The media and those in my professional life – they all witter on and on about the mysteries of communicating, working with and dealing with Generation Y.
And there’s certain assumptions – oh yes all Gen Y are addicted to social networking and this is the way of the future and we all need to get up to speed or we will be left behind forever.
So here’s the funny thing, I have three Gen Y-ers in my house. They are all quite different as brothers of ages 16, 18 and 20 are likely to be.
Ask them – what do you think about social networking and they have no idea what you are talking about.
- Twitter? – never heard of it.
- LinkedIn – is that something for old people?
OK – let’s be more specific. The 20-year-old (just finished a BA let’s stereotype as liberal folksinging caring …), he uses MySpace for music stuff – to promote gigs and upload music; and Facebook – strictly back-up – to promote his music not for personal use.
The 18-year-old – about to enter second year commerce at uni – total opposite to above – obsessed by money (plan to have house by end of uni and $1m by 30), recent convert to Facebook (from Bebo) because that’s what “serious” people do.
And 16-year-old – no known social networking activities apart from gaming (arena of world unknown to mum to remotely comment upon); eratically (annoyingly) checks cell.
In short, my view remains – it’s very unwise to make generalisations about “generations”. Age, sex, culture and personality can determine behaviours. Strictly speaking, I’m a young-ish “babyboomer” but that doesn’t mean I fall into all the stereotypes that that suggests … I believe!
And I have to wonder how much “the media” drives the concept of “social media” because they can.
Tags: Social networking
May 1, 2009 at 6:07 am |
Let hear an “Amen”!