Generational Blurring
I’m part of a research team at the moment that is looking at the transmission of values, youth, and new media, so I get to read a lot about how the young people are all on Web 2.0 and the oldies aren’t. I’ve also been spending quite a lot of time on YouTube of late – hey, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it :-) – and finding that many of the people hanging out there aren’t really that young.
Some of my colleagues and I have been talking about these things, and in our experience the generational divide is not so clear. Now this might be partially due to the nature of our jobs, but I’m inclined to think that it may not be. To give an example: among my Facebook friends are my children, nieces and nephews, past students, and children of my friends. My partner’s family has taken it up in a big way, with members from sixty to six months keeping in touch via Facebook.
We are not alone: I was listening to ABC radio one day when this topic came up and a lot of older people phoned in to say that they were friends with their children and grandchildren on Facebook.
Nor is it just Facebook. My friends and my children connect across Twitter, Lastfm, instant messaging, and blogs. Friends of my children now communicate on a regular basis with my friends through status updates.
I’ve also noticed an ease of communication across generations in old-fashioned face-to-face communication, so it is not just a ‘new media’ thing. And we learn from each other, in contrast to received wisdom that children learn from their parents and students from their teachers: I learnt a lot from my students, maybe more than they learnt from me at times; and we learn a lot about our world from our children, sometimes more than either of us are willing to admit.
I’m beginning to suspect that if there is a divide at all, it is far too simplistic to label it as a ‘generational’ divide.
Your Comments
Matthew Smith writes:
Glad to hear a little about your research Lisa. I’ve heard of students complaining about the assumption that because they are under twenty five, they have natural mastery of the internet and their phones. Many young people report that their phones are a mystery to them apart from making a phone call and that they only know the basics of computing. (These stories come via my wife who works with social work students which might be a non-representative group though). So from what I know, I agree with you, it’s not simply generational although that does come into it as older people are more likely to be intimidated by electronics. My dad has become a self confessed nerd since he got ADSL a couple of years ago – he even live blogged the Tamworth Country Music Festival from his PDA. My mum turned on the computer once by accident when she was picking up a coffee cup.
Posted: 26 02 2009 - 13:06 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Matt, your wife’s experience coincides with my own teaching experiences. Universities assume that students are totally confident in all aspects of new media use when often they only know how to do the specific things that they want to do on one or two of them and they ignore attempts by authority figures to co-opt them for other purposes. Ever met a student who uses their student email?
Having said this, I still can’t program the bloody HD recorder, so I guess I only use those things that I need (or want) to as well. John and the kids are perfectly competent at using the recorder, however, and get frustrated with me because I can’t. I could work it out if I needed to – and have done on occasion – but not in a hurry with people standing over me.
The situation of your parents strikes a chord, too. I know of many couples of varying ages where one partner is comfortable with computing and online social networking and the other partner professes no knowledge or desire for such things. Not always the male who is proficient either.
Posted: 26 02 2009 - 20:36 | Permanent link to this comment
Matthew Smith writes:
Another anecdote: Steph used a Youtube clip called “Facebook in real life” in a tutorial recently. The clip portrayed a person in real life behaving as it they were on Facebook: poking the other person, writing on their wall, showing pictures of them and doing status updates. Half the class got the joke but one person put their hand up and asked if the clip was about bullying. It turned out this person and about half of the class had never used Facebook.
Posted: 4 03 2009 - 11:13 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
In that respect I think Steph’s class probably is a bit unrepresentative. I would have thought that FB types of networking sites were sufficiently in the general consciousness that most people would recognise the joke though.
By the way, it seems none of my family can work out how to use my phone, which is really just a basic ‘brick’.
Posted: 4 03 2009 - 22:16 | Permanent link to this comment