Musing about the generation gap

I find myself in the room of a Tech student, asking him what he thinks about his generation. He is seated squarely between a Nirvana poster to the left and a Fight Club poster to the right. As these two emblems of Gen-X dissatisfaction with materialism, conformity and the '90s status quo stare down at me, it seems fitting that I am conducting an interview on what may be the aftermath.

What will we, the generation to follow Generation X, leave behind for historians to categorize, label and generalize? I started wondering about this over Christmas break while snowed in at my parents' house, watching the Dec. 26 edition of 60 Minutes.

There was a segment on Generation Y defined as the generation born between 1982 and 1995, mostly the children of baby boomers. According to the 60 Minutes piece, there has been a lot of research, especially market research, devoted to deciphering general themes, values and trends among us.

Mel Levine, a popular expert on the media circuit and nationally recognized researcher on childhood learning, claims that all our structured after-school activities have left Generation Y children prone to a sort of group mentality that is stifling to initiative and leadership. In his book Ready or Not, Here Life Comes, Levine writes that while we expect undue encouragement and praise, we have little notion of our actual strengths and weaknesses since because so much emphasis was placed on how we should all be praised as children.

Neil Howe, a historian specializing in generational studies who is also a popular national speaker and author, had more to say along the same themes. His book Millennials Rising: the Next Great Generation claims we are, on the whole, duty-oriented citizens and good team players. In a BBC story in 2001, Howe said that these traits may make members of Generation Y better suited for military service than those in Generation X.

I decided to investigate these claims myself, and after a conversation with Jack Feldman, a professor in Tech's School of Psychology, I learned that while generations are often defined by the exceptions and the icons, most of us are destined to become hard-working, decent folks, according to Feldman.

U.S News & World Report recently reported that juvenile crime has been decreasing over the past two decades, and that teen pregnancy, drinking and drug use are also at historical lows. According to polls, most college kids dream of making money and having a family.

Maren Klawiter, an assistant professor in the School of History, Technology and Society, pointed out that another thing to consider is that much of the generation labeling is market research.

" Typically, we think of generations as a group of people that share some essential relationship to significant social changes, or events...like the Great Depression or World War I and World War II, " Klawiter said. " But my impression these days is that, to a great extent, what animates the discussion of the X-generation and the Y-generation is the advertising and marketing industry. "

Because we are huge in terms of numbers and buying power, Klawiter said, " The advertising industry desperately wants to understand what makes Generation Y tick. "

When talking about our generation, no one seems to disagree that the astounding amount of information made available by the internet and other technology has had a profound effect. We are seen as technology-savvy, media-savvy, quickly jumping from task to task in an increasingly complex world. Some would say we were efficiently multi-tasking, but on the flip side, there are criticisms of ever-decreasing attention spans and a sound bite-driven culture.

There is also the idea of " groupthink, " a term for a phenomenon where people will blindly do what others do when forced to make a decision on which they have very little background knowledge or " when their standards of behavior are poorly developed or in conflict, " Feldman said.

Professor Klawiter told me about The Paradox of Choice, a book by Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory at Swarthmore College, that describes how the choices from the proliferation of goods and marketing are so broad that we are left paralyzed. Possibly this psychological insight helps explain the observation that our generation follows authority with such a vast world of information, any parental or teacher's advice may help us find our moorings.

Along with the proliferation of information, confusing mixed messages abound. Cigarettes cause cancer, but studies show that nicotine improves memory in lab rats. Carbs are food for the brain, yet they make us fat. At work, seated at the conference table, we might be told, " Think outside the box, " and then given a memo saying that all future reports should all be done in PowerPoint format.

Feldman, whose experience as a professor spans four decades, said that a main characteristic of his current students was that " they seem more anxious. "

As much as the phrases such as " creative problem solving, " " critical thinking, " and " brainstorming " come up throughout school, I don't see many of those sorts of tasks in what we're actually asked to do.

In interviews with students, some have even told me they are finding that college education seems to be catering to corporate job training these days (for example, tutorials in popular commercial software) instead of real learning based on the theory behind those corporate tools.

I wonder if there is a disjoint between what we are and what we pretend to idolize. Rebellion is still cool to young people; we enjoy movies and video games with increasingly graphic depictions of sex and violence, but as far as actual rebellion goes, our generation is statistically shaping up to be rather tame.