| Inside Gen Y: Serenity's Believe It Or Not... |
| Friday, 05 February 2010 10:09 |
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My husband thinks Twitter is stupid. He's only slightly more tolerant of Facebook. There, he acknowledges, there is a point to the whole thing: one can chat and keep up with friends and family members in far-flung places. And it saves us a lot on postage when we want to share photos from special occasions. He won't use his own Facebook wall, though. It just sits there... collecting unanswered greetings, junky applications posts, and cyber-cobwebs. He doesn't seem to feel any particular distress over ignoring people who might be trying to "find" him. In fact, a pretty astonishing percentage of my late-twenties relatives, friends, and acquaintances don't really "do" social media. They might all have online profiles somewhere, but a lot of them are just not that into it. Astonishing? Well, sure, because all the headlines and market research and media perspectives keep telling me we twentysomethings are all online 24/7 and can't live without the Web at our constant disposal. We are all obsessed with the latest technology, we all know how to use each and every newfangled gadget before it hits the shelves, and we all roll our eyes at the infallible cluelessness of older generations who frown on and resist our integration of trendy electronics into our every waking moments. Who are these people nearing thirty who don't rely on technology to manage their schedules, interests, and social lives for them? What subspecies of Generation Y is this? Well, as I look around, I see they're young professionals, young managers, young entrepreneurs, young service workers, and young laborers who are totally overwhelmed by all the new "stuff" out there. They are utterly uncomfortable in settings that revolve around discussion of the latest, greatest integrated social networking capabilities or the really cool open-source applications of the next big Web 2.0 thing. They are completely disinterested in your status updates, your profile photos, your LinkedIn group, and whether or not your next meeting will involve an online component. Sure, there's the twentysomething sect that devours technology for breakfast. There's also another twentysomething sect that is still struggling to find the "Save As" option in the Word 2007 menu layout and can't figure out why on earth anyone would want to talk to strangers online. (Oh, and there are twentysomethings out there who still put on a tie or make sure their bra straps aren't showing before a job interview, but we'll talk about them some other day.) Believe it or not, a lot of Millennials don't "get" the Web... or want to. A lot of Millennials don't care about new technology. There is, in fact, a strong undercurrent of Millennials who are perfectly capable of sitting through lunch without texting. They manage to stay in the social loop without Facebook or Twitter notifications. They can still spell words in their entirety and knock on a door to see if someone is in. They've heard you can hook up the PlayStation to play against others online, but they haven't figured it out yet, and they really couldn't care less if they never get around to it. They can call people they know and tell them to come over to play PlayStation in the living room. They can drive by the movie theater to see what's playing, instead of bookmarking the cinema schedule on their smartphones. Some of them don't want Web access on their phones at all because they don't really ever check their email... because no one really ever emails them. Some of them have never created a blog. Some of them have never uploaded a video to YouTube. Some of them don't have iPods yet. Some of them never will. Some of them don't even have mobile phones. Some of them have landlines only. Whoa... I even saw a guy I know, twenty-eight years old, pull a real map out of the glove box a few weeks ago. A real, paper map, with pages and everything. He used it to look up driving directions. Can you imagine? He managed to get from Point A to Point B without MapQuest. Believe it or not, all twentysomethings are not created equally. Those trends and statistics and headlines and reports about how the league of extraordinary, techno-savvy Millennials are going to take over the world? They really don't apply to everybody in this age set. They really, really don't. If you're relying on that data to shape your conference messaging for this generation, you might just be missing an audience segment or two. Believe it or not, there are still industries and professions out there that are not entirely technology-dependent, and there are still young workers and professionals out there who are smart, successful, and moving on up... with nary a USB cord to support them. Have you heard of these people? These strange throwbacks amid the hip Gen Y crowd? Are they in your meeting room? How do you know? They didn't get the email survey. Image: Serenity J. Knutson, Editor in Chief, PlannerWire.com
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