- Hi Honey, how are you? Look, I need to know how to add a friend on “Orkut.”
- Dad you are going to need to access that person’s profile. So just click here.
- OK. I’m on their profile page. Now what?
- Now, you click on the menu and to the left side select “+ friend.” Got it?
- …Ah ok below the picture right?
- Right dad, you just added them, got it?
- Wait, where do I click now?
- Now you just have to wait dad, they’ve got to confirm that you are in fact friends.
The dialogue above is real. In fact, it’s one out of four conversations that took place this past week between my dad and I.
The other three consisted of me explaining how to delete friends on Orkut, how to join a group, and how my dad can find his own daughter on Orkut.
This type of phone conversation (especially when you are on a bus, at work or in a college classroom) can be quite a challenging experience for Generation Y.
Let me explain. In my head, the questions my dad poses are so simple, that they are practically automatic reflexes. If I can’t figure out how a website works, I don’t ask anybody, I just explore. I learn by getting my hands dirty, without fear.
That’s how Generation Y has learned everything we know about the Internet, videogames, and any other technology that has popped up during our teenage and young adulthood years.
Answering questions posed by baby boomers and generation X, regarding the most “basic” and “simple” things can be very annoying. I admit that I get a bit impatient, when my father clicks on the right mouse button to “copy, and then clicks again to “paste,” when a single hit of “Ctrl+CCtrl+V” would do the trick. Yet this is the sort of relationship we have with our parents. That’s the way it is.
In the household, it’s easy to say that we don’t have time to help our parents, but in the workplace it’s a different story. We are no longer dealing with our parents. We need to be patient, professional, and understand other generations’ limitations, as they understand ours.
I hope that my experience reveals the following to Generation Y: Have patience with your parents.It’s all a big learning experience. And if Generation X and the Baby Boomers, learn how to use the “accelerator” on the keyboard, it will certainly be an added bonus.
