Our 17 year old is at a basketball tournament out of state and called last night for advice on something. No big deal and it's nice that she still wants our (or to be more specific - my wife's) advice.
But the thing that hit me is that this generation has constant contact with everyone. With parents, with friends, with everyone. And this has to have a gigantic effect on how they themselves turn out and on society too. What does it mean when a child is always connected as they grow and learn and decide what type of person they are going to be?
A couple of things hit me about this - just guesses as anyone else's will be too:
- They will be the most collabartive generation in the history of the world. Everything they do includes contact with others to some degree. This I think is a very positive thing - they will be much more productive than we have been - in business, in research, and in their personal lives.
- They will be much more open-minded. Yes they have constant contact with their parents which gives their parents the ability to pass on their own fears and sterotypes. But at the same time they are in communication with their peers to a much greater degree than before. This is another positive thing - they will be more than any previous generation making their own decision about what kind of person they want to be.
- They will have the most public lives of any generation. No they don't have to create a MySpace page. They don't have to put pictures and notes about what they are doing. But they do. I'm not sure if this will play out good or bad. But I think it will makes us all realize that yes we are all imperfect and this just means that we know those imperfections.
I'm sure there is a lot more that we will learn bout this over the next 40 years. But I think the combination of this generation being the most scheduled in history (school to soccer to piano and no "open" time) along with being in constant communication means this upcoming generation will be very different from us.
Exactly how that will play out will be interesting to say the least.
