By Mauro Segura
I asked a group of teenagers to estimate how many friends they talk to everyday via the Internet, cell phone, or texting. Most of them replied “several dozens.”
Text messaging, Facebook messages, blog comments, tweets etc…Everything from a simple “hello” to a long conversation counts as talking. Their responses confirm what most of us already suspect: young people engage in a huge amount of social interaction through the web and through mobile devices like cell phones everyday.
All day I hear about how Gen Y has fragile human relationships. Their relationships more volatile than the relationships of youth in the past. Perhaps this is true, yet in front of me I see a much more interesting generation. A mature generation, actually preoccupied in cultivating relationships with my generation.
When I was 15 years old, I played soccer in the afternoon and studied the encyclopedia religiously. I believed everything my professor said. My relationships limited themselves to my classmates, neighborhood friends, and of course my family.
In contrast, young people today are able to travel out into the world virtually everyday. People from all places, social classes, and cultures meet intensely, 24 hours a day. Young people are more informed and attentive than we were at their age. They are conscious of the dilemmas of the planet, and are preoccupied in changing the world, and being agents of change.
A big challenge for Gen Y is time. So many possibilities and alternatives to create and build relationships in the short time-span of a 24-hour day, by a simple mathematical calculation, young people have many more opportunities to talk to people, and so it’s no surprise that the length of their relationships will be shorter and thus more volatile.
Yet have no illusions: young people continue to have the same characteristics of young people in the past. They have friends they confide in, they want to get closer to those they trust, and they want to be successful professionals in their careers.
However, Gen Y is not particularly preoccupied with their privacy, as they reveal parts of themselves on social networks, creating many virtual relationships rather than real ones.
Is this Gen Y’s fault or the fault of social networks? This is the current state of our country and of our democracy. Brazil is a democratic country, things are becoming more and more transparent. The media is also becoming increasingly outspoken. The Brazilian people have started to express themselves more freely. So this so-called “lack of privacy” does not just pertain to Generation Y. It’s part of the general transformation of society, as we all become “more open.”
There’s always something new popping up, giving fuel to those who argue that such or such thing will contribute to the worsening of society, be it the deterioration of family or human relationships. In the past, the same thing happened with radio and television. Now it’s happening with the Internet. Society is evolving, becoming more transparent, and this creates a higher level of social consciousness.
Everything in this blog post expresses the idea that Gen Y is much more interesting than past generations. Raised as citizens of the world, global citizens, and transformers of society.
In conclusion, if you are a reader belonging to Gen Y, have a look below at the hero of my generation. In the 1970’s, I was ten years old. I sat in front of my Television to dream…
