Are you a baby boomer, a Gen Xer, a Millennial? An Echo Boomer? Part of the Silent Generation, that came before the boomers? Ryan Healy of Employee Evolution did a nice guest post for Web Worker Daily about what Gen Y (a.k.a. the Millennials) expect from work. Only problem is that’s what a lot of us want from work, not just those in their twenties. Those are changes that could benefit everyone in the workforce, not just younger people.
Does it really matter what generation we were born into? I do find some usefulness in generational explanations and I’ve even resorted them to myself, but I think we should use them with caution:
1. People may be more influenced by their life stage than by the generation into which they were born. If you see a bunch of people of a certain age behaving a certain way, it’s not necessarily representative of their generational temperament. The baby boomers liked to party hard when they were in their late teens and early twenties, but what young adults don’t? Now they are focused on personal fulfillment and financial gain. That’s something you’d expect middle-aged people to focus on, no matter what the era in which they were born.
2. Generational explanations tend to overstate the resistance of older people to new technology. Please, spare me the “make it easy enough for my mother to use” cliche. It’s so tired to assume that female+older = technologically clueless. Lots of mothers, aunts, and grandmas take to new technology with enthusiasm and skill.
3. Generational descriptions gloss over the diversity you find within groups of people of a certain age. Baby boomers aren’t all selfish; Gen Xers aren’t all filled with ennui; Millennials aren’t all waiting around for older people to praise them.
That said, there are clear differences between generations in technology usage. People do tend to hang out with people of their own age and take up the activities that their peers take up. My generation is comfortable with email while younger people might rather text message. So I’m not calling for an all-out end to categorizing people generationally for the purposes of understanding technology usage, just saying let’s use other lenses too.
4 Comments
Reminds me of an old saying, “There are two types of people in this world: one that believes there are two types of people; one that doesn’t.”
One-to-one marketing is over-hyped, under-delivered, and rarely necessary. Addressing the needs of folks who behave similarly often accomplishes the goal. While generational cohorts provide one way to lump folks together - to your point - it ain’t the best way to go. Far better to focus on behaviors and meet the needs there.
I’ve never understood the urge to lump an entire generation together on the basis of age either. Just what exactly does Gen Y in a slum in Brazilia and Gen Y on a slope in Aspern have in common? (Well, it certainly isn’t life expectancy)
I broadly agree with you, I think.
However, I did also read a book the other day called Generation Me (with a super long tag line I don’t remember) that talked about the difference between the post-Boomers, who have been brought up by their parents to believe that they are the most important people in the world and that their personal happiness and self-esteem are of primary importance - and the differences that that particular attitude has brought about, which was quite interesting.
I’d also say that what ‘technology’ age you were born into could be quite important also - at least, it seems to be now. Not sure how that’s going to play out over time.
Both of these are potentially temporal things though - and they’re really much more specific in terms of cause and effect than generalising about generations.
Interesting to think about tho
A friend of mine Mark Federman (formerly strategic director at the McLuhan program at U of T) has a theory that there is a massive generation gap that can be tracked back to 1996 and the Netscape IPO. The kids who were 10 back then are now 22. They are the first generation who grew up connected with the notion of technology as biology (vs. adapting to technology and seeing it as outside of themselves).