If you’ve ever puzzled over a young person text messaging the friend sitting beside him, you’ve joined the generation gap.
In fact, if you’re reading this newspaper, some would consider you on the aging side of that divide. Younger people, it seems, don’t read papers.
The concept of a generation gap in America is nothing new. The term was defined back in the 1960s, but differences in attitudes between the young and old go much farther back than that.
For the most part, however, the generation gap has mainly been defined by conflicting attitudes, ideas and interests. And while that’s still true, you can add something else to the mix.
Technology.
Some will argue — correctly — that technology’s impact on the generation gap is scarcely a new phenomenon. Young people tend to embrace new products and advancements more readily than their parents or grandparents. How many adults have depended on the know-how of a child to program a video cassette recorder?
But let’s face it, technology — particularly in terms of the way we communicate with each other — is morphing at an explosive rate. Adults who prided themselves in learning how to surf the Web and establish an e-mail address are faced with such terms as text messages, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogs and — well — you get the idea.
These new forms of communication are a mixed bag. Much has been made of the fact that street protests in Iran have been covered mainly through bursts of quick messages from Twitter and from images captured by cell phones. This was after Iranian authorities shut down more traditional modes of media.
But here’s an interesting tidbit from a broad-ranging survey of generational activities and attitudes released by the Pew Research Center. Analysts found that 87 percent of adults under the age of 30 text message with cell phones. By comparison, just 11 percent of those 65 and older do so.
In other words, the traditional generation gap is being exacerbated by the mere fact younger and older people aren’t speaking the same language. How can they communicate if the technologies they use to talk to one another are completely different?
By the way, the Pew survey found that the generation gap is expanding. No surprise there.
The way we see it, much of the generation gap is forged by ignorance. People who don’t understand their counterparts of a different age will invent stereotypes or embrace preconceived notions in order to fill the informational voids. And the less the generations have to do with each other, the wider the gap will grow.
We have no solution to the technological divide, other than to ask people to recognize it. Technological advancement and change will come regardless of the consequences. But it doesn’t have to reinforce barriers to communication that already exist.
