We know that managing millennials — i.e., Gen Y, Generation Tech, Adultolescents, etc. — can be different than managing Baby Boomers, or even Gen X, but at least BNET gives the kids the benefit of the doubt.
No so author Mark Bauerlein, a 49-year-old professor of English at Emory University and a former director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. Bauerlein thinks Gen Y, with their supposedly short attention spans, whacky social media ways and near constant need to interact digitally and in real time, is the harbinger of ill moment — like the end of civilization as we know it, or something. He’s so sure about this that he wrote a book about it: “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).”
(Millennials might indeed have short attention spans, but Bauerlein’s title certainly strains this cusp-of-Gen-X-and-Boomer’s patience.)
“50 million minds diverted, distracted, devoured,” gravely intones Bauerlein’s website. According to Bauerlein, Gen Y’s insatiable media habit imperils the future as it instills a “brazen disregard of books and reading” that leads to a “neglect [of] enduring ideas.” As a result, the kids are bound to a long adolescence, a semi-permanent immaturity.
Yeah, maybe. But then they’ve been saying that “40 is the new 30″ for at least decade now. And they said that Boomers – not tempered on the anvil of the Great Depression and the Second World War, as were their parents – would never grow up, either. (I personally know several Boomers who couldn’t be bothered, and they don’t seem the worse for wear, except maybe for the gray pony tail beneath the pattern baldness.)
Never mind. Gen Y’s here, they’re bringing their technology with them, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it except learn to deal.
Here are a few Cliff’s Notes, courtesy BNET:
How to know when you’re at war with Gen Y
Understand just what Gen Y brings to the party
What Millennials want (hint: it’s not a revolution)
How Gen-Xers can fight back against their younger, devil spawn siblings
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