Complainers. Overly confident. Demanding. Waste too much time on social networking sites.
If you listen to Sarah Horne, these are all buzzwords that characterize Generation Y.
Depending on the source, Generation Y is defined as a cohort born between the late 1970s and early part of the 21st century, resulting in a significant portion that grew up during the 1990s and 2000s. It is almost universally accepted that Generation Y is the first cohort to have “come of age” with the Internet, making it naturally tech perceptive.
I am a product of Generation Y.
Born in 1980, I was always surrounded by technology, beginning with the Speak & Spell at a very young age, advancing to the Apple II-E (which my parents bought in 1984), and before the decade was out, joining one of the first social/informational networks, Prodigy, through which I began to realize the power my generation would hold. When I reached the sixth grade in 1992, I became fascinated with a more simplistic and malleable social networking tool than Prodigy, the Bulletin Board System (BBS for short), when first introduced to it at school. Shortly thereafter, I started my own BBS on my Macintosh Classic and linked with people around the world by becoming a member of FidoNet, a messaging tool similar to USENET newsgroups and later online message board/forums. By late 1992, I began to use telnet, FTP, and the World Wide Web, which at the time was entirely text based and predominately occupied by institutional uses. After the introduction of the Mosaic graphical interface in 1993, the whole world had changed overnight, and the Internet’s rapid ascension to becoming an e-commerce, educational, informational, and social tool had begun.
Although many of my peers did not have the exposure to “pre-internet” networks, by 1995, almost all of my classmates had an AOL account and email. Perhaps my school was different, considering it had offered internet access since around 1993, but judging from the tech shrewdness of my college peers when I arrived at the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 1998, most had been using the web for multiple years preceding college.
Generation Y is the first generation that is completely comfortable with emerging online technologies, and as a result, most, including myself, can complete tasks much quicker than someone without a firm understanding of internet based tools. This advanced understanding of the internet’s global reach will be our propeller to change the world—something we have already done.
However, if you ask Sarah Horne, author of a March 22, 2009 New York Post op-ed entitled “Slice of Humble Y,” we are, across the board, dreamers who believe that “The Hills” is a microcosm of life. Ms. Horne categorically defines Generation Y as those whom, “during the boom times, […] felt secure enough to brashly knock on their bosses’ doors and demand better assignments, better titles, better salaries.” The overall thrust of her op-ed is that the economic downturn is a “much-needed dose of reality” for Generation Y, because we are spoiled, overly coddled brats who spend “half of [our] day on Facebook.” For an appeal to “authority,” Ms. Horne cites Jean Twenge, PhD, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” who argues that Generation Y has been brainwashed by the reality TV culture into believing that “everyone on TV has an exciting job … with very little drudge work,” which has resulted in “millions of twenty-somethings who are understandably disappointed.”
I sincerely do not know to whom both are referring, but most of my Generation Y friends are achievers, hard workers, and believe that they have a responsibility to themselves, their parents, and the global community to drive change and transparency in everything they do. We learn from each other, whether it is through blog posts, Twitter updates, Facebook interactions, or Flickr photo streams, and apply our newly acquired knowledge to everything we do. In addition to the actions (or lack thereof) of the previous administration, I credit Generation Y’s embrace of emerging technologies and social networking (and in turn, sharing and transparency) for stimulating the Obama presidential campaign to exploit our everyday tools to propel the message of change and transparency in government.
Just like the Baby Boomers and Generation X, we are changing how the world functions. I would argue that the economic downturn is not changing us, in contrast to what Horne and Twenge believe; rather, the economy has unveiled how much we have altered society. To put it into perspective, just consider how marketing has had to adapt to reach us; I am more likely to respond to a viral campaign on Twitter than a classic 1990s sidebar advertisement that I have learned to ignore, or, for that matter, a television ad.
Horne has encapsulated the Generation Y’s “attitude” by defining us through our actions in the workplace. Clearly, as I had indicated above, those in the Generation Y cohort are new era detectives, with internet acumen that, for the most part, only they possess. Following this, as long as we have access to an iPhone, a Blackberry, or a wifi signal, we can complete mostly any task remotely. This is no excuse, however, for challenging authority—most of whom are from the Baby Boomer generation—in the workplace, and again, I have never heard of any of my friends complaining to a supervisor that s/he should be able to work remotely, rather than sitting at a desk from 9-5.
I would argue that managers are becoming cognizant of Generation Y’s resourcefulness, and within five to ten years, when the oldest of Generation Y begin to settle in to management positions, the workplace culture will shift dramatically.
So, thank you, Sarah Horne, for bashing my generation. You have compelled me to attack your weak diatribe and expose it for what it is: a completely unsubstantiated op-ed devoid of what every journalist should base arguments upon—facts.