Anyone who has a family member over the age of 40 knows about the division that exists between older generations and millennials. Millennials do something, older generations blame them; older generations do something, millennials blame them. This cycle keeps going further and further into hilarity.
We have reached a point in society where boomers are getting older, and their interest in millennials is piquing. From chain restaurants to divorce, millennials continue to be blamed for the way they operate. Simply typing “millennials ruin” into a search engine will open up an entire network of articles and editorials complaining about the state of the world and claims that “it’s the young people’s fault.”
One point of contention that continues to hold boomer’s obsession with the way we work is technology. Social media, smartphones, computers, apps; all of this is monitored and studied to insane degrees so that they can better understand how we behave in this ever-changing society.
For instance, the Pew Research Center found that in 2018, 95 percent of teenagers had access to a smartphone and approximately half of these teenagers said they were online constantly. Furthermore, the average teen spends about nine hours a day interacting with media, according to a 2016 study by Common Sense Media.
All of this information raises questions for Boomers and Gen X: Why are young adults and millennials using their phones and social media so much?
The answer seems quite simple to them — millennials are addicted to it.
But why are they?
This is the question older generations cannot seem to answer. Journalists, scholars and the average man have chalked it up to a lack of self-control and the inability to respect authority.
However, that is a complete oversimplification of the dilemma at hand. Indeed there are problems that stem from technological addiction like emotional detachment, short-term pleasure seeking and the inability to communicate effectively, as Sam Allcock from the Huffington Post said. But these types of problems are not the only ones being discussed.
There is generational stereotyping occurring here. Older generations, as previously noted, are making a complex issue very simple to help themselves understand, and possibly avoid, what the real problem is.
The pressing issue of technology addiction among young people is not just the fault of the young. The people who provided that technology and placed it into the hands of the addicts are also to blame.
Older generations gave us access to the internet, smartphones, social media, the list goes on. Putting the blame entirely on the supposed ‘victims’ of the dilemma is counterproductive.
Matthew Hennessey, author of “Zero Hour for Gen X” talks about the generalizations that occur when we try to understand a cross-generational culture. Hennessey notes that the problem should not be focused on blaming millennials for technological addiction, but that we should blame the technology for warping our minds.
In some ways, that is true.
Technology is a direct cause of screen addiction among teens and young adults, but the indirect one is the people who enabled that technology, and then eventually required it, to be in their hands.
There is no denying that both older and younger generations hold blame for their problems with technology usage. The problem is deeper. We cannot continue to generalize, stereotype and scapegoat each other for our problems; we must work together to fix it.
And that starts with the acknowledgment that we all are the problem. Do we have that understood?
Now shut up about the avocados, shopping malls and social security and try working together, please.
