Is your generation wiser than your grandparents’ generation?
As we walk into the second decade of the 21st century, the world faces a whole slew of situations: the aging world population, global warming and the ever-rising standards of living. Spearheading those who will have to weather these situations are the youth of today, the world leaders of tomorrow.
However, for now, the so-called Generation Y, riding on the waves of the technological revolution, seem to be having the times of their lives , due their ability to somehow operate every gadget that happens to start with the letter i. it seems that the dominance of such technological wonders the youth of today are much wiser that any generation before.
What are the qualities of youth that put them a cut above the rest? The first would definitely be the aforementioned technological adeptness. If there is a digital device today, it is between generations. More than 60% of Singaporean households with children have computers with Internet access, and nearly all Singaporean graduate students use e-mail, the web and the latest Internet music-piracy technology. While our parent’s generation, Generation X, born in the 1960s and 70s, were relatively computer savvy compared to our grandparents’ generation, their successor, the youth of today, are technologically precocious, growing up with a rattle in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. The generation difference shows up such that the one in the family who knows most about computers is far more likely to be a teenager rather than the father of the house. A study has shown that calls to technical support are coming predominantly from children rather than adults.
For example, in many “pre-figurative” societies – those going through rapid technological evolution – parents have little to offer their children because their knowledge is not relevant enough. In such societies, adults don’t have all the answers anymore. They are not in a position to tell young and the old is becoming more of a dialogue rather than a lesson, affecting the traditional role of authority, as the young begin to teach the old.
Also, they welcome change. Youths by nature are well-adapted to the frenetic and unpredictable workplace of the future. They have less concerns weighing down their mind and can therefore afford to take risks. Youths today are getting married much later, and women today are having children three years older than previous generations have on average. Each generation is born into an era of more rapid change than their parents, making them better adapted for the hectic world they are about to enter. As Pearl S. Buck once said, “The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.” These words, written half a century ago, seem to be even truer of our youths today.
Furthermore, they know to think differently and move away from the old ways of previous generations in order to better adapt to the brave new world today. While years of education, training and experience were once necessary to succeed, now there are increasingly seen as irrelevant, even a liability. Companies set up by bright young youths, born on the right side of the digital divide, are running circles around older, richer but slower rivals by virtue of their ability to turn the increasing popularity of gadget usage today to their advantage. Experience is rapidly giving way to technological adeptness as the most powerful force that can make or break a new company.
Besides, they are independent. One of the more pervasive business trends of the past decade has been the rise of the “free agent”, caused both by the breakdown of the social contract between companies and employees, and by the growing share in the workforce of knowledgeable workers with portable skills. Today’s young people came of age to enter the workforce just as the so-called social contract, an unwritten agreement between employers and employees not to break a partnership easily once it is formed, was dissolving. They have never expected any loyalty from a company, nor have they expected to give it in return. They define themselves by their skills, rather than the firm that they work for.. Many of them see their career after graduation as a path zigzagging from one company to another, from job to job, rather than a straight line of advancement in one single company alone. Along the way, they constantly upgrade themselves and gain new skills from the times that they spend at different jobs, increasing the demand for themselves on the market, increasing their chances of getting a job in the future.
Moreover, they are entrepreneurial. With an economy which has been rapidly picking itself up after the recent financial crisis, capital for the taking and unprecedented technological opportunity, it is no surprise that more and more young people have been striking out for themselves. Nor is this just the bravado of callow youth; by the time they enter university, most teenagers know far more about the business world than their parents ever did. Daring to live their dreams and having the right knowledge on how to survive, they do and consequently make it big. In a Newsweek poll, when youths were asked to name their hero, nearly half of them picked Bill gates, who dropped out of college to start Microsoft, one of the most successful Information technology (IT) companies today. All these characteristics of youth that enable them to survive in our world obviously show that they are much more worldly-wise than our grandfather’s generation could ever hope to be.
However, it cannot be denied that our youth often show signs of being lost lambs in this chaotic world. Our youth seem to be victims wherever there is trouble, from wars to famine. They are also the victimizers and an extreme caricature of the current culture they are in, from Britain’s “yoof” or youth hooligans to America’s inner-city gangs to the increasing occurrences of parody of adulthood among teenage girls, especially in Western countries.. Yet they are also carefully crafted in that society’s image, raised to reflect the society’s values, which gives them every chance to improve upon them. Whenever you read headlines about youth, it is likely that you will despair for them. They are in perpetual crisis – fat, lazy, amoral, sexually promiscuous and drug-addicted, failed by a deteriorating education system and sent astray by society’s dropping standards. They are explosive, aimless, spoiled and corrupted by materialism, television and violent video games. They are sullen, distant and…armed. The majority of them will be born and die with poverty, most of their endless potential untapped.
Yet all these examples are once again evidence pointing to the mind-blowing adaptability of the youth today, who have in their unique ways, managed to make the best of their respective situations that they have been born into. Though they will not be capable of achieving as much as their peers in the city, considering the lives that they have had to experience and the conditions that they are immersed in, it is an achievement in itself that they can remain an active, surviving member of society.
Indeed, youth resonates with infinite potential – representing the wisdom of today’s society that can withstand the storms of economic crises or waves of technological advances. In conclusion, our youth is definitely wiser in terms of facing today’s troubles than our grandparents’ generation. Though they may have age and experience of decades, all this knowledge becomes irrelevant in the face of our world today, and the old cannot help but admit that only the generation of youth is the best equipped to face this modern age.
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