Talking ‘Bout Some Generations
Last week there were a pair of blog postings, by Leslie Johnson and Siva Vaidhyanathan, on what was being described as an “oversimplification” of generational tags. The main thrust of each argument was that many people — including me — were being too general when it came to classifying upcoming generations as Digital Natives (let alone, as I do in Print is Dead, naming them Generation Download and Generation Upload). This did not sit well with either Johnson and Vaidhyanathan. For instance, here’s Vaidhyanathan on the subject:
Invoking generations invariable demands an exclusive focus on people of wealth and means, because they get to express their preferences (for music, clothes, electronics, etc.) in ways that are easy to count. It always excludes immigrants, not to mention those born beyond the borders of the United States. And it excludes anyone on the margins of mainstream consumer or cultural behavior.
Here’s Johnson:
I often take part in discussions about services for faculty and students, and sometimes hear ageist comments about how older faculty are completely non-digital and all students are automatically all digital. Hah! Just like some folks have an interest or skill in languages or math or art and some folks don’t, it’s the same with whatever “digital” is.
In fact, Johnson goes so far as to claim that “Being digital is not generational.” Well, I might agree that being digitally adept maybe isn’t generational, but there’s no way you can say that kids today aren’t Digital Natives. It’s a fact. From the moment they’re born (under the watchful electronic eye of digital cameras and camcorders, not to mention the bevy of beeping medical equipment nearby), to every aspect of their ensuing lives (electronic baby monitors, video games, cell phones, digital watches, TVs, MP3s, the Internet, etc.), they will exist in an electronic milieu.
A hundred years ago, kids who were born were Generation Victrola; today they’re Generation Download. To argue against this is to swim against the tide of not only history but common sense. Because generations are defined by the world in which they’re born and nurtured. Whatever surrounds that generation is later what comes to define it. Because of this, someone could be said to have grown up in the era of Vietnam even though they didn’t fight in Vietnam, or never even gave it much thought. But the influence that Vietnam had on the books and music and movies of the time is resolutely inescapable.
Vaidhyanathan points out that just because someone was born within the accepted timeframe of what constituted Generation X, it doesn’t mean they had the same experience. With that I completely agree. Just because you were born in 1972 doesn’t mean you’re a carbon copy of Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites. Instead, stating that someone was born at that time simply means that they were exposed to the prevailing attitudes and influences which were omnipresent during those years (whether they were part of those influences or not).
But there are also more important and subtle shifts, generational gaps that both envelope and separate us without us even knowing. And, in many ways, these are the most important developments of all. For instance, last week’s tragic mall shooting. As I watched the news reports, most of which described the mall as a growing place of danger and paranoia, it caused me to reflect upon my own life and childhood. As a youth growing up in suburban Southern California in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, most of my weekends were spent at the mall, hanging out in the arcade or at the pizza place, or just wandering around for endless hours (during any of the mall scenes in either Valley Girl or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I could have been an extra). In those days, the worse thing that could happen to you in a mall was that Asteroids might eat your quarter. Today, people go to the mall and get gunned down as they shop for Christmas presents. For today’s teenagers, malls (not to mention their own schools) can be a dangerous place. For me, they weren’t. So the meaning and length between my experience and theirs is indeed a generational gap. And its exists all around us in ways that far outshine the surface differences in music, fashion, or even anything necessarily cultural.
The bottom line is that no generation marches in lockstep; no era can be defined completely (the ‘20s weren’t roaring for everyone nor did everybody swing in the ‘60s, and surely someone was pissed off during the Summer of Love). Instead, the tags we give to generations are shorthand; they’re always just signifiers. To treat them literally is to mistreat them.
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I just want to clarify one point — I do think that the ubiquitousness of digital media availability has changed the cultural standard operating procedure in terms of creating and interacting with media. I just think it has an effect on all members of society — generations x, y, z, boomers or anyone else. I’ll grant that the younger “generations” are more likely to be digital due to exposure to this lifestyle during their entire lifetimes. The effect isn’t limited to them, and, as you say, they’re not all in lockstep.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I must take issue, however.
Malls and schools are not dangerous places. In fact, schools have not been safer in 50 years.
This is the problem. By focusing on the anecdote and the perceived trend, you define something you have not measured or certified. How do you know what a “prevailing attitude” is? And what if such an attitude (if measurable) does not match reality?
There may be a prevailing attitude that schools in the 2000s are dangerous. But the reality is that they are not.
Your story of growing up in California in the late 1970s and 1980s matches mine from Western New York at the same time. So we share some stuff. But how many poor or non-white young people in America at the time shared them?
These days, more than one out of four American children are born into poverty. Many of them are born to immigrant parents who do not speak or read English. How “digital” are they? Or do they not count?
Historical phenomena such as Vietnam matter to entire populations in complicated ways. They still matter. But slicing them into arbitrary age segments makes no sense.
Vietnam affected almost everyone in America who was 18 to 25 year old at the time. But it effected everyone differently. Those who served did not share the “zeitgeist” with those who resisted. Women and men experienced it differently. The poor tended to serve. The rich did not.
Everyone assumed in 1972 that there was some great “generational” mood or attitude that would pull voters to McGovern in the first election in which 18- to 20-year-olds could vote. Look how that went. Everyone was wrong.
By focusing on wealthy, white, educated people only, as journalists and pop-trend analysts tend to do, they miss out on the whole truth.
There was no “generation Victrola.” Most children 100 years ago were born on farms and did not have running water, let alone Victrolas.
Shorthand is another word for stereotype. See Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion for an elaboration.
[…] defense of “born digital” Over on his blog, Print is Dead, Jeff Gomez […]
I have to agree in part with Vaidhyanathan — not in the idea that we cannot make any statements about generational trends (I think we can) — but that it is important to consider those who are left out of the digital equation.
I think that those who are not wealthy enough to own computers are also part of their “digital native” generation — not that they’re digital natives themselves, but that, in a society in which the educated, middle and upper class kids download and upload content to their hearts’ content, those who do not have the means to do so become further marginalized in poverty than they would have been 40 years ago. In the 1960s, if I had no money for books, I could use a library card and read all I wanted for free. Even if I couldn’t attend college, I could get the skills needed to excel in the workforce. In 2007, if I have no money for a computer or internet access, I can sign up in advance for 20 minutes at a public library kiosk, while my peers are downloading, uploading, and otherwise changing the definitions of media. My 20 minutes of email checking will not prepare me for a digital workplace, and my place in the digital generation will be squarely defined by my lack of access.
This, I think, is especially important to these generations, as the digital gap widens and as the workforce becomes more digitally native itself. As these marginalized kids become marginalized adults, the gap widens, creating a generation that, while not necessarily defined by being completely digitally native, is nevertheless defined by its relationship to digital media.
I completely agree that immigrants and the less-fortunate are often left standing at the margins of these discussions, simultaneously part of the generation but not able to take part in the trend. But that’s a sidebar discussion (and one that, perhaps, is in fact more important than this one). But in terms of the general discussion of Digital Natives, we need to keep our focus or else realize that we’ve moved on to another discussion, because to be like Buckaroo Bonzai — and stop the band just because one person in the back of the room’s not enjoying the song — means we’re not serving anyone’s needs.
This is a digital generation. A generation is an intentionally general classification. That there are people who are exceptions is beside the point. What will a certain period be best remembered for? That’s a generation, in this sense.
The intention of broad metaphors like “digital natives” is, as Gomez indicates, to focus on the culture and discourse to which people present during the era are exposed. While many of the children on farms without running water 100 years ago, many or most had heard of victrolas. If they saw a victrola, they’d likely be able to recognize as such and operate it. The understanding of the victrola for the majority of people signified their belonging to the “victrola generation.” If, as Vaidhyanathan suggests, there is no such thing as the “victrola generation,” what are we to call the group of people who lived around the same time for whom victrolas were a recognizable technology?
The lack of access barring have-nots from participating in digital environments does not prevent them from being part of a “generation” of digital natives. Even for individuals on the margins of the digital era, “upload” and “download” have specific meaning as do the terms “blog,” “ebook,” and “ipod.” They are “digital natives” in that they speak the language and know the culture although they may not have the full experience. Access is an important, but separate issue. Attempting to separate a broad age-range by who has access and who does not takes away from the power of the permeating culture and discourse that naturally induct people into the “digital generation.”
These types of critiques are annoying. Sure, generalizations are never entirely accurate because that’s the nature of general terms.
Ironically, people make the same error when referring to immigrants or persons born outside the U.S. Here in Buenos Aires the youngest generation is definitely aware of digital technologies. Of course, most Argentine immigrants to the U.S. are from middle class families. But even in the slums of Buenos Aires there are places to use the Internet. Three years ago I saw Internet centers even in the favelas of Rio. Anyway, focusing on oversimplifications is such an easy argument and quickly leads to being sidetracked. Of course, my example of Internet in the slums is another oversimplification!
Discerning what makes generations “tick” is quite a difficult task and often the most profound influences are also the most taken for granted or overlooked. It is only in hindsight that larger generational patterns emerge.
Although its ridiculous to assume that *everyone* of a particular generation has the same exact experience, there is, I think, a more subtle background “noise” that people of a generation vibrate to. I believe this has to do more with how a generation, as a whole, perceives its environment.
Subtle shifts in perception occur gradually and can be more clearly seen when interacting with others from a different generation. The simplist example I can provide is the advent of television. I’m a “genx” who grew up on TV and can’t imagine what the world was like before it. My parents (older than the norm) grew up during the Great Depression on radio and the occasional trip to the movie theater. My parents loved and appreciated TV, however they could also listen to old radio shows for hrs and be just as entertained (where I would be bored). Their perception of the environment was tuned differently than mine because of the types of media we were exposed to.
You can see this visual paradigm shift in art and movies as well. As photography and movies came of age, fine art diverged from realism to expressionism, dada, surrealism, cubism, etc. - artists exposed to new media perceive reality differently and thus express it in a new way. Movies/film show a similar tangent as other media took off (big difference in films from before and after the introduction of TV) and now this medium continues to change as new tech puts video into the hands of everyperson and on every website.
Today’s kids can’t imagine a world without the internet and over time their perceptions will be expressed to the world we can’t imagine. They’re as different from me as I was from my parents and their radio programs.
Does this mean that every kid today is a tech wizard? No. But even those that are not will perceive the world in a flavor unique to their generation.