Gen Z, The Last Generation?
posted 18.07.09
It is quite astounding how something as simple as losing your mobile phone can incite a raft of serious social issues, but this loss of a relatively minor piece of property has brought me hard up against a generation gap with implications for the future of society. It started simply enough, with an incoming text message when sitting at a bus stop and the bus came. It was not until arriving at my destination that the phone’s absence became apparent. I retraced my steps, but despite the fact this stop is not busy, someone had evidently been there before me. Well, there went a pleasantly anticipated outing, and my optimism. The rest of the day and my energy were consumed with attempts to contact the finder, then calls to police, bus and ferry lost property, and finally Telstra to have the account suspended.
Over the next few days I’ve vented frustration at the pointlessness of keeping someone’s older-model phone when the line is blocked, and the absence of conscience about the inconvenience and possible distress that not handing the phone in may cause. Recipients this venting comprised a limited sample and amount to nothing more than a straw poll, but the responses have coalesced previously disparate concerns. Response comprised two distinct world-views that can be clearly identified as those under the age of twenty-five and those over. Anyone over readily confirmed my sense of outrage whilst the younger group couldn’t see what I was going on about. Indeed, a quote from one sums it up: “No one bothers to hand in phones. They’re like, disposable items. If you find one its yours.”
Now, this statement is about a product that can cost hundreds of dollars, let alone has high personal value in the essential information stored and the replacement time. This is not some item worth a few paltry dollars and of no consequence to the loser. The disparity prompted recall of seeing a young person who had just found an expensive mobile phone and was crowing with their good fortune as they transfered their sim card into it. My protest then, that the phone was a valuable item and should be handed in, was greeted with derisive incomprehension. At the time, I attributed this to an individual lack of ethics, but now realise such behaviour is common wisdom to the peer group.
I’ll preface the following analysis with the assurance that I do realise not all Gen Y think this way and, as in every generation, a proportion will possess an innate moral compass guiding ethical behaviour. However, the sheer commonality of the attitude evinced by those that fall into Gen Y in my straw poll reveals an underlying absence of the ethics that have been universal for preceding generations. This is not to say Gen X and the Baby-boomers always abide by common ethical principles, but at least they are capable of recognising unethical behaviour and its consequences. From my straw poll it appears a significant proportion of Gen Ys are not. Such a common perception in even a small sample elicits the question how such a basic sociocultural more has diminished so rapidly, resulting in the following theory.
Firstly, whilst many Gen Xs did have working mothers, Gen Y is the generation of almost universal day-care, spending extended periods of peer age play in controlled environments with limited individual attention and little exposure to diverse people or unpredictable events. In family interactions the focus is on essentials such as feeding, homework and preparing for bed, with intensive peer age-group activities and ‘quality time’ with parents at bedtime and on weekends; maybe. To compensate for limited presence, Gen X parents have smothered their children so that they have been coined 'bubble wrap babies,' taught to view all strangers with suspicion and kept so safe they become desperate for risk and turn to extreme sports and binge drinking. They have had neither the interaction with an omnipresent parent that transmits and reinforces social values and models parenting, nor the extended experience of mixed-age social environments, wherein the cognisance of the subtleties of social morality and ethical practices are inculcated and refined. So what sort of parents these people will be is anyone’s guess.
Secondly, their formative period has been during the dominance of the economic rationalist paradigm, their social values inculcated with its rhetoric of ‘winners and losers,’ ‘survival of the fittest,’ ‘dog eat dog,’ etcetera, etcetera. They have been told that they can ‘have it all,’ indeed, are entitled to ‘it all,’ and wanting is having with a credit card; brand name clothing and technological accoutrements the measures of success. I see the same world-view in my teenaged grandchildren, who show not the slightest compulsion to civility, that is, of course, unless they want something. Carefully chosen presents at events like Christmas and birthdays evoke a mere shrug, and there is never a return gift. Its like I don’t exist.
And thirdly, they have been raised on a raft of violent computer games, where morality is a foreign territory and actions have no real consequences. Reality has become too complex, too onerous, and life is simpler when it is approached through a screen with a keyboard and/or gear stick that bestows virtual power. They are the first generation for whom virtual reality merges so continuously with reality and communication has become a form of solipsism, where the communicator has precedence and the more convoluted subtleties of body language are conveniently avoided. Its all about image, what ‘I’ am saying and how smart I appear. ‘I am, therefore I communicate’ is their signature, but much of it is in the shorthand of textmessaging and so lacking in intellectual and emotional depth. In addition for older Gen Ys, is the ubiquity of affect-altering drugs such as Ecstasy and Ice, and the emotional black hole of hydroponic cannabis - an entirely different species from the creative stimuli of free-range known to boomers. These later drugs interfere with the brain’s ability to develop constructs such as empathy and sympathy and so respond normally to emotional stimuli. Hence that other signature of theirs, "Whatever!"
These developmental failures, exacerbated in the generation now in their teens, have dovetailed to produce what is, in effect, the evolution of a species of humans different to all preceding generations. We baby-boomers experienced our own version of the generation gap and ran the gamut of mind-altering drugs and their casualties and Gen X has followed a similar developmental path. Ultimately, many have come to realise they are more like their parents than expected, or perhaps desired. This is a realisation I doubt will come to Gen Y or their successors. Their brains seem to be wired very differently. The baby-boomers have been accused of creating the consumerist world in which they grew up, and to some extent that is true. But at least we were largely motivated by a sense of optimistic adventure and the desire to change the human condition for the better. We also created a lot of the humanitarian and idealist organizations that have, indeed, achieved those goals.
Unfortunately, in our enthusiasm to challenge the small-minded prejudice and hypocrisy we’d grown up with, we do have to accept responsibility for throwing the ethical baby out with the moral bathwater. Towards the end of the 70s baby-boomer idealism was starting to unravel without that moral compass and the adventure got lost in an ethical vacuum during the 1980s. I do accept that the traits outlined here are not unique to Gen Y, and remember a late 70s Playboy article (yes, I did occasionally buy Playboy for the articles) on USA survivalist communes. This one ended with the author's comment that he'd found them so scary, if they were the only ones to survive he'd happily stand under the bomb. But, whilst we may be the unthinking progenitors of this latest scary brood and have to accept due consequence, I’m actually rather glad I won’t be around to see the world they will create.
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