By Flávia Vianna
Once upon a time there was a little girl named @littleredridinghood. Little red riding hood’s mother walked by her daughter’s bedroom and warned:
Honey, your grandmother is sick. Let’s go visit her?
So @littleredridinghood sadly glanced at the chaos of her flickering AIM, MSN, and twitter messages. She didn’t respond to her mother. She faced a major challenge: how to express the excruciating sorrow about not being able to make the awesome party with her gang of friends, because she had to visit her sick grandmother. How totally lame! How could she express all this in only 140 characters? She had to explain to all of cyberspace that she was suddenly disconnecting, like….#now!
Her 139 followers who were online at that moment, not to mention the 468 followers she had won over, got the following post: “whatdoyoumean grandmother sick on a Saturday?!! Plans for the club # fail. Kisses.
This didn’t mean that @littleredridinghood didn’t love her grandmother, or that it didn’t greatly affect her to know that her grandmother wasn’t well. It simply meant that @littleredridinghood preferred staying home tweeting until it was time for the party, where she would meet the hottest big bad wolf of the moment, than visiting her sick grandmother on a Saturday night. But for her mother just didn’t get this.
Where were the family values? Where was the consideration? Where was the ingenuity that she had when she was @littleredridinghood’s age? Where was the respect? She doesn’t even have time to visit her own grandmother? But she has time to spend hoursssssss talking to her friends on AIM and MSN messenger? Where was the real big bad wolf when you needed him? The questions that filled mother’s mind were infinite. Inevitable.
Clearly, there are generational conflicts. We try to understand the reactions of each generation based on the paradigm established by past generations, usually our own. The questioning which starts to appear in our brain is a fusion of our values and of our perception of the world. This is perfectly normal, of course. Those who don’t agree with the current reality, are actually reflecting a personal perception of facts, but not necessarily the objective facts. Right?
This generation asks for changes. Connected to the digital world, these young people are born under the reign of technology, transferring the virtual environment where they live, letting this spill out onto everyone and everything. Their interpersonal relations reflect their desire for immediacy, online and offline. They hope for a world that’s only their own, connected, open to dialogue, speedy, global, and with a completely different understanding of hierarchy and leadership.
Cell phones, Facebook, Orkut, MSN, and Twitter give young people the ability to constantly dialogue. They value communication. They are not very tolerant of criticism or being contradicted, and generally they develop personalities which can be quite egocentric. They demand direct access to their superiors (in the workplace) and the expect explanations when they ask for them.
These young people live a fragmented rhythm, due to the variety of their activities and their simultaneous execution of them. They listen to music, surf the net, and watch movies, all at once. Isn’t it logical to think that with the current intense stimulus of their world, their values and reactions will be different from those of their parents and elders?
For my generation, for example, the question, “Let’s go visit your grandmother?” doesn’t exist. It would be a concrete affirmation, “Let’s go visit your grandmother.” Period. Did this bother or upset me? Not at all! However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I loved my grandmother more than @littleredridinghood. It simply reflects two different reactions to the same situation. Inputs and outputs of different worlds and different times. Affection and love for a grandmother don’t necessarily have anything to do with it.
Family members, coworkers, educators, and business executives, who are currently absorbing this new generation in their institutions, can opt to create new ways to motivate and develop healthy inter-personal relationships, creativity, and dialogue. Or they can continue investing in the conservative attitudes that will continue to fuel generational conflicts.
By saying this, I certainly don’t mean to encourage permissiveness. Generation Y has a lot to learn from the wealth of experience of their elders. This is incredibly obvious. But I also believe that Gen Y can teach the Baby Boomers and Gen X, a lot as well.
And so, I dedicate this post to all the grandparents in the world. As a Gen Y friend says, “Press F5 and update that!” So I’d like to extend that to all the business executives and educators. A great F5 for all! Refresh! #Go!
