Closer Together, Further Apart: The Effect of Technology and the Internet on Parenting, Work, and Relationships. Jennifer Schneider
expectation—not a hope—that they will be able to use their own mobile smartphones and tablets for work-related activities. In fact, that expectation [is] the driving force for a critical mass of users who maintain they would go or have gone against company policy in order to use their own mobile device for work. And, like it or not, organizations [emphasis added] will have to adapt.” This insistence by Gen Y on using their own technology can negatively impact both workplace environments and company security, but it is not likely to change. Gen Y is here to stay, and so is the technology that Gen Y loves. As the study concluded, “It is businesses rather than workers who must adapt.”15 In many ways, the BYOD (bring your own device) movement is similar to the early days of workplace computers, when employees suddenly wanted to toss aside paper in lieu of Lotus spreadsheets and Macs for desktop publishing. So IT departments adapted, and business moved forward, becoming more efficient in almost every way.
But how are digital immigrants to survive and successfully negotiate a workplace that doesn’t uniformly respect or appreciate their values? Read below for some clues.
Workplace Management For Digital Immigrants
•Take the time to learn about new technology, accepting that in many ways it offers potential improvement and in all ways it’s here to stay (until replaced by something even newer). Those who struggle with new technology are well served by pairing them with a “reverse mentor”—that is, a digital native to act as guide and interpreter.
•Allow, even encourage the coexistence of differing work ethics, recognizing that people from younger generations may be more interested than their older counterparts in achieving a healthy work-life balance—which often includes telecommuting and flexible hours. Consider the possibility that this doesn’t mean young people are lazy or unmotivated; it just means they approach work differently.
•Learn and accept the new forms of business communication, understanding that face-to-face communication (scheduled meetings) may not be in line with the much more immediate ways in which younger generations communicate—using IMs, texts, and Skype.
Unfortunately, today many older workers are not coping well with new and evolving technologies. In a recent Huffington Post article, human resources management consultant Dr. Linda Gravett states, “I’ve had so many Boomers say to me, I’m not going to learn how to text, I want to talk to someone face-to-face doggone it and I’m going to track them down till I find them. I say ... if you want to communicate with people across all age groups then learn how to text, learn how to instant message, get out of your comfort zone and your rigidity that every kind of communication must be either by letter or email or even face-to-face because that isn’t necessarily practical.”16
Technology and Politics
Do digital natives and digital immigrants differ politically? One school of thought says digital natives are (or will become) more responsible citizens than their predecessors by using their technological expertise to exert social change. With their technological know-how, the theory goes, younger people can communicate more quickly and more expertly than their predecessors. And there are certainly examples that support this, such as the 2008 U.S. presidential election in which digital natives voted for Barack Obama (who campaigned heavily online via Facebook and Twitter) by a two-to-one margin, while digital immigrants were essentially evenly split between Obama and John McCain. Whether Gen Ys voted for Obama because he did a better job of communicating with them or because he better represented their political ideals remains open for debate. More than likely the result was a combination of both factors.
As the Economist stated in 2010:
There is a feeling of superficiality about much online youth activism. Any teenager can choose to join a Facebook group supporting the opposition in Iran or the liberation of Tibet, but such engagement is likely to be shallow. A recent study by the Pew Research Center, an American think-tank, found that Internet users aged 18-24 were the least likely of all age groups to e-mail a public official or make an online political donation. But when it came to using the web to share political news or join political causes on social networks, they were far ahead of everyone else. Rather than genuinely being more politically engaged, they may simply wish to broadcast their activism to their peers. [There] may be less going on here than meets the eye.17
Of course, the same thing could be said about baby boomer activists in the 1960s. Were most boomers attending rallies and sit-ins because they fully understood the causes, or because it seemed like the groovy thing to do? Once again, the answer is likely some combination of the two.
So far, the political split between Gen Y and older generations has not played out with the same visible acrimony as the gap between the boomer generation of the 1960s and 1970s and its predecessors. This, however, may change. After all, many current public policies work to the benefit of older generations at the expense of younger people. In Great Britain, young people have responded to this disparity by forming the Intergenerational Foundation, (www.if.org.uk), an organization created to publicize and redress their many grievances. Their slogan? “Fairness for Future Generations.” These young activists are lobbying online rather than taking to the streets as boomers once did, but they’re nonetheless getting the message out.
In the United States, Generations Y and Z will soon rule the political roost. As Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais wrote in a 2012 National Journal article, “At 95 million, Millennials [Gen Y] are the largest American generation ever. By 2020 they will comprise more than one in three eligible voters. Sooner or later, those numbers, and the unity of belief that the millennial generation has so far brought to politics, will allow that generation to reshape the United States, first as voters and then as the nation’s leaders. The way in which boomers and seniors react to the growing presence of Millennials, and the younger generation’s distinctive beliefs and experiences, will determine the difficulty of the transition from the old America to the new.”18
The “Friends and Family” Plan
Virtually everything discussed in this chapter in terms of the “generation gap” between digital natives and digital immigrants centers around the technology used for communicating and “staying connected.” And though under acknowledged by the generations that have come before, no group in history has been more interconnected than Generations Y and Z! In 2009, more than half of American teens logged on to a social media website more than once per day, with nearly a quarter of teens logging on to their favorite social media site ten or more times per day.19 That same year, a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that three quarters of U.S. teens owned a cell phone, with 88 percent of them texting regularly. Boys typically sent and received thirty texts per day; girls sent and received eighty per day. Girls age fourteen to seventeen typically sent at least one hundred texts per day. A more recent Pew study shows the median number of daily texts among teens age twelve to seventeen has risen from fifty texts per day in 2009 to sixty texts per day in 2012, with older teens, boys, and African Americans leading the increase, though girls ages fourteen to seventeen remain the most avid texters, still averaging well over one hundred per day.20 The survey also revealed that texting is now the primary mode of daily communication between teens and their friends and family, far surpassing phone calls, face-to-face interactions, and email.21
Consider the opening sentences of Associated Press writer Martha Irvine’s June 2012 article “Is Texting Ruining the Art of Conversation?”
Anna Schiferl hadn’t even rolled out of bed when she reached for her cellphone and typed a text to her mom one recent Saturday. Mom was right downstairs in the kitchen. The text? Anna wanted cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Soon after, the 13-year-old could hear Mom’s voice echoing through the house. “Anna,” Joanna Schiferl called, “if you want to talk to me, you come downstairs and see me!” Anna laughs about it now. “I was kind of being lazy,” the teen from suburban Chicago concedes. “I know that sounds horrible.” Well, maybe not horrible, but certainly increasingly typical.22
The fact is digital natives are often more comfortable