level: High - Storm likely. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, if this "old dog can learn new tricks" and my friends have as well...
The question that I'd like answered is whether the new dogs can learn what the old dogs have learned, or whether they're too enamoured of (or distracted by) gadgets and interfaces so as to believe no such effort is necessary.
Re:Bullshit level: High - Storm likely. (Score:4, Interesting)
I was born in 79, and while I think the article is exaggerated a bit, I'd say it's basically accurate from my experience.
I suspect that you're doing something people do all too often: seeing others through the lens other your own worldview, and being unable to imagine otherwise.
As others have pointed out; your very presence here on Slashdot proves you're not the norm for your, or any generation. People here use alternative OSes, (and know what an OS is, for that matter), terminal services, were on BBSes when they came out, and are generally more "wired" and comfortable with technology in general than the general populace.
Yes, lots of people are on Facebook. That doesn't prove anything. Facebook is just the new "cool" communication medium that everyone jumped on (last cycle it was MySpace).
I will cay this, though - While I think the author's data is basically correct, I'm not sure all of the conclusions they draw from their data are correct. For instance, the Pwe study he cites mentions a marked decrease in usage of IMs between teens and 20-somethings. Well, I'm 30. And I know I used IM constantly in high school, and through my early 20s. As I grew older, I used it less and less. Likewise, all my friends who I used to IM with are in the same boat. For us, it wasn't a correlation of generation, but of simple age, and where we are in our lives.
Teens go to more concerts and play more sports than their 20-something counterparts too. This isn't a function of "generations", but of simple age.
I actually suspect that if a formal study was done, following folks usage patterns across generations for a long period of time, that you'd see my generation at 20 used IM more than the current crop of 20-year-olds. We didn't have Facebook and Twitter, or even text messages. IM, email, and the phone were basically it for us. So we used IM quite extensively. The average kid today lives much more by his or her cell phone than their PC compared to how my "generation" did.
Re:The lack of attention span is certainly true! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but when that behavior holds over into adulthood you have a problem (or rather, people are going to have a big problem with you.)
That may well be, but we don't know if that is going to be the case, because most of these people haven't reached adulthood yet. I think you're just making assumptions based on teenage/early 20s behavior.
Don't assume that changing technology will automatically force changes in fundamental human behaviors. Sometimes it does, but in this case I don't think it will.
I'm saying that the world runs on the principle of hierarchies. They're as much a part of our lives as breathing, and people who are higher up in a given pecking order do not appreciate having underlings attempting to monopolize their time. That's the way it is, and the way it will always be so far as human beings are concerned. That a young person's peer group accepts (or even revels in) this form of instantaneous query/response is irrelevant: those peers don't pay the bills. What those entering the job market are going to find out is that their employers make the rules when it comes to communication, and those aren't going to be anything like the behavior the article refers to. Furthermore, as we gain responsibilities, our time becomes more valuable, we have less free time to devote to casual communication, and we have to prioritize. So do our peers. That's called growing up, really, and has nothing to do with changing social norms.
So yes, our communications systems are faster and more efficient than ever before, but this in no way changes the fact that some people's time is more valuable than others. Children have virtually unlimited time to socialize, text each other and run up their cellular bills. Those are trying to survive in the real world usually do not.
Re:Patience (Score:3, Interesting)
I said 200 feet because I consider that an insignificant, negligible distance to walk. Though, I enjoy hiking and walking 5-7 miles is not unusual for me. Perhaps 20 feet would have made the point more clear to you? Maybe 2 feet? Six inches? A point is reached where it's neither timely nor economical to get in your car, fire up the engine, drive, and park. You are capable of seeing my point whether or not you want to dispute that 200 feet was a good figure to use.
You think I require a rejection of technology, despite the fact that I explicitly said otherwise? You realize that you're living in a fantasy land, right? Maybe a fictitious "causality" that exists only in your mind has told you to reject technology. Meanwhile, the real causality (the one you can quote above) just said that we don't have to reject technology, we basically just have to give a damn. It's really amazing how people on this site sometimes think they know my own mind better than I do, that I must not have meant what I explicitly and obviously stated. Which leads us to the next point...
No, for I lament the fact that the average person is this way (particularly the immaturity and the superficial society it leads to). If I were happy about this because it makes me look better, that would be self-righteous. Truth is, if it were up to me, people wouldn't be this way. It's like what Bill Hicks said, this country is at about an eighth-grade emotional level, and it shows. It particularly shows when someone comes along and tells me I didn't really say what I obviously just said, merely because he doesn't like what I said. It's pretty weak to try and mischaracterize something because you're unable to either dispute or admit it.
Now, if you want to make the case that I am self-righteous, first you'll have to dispute the fact that many people are lazy and immature. Once you show that this is false (good luck), you can then propose an ulterior motive for why I said so, such as self-righteousness. If you cannot do that, then you are just calling me names for merely speaking the truth. Otherwise, you can run your mouth all you like, say whatever you want, and it'll be just as empty and meaningless as any other unsubstantiated claim.