Generation Gap

[RCMerchant]

Do you think there is a Generation Gap?

[ER]

Oh, yeah! Though most experiences repeat and every generation has more in common with all the others than most people, especially young people would like to admit. But sure each generation has defining characteristics and experiences.

[LilCerberus]

Arrested development...
Not sure I had one...............

[Allhallowsday]

Arrested development...
Not sure I had one...............

Interesting remark; I concur.  I don't think I grew up until I was past 40.  Now, I strive to continue to develop. 

[ER]

RC, I have been thinking about this topic, it did catch my interest, so more broadly here is what I think.

As the pace of technological innovation increases and popular culture's changes accelerate, the difference in generations (or the illusion of differences) will amplify when for countless eons, generations differed little, so it is easier than ever to feel left behind. I do and I don't mind that much. I couldn't tell you who half the celebs on magazine covers are and I'm cool with that. I don't know what many of the terms Millennials in my office use mean and I don't care to because I figure wait two months and they'll be saying something else. I like what I like and the rest can go flop.

But changes were not always so fast and obvious.

In hunter-gatherer cultures, which describes 90% of human history, you learned your parents' skills, you lived much as they did, seeking shelter from the elements, pursuing often migrating food sources, and not much shifted over time.

In an agrarian society you learned to sow crops and tend livestock like your parents, and you transferred those skills with few changes. With some advances in plowing and crop rotations, perhaps, a farmer in France in AD 500 lived little different from one in AD 1000 or AD 1500.

In industrial times changes may have been slightly more obvious but even then you worked a mill like your old man, circa 1850, and the differences were not too great for a long time.

Now in the internet age things are happening increasingly quickly and so, yes, I do think the mores and trends are broader in defining generational distinctions.

I work closely with Millennials and I note glaring, real differences in how things were when I was their age and now, especially in their openness about promiscuity, which sometimes seems like the norm among them.

I think me at thirty-nine and one of them at age twenty-one, we're more different in less than twenty years than my generation was with, say, 1960s-era college-agers, and that was thirty years there, not eighteen.

I think things are moving so fast n the 2010s that by the 2020s we're going to start talking about sub-generations, how those in the early part of a generation differ from those in the latter part of it. Even siblings will grow up seeing marked changes.

So, yeah, it's a real thing, a generation gap, it's interesting but I don't care to keep up with it, do you?

Of course I could be wrong.

[Alex]

I quit trying to keep up with what was cool when I was a teenager so I've always had a bit of a disconnect from even my own generation. I figure at the moment I can happily ignore what the newest generations are into the knowledge that no doubt when I need to know them Ash will lecture me about them, mostly including the phrase "But dad, you are sooooo uncool!"

[RCMerchant]

My opinion, of course there is. There always will be. There always has been.

It amazes me when someone freaks out because they can't get cell phone service.
To this day I still do not own a cell phone

When I was in my 20's, I lived way out in the middle of nowhere. I had to go to the bar to use the phone. I couldn't afford a phone. I'm talking about a plug in you wall phone. I had a little black and white TV a record player, and a radio. Of course I lived across the street from the bar on Fish Lake-Melville's. Which was a biker bar outside of Marcellus. I had a nice trailer. That got flooded when in the winter the pipes broke because I was broke and couldn't call the gasman.

And my Dad usta tell me about walking past German POW farm camps- and the Germans would trade chocalate bars to the kids for comic books.

[RCMerchant]

Arrested development...
Not sure I had one...............

Interesting remark; I concur.  I don't think I grew up until I was past 40.  Now, I strive to continue to develop. 

I still have problems I had when I was 16!

[FatFreddysCat]

I can barely understand anything my 11 year old son is talking about. He's either going on and on about video gaming, what some random yutz on YouTube just posted, or referencing "memes" that either aren't funny or make no sense whatsoever.

So I'd say yes, there definitely is a gap. Now I know how my parents felt when all I talked about was comic books.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Do you think there is a Generation Gap?

Sure, and it is a bridge at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista (Florida.) It is called the Generation Gap Bridge and it connects two resorts there, as it spans Hourglass Lake:  Disney's Art of Animation Resort and Disney's Pop Century Resort.

[claws]

I can barely understand anything my 11 year old son is talking about.

Same with my 20 year old co-worker. When we talk it's like we are from different planets. He doesn't know what a internet forum is. I don't know the stuff he constantly quotes from songs of artists he claims are popular. He doesn't understand why I collect blu-ray or physical media. I don't understand why he spends every second on his phone at work. Our conversations are awkward to say the least 

[dean]

I work with teens just about every day. The way I see it: the attitudes are all generally the same but the access and pure consumerism that is todays world compared with 20+ years ago is much more 'hyper.' Not the younger kids fault: they're not the ones creating the marketing, but thats just the way of the world with technology and convenience.

What it means is less of a 'generation gap' and more of a split into subcultures much more so than previously thanks to the access available to everyone these days. That means trends move quicker (or there is more variety so you may see more generally).

I look at the general rebellious attitude of teens through out history and the ideas are the same, just the execution. I look at early 20th century dada art and how they were just messing with the traditional art scene by effectively making rubbish and it seems exactly the same as kids spreading crap-post memes on the internet...

[dean]

I can barely understand anything my 11 year old son is talking about. He's either going on and on about video gaming, what some random yutz on YouTube just posted, or referencing "memes" that either aren't funny or make no sense whatsoever.

So I'd say yes, there definitely is a gap. Now I know how my parents felt when all I talked about was comic books.

Ah I missed this earlier: this links to my above point - the stuff people are into are different but it's basically the same trend cycle/attitude, just instead of comic books its video game streamers. For the current kids when they get older it'll be 'back in my day we were watching minecraft lets play videos and now all the kids watch augmented reality puppies floating around their friend's heads - I don't understand this generation!'. Kids are building their own worlds and its deliberately different to their parents as they try to find their own communities and carve their own niche.

[Trevor]

When I lecture - three or four times a year - to film students, their view of me is "that crazy old guy who loves movies".

I'll take that. 

[Pacman000]

Fairly sure the 90's was Generation Gap.

The 70's/80's was Generation Sears or Generation J.C. Pennies.

Don't know about today.