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Everybody knows how the natural order of things is supposed to work. Parents give birth to, nurture and educate their children. Then, after a couple of decades, the children reciprocate by answering the phone when their parents need help configuring the new wireless router.
I fielded one of those calls the other day. You can't blame anyone for needing help with a wireless router. The things are impossible. I have a theory that they're the 21st-century equivalent of the VCR, pieces of technology that are mandatory but completely obstinate. The most salient feature of the VCR, you'll recall, was its ability to resist having the time set by anyone over the age of 13.
Technology has always accentuated generation gaps. And now, a new generation of 13-year-olds has arrived, and we're hearing no end of hoopla about their technological abilities, which, in all fairness, are a good deal more interesting than being able to stop a VCR from flashing "12:00." These days it's all about the Net Generation, kids of the eighties and nineties who were born with a mouse in their hands and, by the sounds of things, are unable to enjoy regular human interactions except on Facebook.
A cottage industry of analysis and punditry has popped up around this group. Author Don Tapscott, noted interpreter of the newfangled, recently rolled out a tome called Grown up Digital, in which he explains this mysterious new generation for his contemporaries. The New York Times called it "a must-read for baby boomers and virtually anyone else born before 1977."
Tapscott's conclusions were broadly positive, and broadly sensible, exploring what's different for kids today. The Internet has opened up strange new frontiers of culture, and is subtly but profoundly changing the way we process information and present ourselves to the world. It seems inevitable that people who have grown up in this environment will view the world differently from those who haven't.
The problem is, generational determinism might not be all it's cracked up to be. For instance, a recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that it's actually members of Generation X — born, by their definition, between 1965 and 1976 — who are the most likely to bank, shop and look for health information online.
According to another report from the same think tank, more adults are signing up for social networks, too: More than 35 per cent of American adults now have accounts.
Meanwhile, a report from the British Library last year suggested that Net-generation kids don't necessarily process information differently than their elders. Jittery, short-attention-span information-filtering is a trait that's popping up across all ages that have become cozy with the Google lifestyle.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that older generations are fascinated by younger ones. But here's the curious thing. Instead of looking at youth with disdain or loathing — their greasy hair! their rebelliousness! their moral lassitude! — what I see instead from my parents' generation is a sense of awe and resignation. Awe at the facility that these bright young pups have with Internet technology, and resignation that, at their advanced age, it's something that they just couldn't understand.
That sense of resignation is pernicious. The more we gush about the millennial generation, talking about them as if their brains arrived pre-wired for high-speed Internet, able to upload their thoughts to Facebook just by concentrating on them, the more we perpetuate the myth that older brains aren't wired for the Internet.
I hear this sentiment from my elders with some regularity, and it kills me. Boomers invented the Internet, but now our youth-obsessed, generation-gap mindset is trying to convince them that they'll never get it.
The more we indulge in playing generations off against one another, worrying that today's youth just can't keep themselves from posting too much of their private lives online, the more we reinforce the belief that there's something strange and foreign about the Web.
The Web is, in reality, an all-ages place. Harping about generation gaps obfuscates the fact that the social Web (the blogosphere, the Twitter universe, the chattering class) is powered by every age group.
It's true that new technologies are picked up by more youngsters than oldsters, but I refuse to believe that it's because older minds have ossified. Young people have the time to throw at new trends, and are propelled by a burning need to socialize. Older people have — how shall I phrase this? — real lives to live. You need free time to play around with social networks. It's not simply a matter of ability; it's a matter of interest and opportunity.
So cheer up, boomers. Don't let the fact that you called for help with your wireless router convince you that you'll never understand this Internet hubbub. Don't let the generation-gap chatter insinuate that the world has moved on without you.
I've met a few of these millennial kids and they seem like perfectly nice people. There's nothing inscrutably, ineffably different about them. Yes, they seem prone to fads and trends — it's Facebook this and LOLCATS that — and yes, they're obsessed with socializing.
You know, it's almost as if they're young.
