Kids These Days
posted August 23, 2010 # 0 Comments
Ran across two interesting reads recently regarding the younger generations of today. As I get a little older I find this sort of thing more and more fascinating.. maybe because it's an experience I will never have or maybe because I'm secretly always looking for ways to embrace my inner curmudgeonly old man and this is fuel for the fire:
- What Is It About 20-Somethings? - An interesting debate to start thinking about a new phase of life called "Emerging Adulthood" - mostly reserved for the possibly listless 20-somethings. It happened with "Adolescents" so why not introduce a new term? Times they are a changin'...
Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? That’s the subject of lively debate among policy makers and academics. To some, what we’re seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.
- Wear a wristwatch? Use-email? Not the Class of 2014 - another bit of insight into the younger generation and some of the divergences that are appearing from our own - i.e. Clint Eastwood being primarily a director, not an actor; kids not really ever wearing watches or preferring not to use email.
- Eric Schmidt Advice: Change Your Name To Escape Your Past - Google CEO suggesting that in the future it will become a right of passage into adulthood to change your name to escape all those embarrassing things you put online before you were legal. Sort of like wiping your permanent Internet record clean. It sounds nuts but I actually wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.