This week I had the pleasure of reading a great article by Emily Nussbaum entitled "Say Anything" that appeared in The New Yorker. I'd like to take this space and highlight one part of article I found interesting and very informative.
Nussbaum highlights the generational divide that has emerged within the past ten years or so between those who grew up with New Media in their lives, and those that did not.
It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years—you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about “jungle rhythms.” Everything associated with that music and its greasy, shaggy culture felt baffling and divisive, from the crude slang to the dirty thoughts it was rumored to trigger in little girls. That musical divide has all but disappeared. But in the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk.
A lot of people don't realize this, but older people back in the 50s and 60s hated rock and roll. It goes back to when Elvis was a twenty-something year old sensation, but it continued throughout the sixties, when Woodstock rocked upstate New York. The kids that listened to the music did not surrender when their musical tastes were rebuked by their parents. Instead, they rebelled, and kept on rocking. That's the reason why Paul McCartney can open up the Mets new ballpark and sell it out, and why Pete Townshend of the Who can still smash his guitar on stage.
Now, I can't help but to think of it as ironic that these same rebellious people that went to Woodstock at 17 with a case of beer against their parent's wishes are now cracking down on their children being on Facebook and MySpace. Why would these same people that forty years ago rejected their parent's attempts to limit their freedom of expression do the same to their own kids? Professor Clay Shirky of New York University has an opinion on this.
“Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.” People are always eager to believe that their behavior is a matter of morality, not chronology, Shirky argues. “You didn’t behave like that because nobody gave you the option.”
Now, I don't completely disagree with this assessment. After all, if Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are for the young, then why would older adults be joining these sites? They want to feel young again, and they are somewhat jealous, even if they don't show it, of the younger generation for having this much freedom of expression.
At the same time, that's not the motive of the older generation for rejecting new media as a form of expression for the younger generation. There's another consideration to be had, parenting. We may not know it yet, but our parents have had to put up with a lot.
Their number one priority in parenting is protecting their son or daughter, which is made harder tenfold when the son or daughter has a computer. More often than not, parents have no idea how to begin to tackle the problem of their children posting too much information on the internet. They're not familiar with new media, so they have no idea about how it works. That's enough to make any good parent nervous.
The best parents can do is talk to their kids, and often that's not enough. As the article notes, they have an invisible audience, their skin is tougher, and, often enough, they archive their adolescence, which, at the ends, provides in some cases for a nice future shock.
The fact is that many of these same kids that wore their hair long, that went to rock concerts, and experimented in risky behavior when they were young have grown into conservative parents, which, I believe, is why they resent the phenomenon of New Media. Yes, they may want what we have now, but they're also concerned about us making mistakes they made in their youth, mistakes that are available for the entire world to see with the click of a mouse.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
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