The Millennials have aged to the level that
Boomers (my group) reached in the 1980s. Perhaps it’s time to reboot the TV
show Thirtysomething for them. They
are by no means old but already are disconcerted by having been displaced as
the representatives of youth culture by Zoomers and Alphas, generations to
which they do not entirely relate.
[Definitions: Boomers were born between
and including 1946 and 1964, GenX 1965-1980, Millennials 1981-1996, GenZ (aka
Zoomers) 1997-2010, and Alphas 2011 -present.]
A Millennial friend of mine the other
day, feeling the changing of the guard, commented to me about how advanced kids
are compared to when she was the same age. “They grew up with all this
information at their fingertips. There are articles and YouTube videos on
everything, so they just know so much more and are so much more sophisticated.”
I disagreed and remarked that my admittedly limited experience with them was
nothing so encouraging. She again pointed out the vast knowledge available to
them. I didn’t wish to argue the matter so I let it go. Besides, it is true
that answers (more or less correct ones generally) to almost any question are a
few taps on a phone away, but there is a difference between virtual knowledge
and knowledge. Being able to google something is not the same as internalizing
the information. As far as sophistication goes, it is also true that kids
(Alphas as well as Zoomers) are likely to be aware of the edgier cultural
issues of the moment. But these are so much in the air as to be essentially pop
culture – like knowing the names of the members of a popular band. (I was aware
of the cultural issues of the ‘60s, too.) It’s a stretch to call this
sophistication.
Every generation tends to underestimate
previous ones, which is another way of saying they overestimate themselves. My
generation was as guilty as any of that arrogance. I recall watching Casablanca years ago with a younger
Boomer (b. 1961) who had never seen it because it was an “old movie” and
therefore by definition boring. He liked it but then asked in all seriousness if
I thought audiences back then “got” all the allusions, double entendres, and
irony in the script, as though they couldn’t possibly be as sophisticated as
ourselves given the primitive era in which they lived. “They got it,” was all I
could say. Zoomers have much the same sort of reservations about Boomers given
that by comparison we often remain a bit clunky with electronic devices.
I like having answers so readily
available thanks to modern technology. I’m no Luddite. Yet there are drawbacks
to everything, and the drawbacks to tech affect Zoomers and Alphas the most
given their immersion in it and reliance on it. Henry Kissinger in his latest
book (my review is a couple of posts ago) worried about this: “While the
internet and its attendant innovations are unquestionably technical marvels,
close attention must be paid to the balance between the constructive and
corrosive habits of mind encouraged by new technology.” He noted the decline of
“deep literacy” amid visual culture and quick clicks from link to link:
“reading a complex book carefully, and engaging with it critically, has become
as counter-cultural an act as was memorizing an epic poem in the earlier
print-based age.”
I do not know, since Henry doesn’t
mention it, but because he uses some of the same terminology I suspect that he
is familiar with a book from around a decade ago by Nicolas Carr called The Shallows. Carr examined the question
of whether relying on virtual knowledge and virtual memory was making us
weak-minded. The answer was a qualified “yes.” Referencing numerous
psychological studies, he reported that the internet diminished the time spent “deep
reading.” We skim. We follow links, flitting about and often losing track of
our initial question. The more hyperlinks an online text contains, the lower is
our comprehension of it when we are tested afterwards. Carr quotes T.S. Eliot about being “distracted from distraction by distraction,” which is precisely
the kind of quote likely to be used by someone who has done deep reading.
Creativity and insight largely involve connecting one piece of knowledge with
another in a new way, something quite difficult when the pieces of knowledge
aren’t in our own heads. Carr concludes, “What
we seem to be sacrificing in our surfing and searching is our capacity to
engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation,
reflection and introspection.” We become
shallower.
Questions
to random young people
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