The Last Chapter

I've finally made it to the last chapter of Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital. With Cash and Kenz in the house, gone are the days when Kristie and I would lounge on our front porch absolutely devouring books.

So it has taken me a good three weeks to finally get around to concluding Tapscott's book.

The final chapter is entitled "In Defense of the Future," and it is a refutation on the works by Mark Bauerlein (The Dumbest Generation), Jean Twenge (Generation Me), and Robert Bly (The Sibling Society).

In this chapter he gets down to addressing the "top 10 Dark Side issues" regarding the millennials, or the Net Generation.

#1 - The Dumbest Generation?  

There is some concern that this generation that grows up having their information fed to them in bits and bytes, thanks to Google and Twitter, might develop digital ADD.  This generation might well lose the ability to develop vital higher order thinking skills.

Count me in when it comes to worrying about this.

But I think every teacher that has ever existed, at least all the way back to plato, has worried about this.

One way of making sure this generation develops higher order thinking skills is to re-examine how we teach our young.  I like these approaches to higher order thinking skills.

There is also a raft of research that suggest the brains of the young are adapting to their digital environment (yes for neuroplasticity).  It is high time schools adapt as well.

And just ask any college admissions person and they'll tell you: the kids who apply today have higher ACT scores, have worked more, have accomplished more, have participated in more activities and sports, and have done far more than previous generations who have applied.

Now this is not all rosy and perfect.  The top third of our kids are the sharpest ever.  The next third is average.  But we are losing the bottom third like never before.  Drop out rates in certain areas are right around 50%.  In the past, this bottom third has still been able to find suitable jobs and occupations.  But that latter part doesn't exist anymore.  That is real cause for alarm.  We have to find a way to motivate and engage and inspire the bottom third like never before.

Reading Bauerlein's book, he would lead you to believe that every millennial can't get off their phones or laptops long enough to hold an intelligent conversation.  To prove the earlier point that today's best and brightest are some of the brightest ever, take a looks at these millennials featured in this USA Today article.

One of those young people featured is Joe O'Shea who is also featured in Tapscott's book.

Certainly, some critics will claim that yes, the millennial generation has a few stars in it.  But isn't that true of every generation?

Yes, Thomas Edison was brilliant.  But did that generation spawn a thousand Edison's?  Of course not!

#2 Screen addicted? Losing social skills?

I used to really worry about this.  I recall KoKo having a little party (well, more accurately a bonfire) at our house when we lived in RLF.  As I made the fire for her group of friends, I looked around and noticed each of them had their cellular phones out and were glued to them . . . probably texting each other.

I wanted to say, "Put those damn things away and TALK to each other.  Be where you are now and enjoy each other's company.  Don't be so concerned about someone else's Facebook status."

But I didn't.  I just shook my head and went inside.

I didn't say anything because I quickly recalled how my mom would say the something similar to Simon, Harry, and I as we sat upstairs and played Nintendo.  "Get outside and do something," my parents would say.

But we didn't want to.  We were engaged and enjoying ourselves playing Nintendo.

I'm sure my grandmother told my mom at some point to quit watching American Bandstand and to get outside and do something or play.

I'm sure my great grandmother told my grandmother to quit listening to the radio or reading books and to get outside and do something.

And I'm sure my great, great grandmother was so burdened with cooking and children that she wished she could have a few minutes to herself to relax . . . to have the luxury of free time to do with it whatever she wanted.  The same thing the next generations would lambast their kids for doing!

That's irony for you.

Tapscott makes a great point about this generation's obsession with the screen . . . too much of anythign is not good.  When it came to the Baby Boomers or my generation, Gen X, watching too much TV was not good.  I even recall my dad getting after me because I spent too much time reading and that I should get outside and do more.

Imagine that today, being accused of too much reading!  

So we should all strive to limit ourselves with our screen time and strive for a variety or balance of activities.

But I'll tell you this, as a teacher, these kids are not just going home and vegging out in front of their laptops.  They have jobs.  They have homework.  They have sports.  They have activities.  These kids are busy.

So I don't really buy that they don't have social skills.

Just ask any Gen Xer about the social skills of their peers or folks older than them!  Lacking social skills is not an issue isolated to the millennials.

#3 Are They Giving Up Their Privacy

Yes, they are.  And as far as I'm concerned, this is the most pressing concern for the millennials.  Their digital lives are so instantaneous that they can Tweet or Facebook something and it's up there and anyone can see it.

As one person put it: "Anything digital is forever."

Yes, you can delete a Tweet or FB post, but if someone has taken a screen capture of it or downloaded it, it is now their property and is beyond your control.

Here are a couple of examples that I just chronicles this summer, both via Twitter -

"Going to be another crap week at work.  Time for me to do all the idiot supervisors' work again"

and 

"Anyone got a fly swatter?  I gotta bunch of sticky-faced barefoot native kids scaling the concession stand counter."

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Where to start?

First, the workers are tweeting while at work.  Not smart.

Second, one is criticizing a boss.  Very dumb.  The other is racist.  Very dumb.

Third, what if their bosses actually read these tweets?

Fourth, would they have the guts to say these same things to the people they are criticizing?

Fifth, what kind of digital footprint are they leaving?  I've told students in the past that whether they believe me or not, they will come back to me one day for a letter of recommendation.  And if all they do is tweet about pot and parties, what can I possibly recommend them for?

Sixth, this isn't private.  Since I came across both of these via Twitter on my phone, it took a nano-second for me to email them to anyone I wished.  Let's just say I knew their bosses.  How hard would it be for me to send the tweets to their bosses?  Very, very dumb.

Again, this is not something that is just limited to the millennials.  I think some of the worst offenders on FB are Gen Xers, but the millennials will bear the brunt of this problem as more and more employers catch on to this.

Even now some employers are demanding password to Facebook and Twitter at interviews.  Also, more and more employers are scouring FB posts and profiles to weed out undesirables.

And who can blame an employer?  If I'm going to hire you and stick a million dollars into you over the course of your career, why should I hire someone who gets hammered every weekend or who brags about being a dead beat dad?

Here is an example I've used in class before.

On FB I am 'friends' with some former students.  One constantly complains about the girls he dates.  Initially, he states how great they are and how they are rapidly becoming someone special.  However, she will piss him off in a few days and then he'll post something like "Can't believe I gave my heart to that bitch."

Lovely.

I also have a former student who is doing mission work building AIDS hospitals.

If I'm an employer, despite how well each person interviews, who would I most like to hire?  And it's all available for free on FB.  What millennials need to learn, Tapscott argues, is how to set the privacy filters on their social networking sites. 

#4 Are They Coddled?  Do They Lack Independence?

Tapscott structures this claim around the fact that the millennials are also known as "the boomerang generation" because they leave home, go to college, and then return home again.

Is this bad?  Does it mean that they have been coddled or that they are incapable of independence?

I don't know.  

Tapscott argues that the millennials are closer to their parents than any generation before them.  He refers to it not as the generation "gap" but as the generation "lap."

Just look at how Gen X mothers will not only go shopping with their millennial daughters, but they will often buy clothes at the same stores as their daughters!  That's a generation lap.  As much as I tried, it was hard for me to get Dad to spend the money it took to buy something at Macy's.  He was content with his stiff blue jeans purchased from Fleet or JC Penney's while I wanted to plunk down a huge sum (to my dad's point of view anyway) for jeans (with pre-made holes in them even!) from Macy's or The Buckle.  There was definitely a gap there!

I do, though, think that this generation has been coddled.  But is that their fault?  I think it's the fault of helicopter parents.  If we want our kids to be coddled less, then we have to do a better job raising them.

#5 Does the Internet Encourage Youth to Steal? Are They Cheaters?

Yes, the music industry has lost billions of dollars when digital mp3 files were invented.  But I know some youth who do actually buy their music from iTunes or Amazon.

In fact, I see many millennials saving their money to buy MacBooks or iPhones.  

Cheating is an issue.  But if the internet makes it easy for kids to buy papers on line it also makes it easier for teachers to catch them and isolate incidents of plagiarism.

Here is where educators need to do a better job of clearly showing kids what is cheating and what isn't cheating.  If I don't know how to do my math, is it so bad to look it up on the internet?  Yes and no.  It can help you get the homework done, but that's a small step in the learning process.  The student still needs to understand that they might have the assignment done, but they have not yet mastered the skill which they will need to master in order to move on to the next level in math.

This is important.

But am I above cheating?  When I wanted to build a patio at our house in RLF, what did I do?  I cheated by going to Google and finding out a dozen ways to build it.  Am I so different?

I learned a lot from my first patio experience.  The next time around (God help me if there is ever a next time though), I will improve and revise my method.

But if that was a school environment, I would have been guilty of cheating.

Actually, if it would have been a school environment, I would have read up on building a patio, listened to a teacher lecture on it for a couple weeks, taken notes on it, and then taken a final test (maybe even done some role playing) on how to build a patio, but I would never have actually built anything!  Boy, what a can of worms that is!!!

#6 Does it Encourage Bullying

To some extent, yes.  The suicides that result of cyber bullying are appalling.  But bullying has been going on for years . . . long before the web was devised.

Luckily, the web also offers solutions to bullying.  It leaves an easily traceable path back to the bully and it also allows for support networks for those who have been victims.

I had a student a few years ago tell me about how she saw on FB how an athlete was bullying one of her friends.  What did she do?  She took a screen capture of it and sent it to the boy's mother who worked for the school district!  Now if that isn't a great way to curb bullying, I don't know what is.  When I was a kid, I could call someone's parents (if I had the guts) and say, "So and So was guilty of bullying a kid in the locker room.  I saw him do it."  

But where is my evidence?  Most parents would just shrug it off and say "My little Johnny would never do anything like that."

But in the case of what my former student did, how could you refute that evidence?

Here is another example of what parents can do to protect their kids:

John Merrow has made a great point about this issue - we need to make school more engaging and interesting when it comes to this.  If we just house kids in a building and don't challenge them, they will inevitable do what kids do . . . and that includes pick on each other.  We need to make school more engaging and relevant to kids . . . and social media can allow for us to do just that.

One more example.  Just saw this on Yahoo News.  An older woman on a bus is bullied by junior high kids.  One of the little snots posted it on Facebook.  And it goes viral.  So far, led by a 25 year old millennial, $200,000 in support funds have come in for the elderly woman to send her on vacation.

#7 Does it Incite Youth Violence

I know Phyliss Schlafly and her crew took aim at violent video games a few years ago, but that legislation was shot down.

Personally, I worry about a young person playing hours upon hours of a game like Grand Theft Auto.  But having said that, I'm sure my parents worried plenty about me and my devotion to bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Metallica, my obsession with Stephen King books, and my love for horror flicks like The Fly, Prince of Darkness, Candy Man, and Terminator.

Yet, for anyone who knows me well, they know I'm about as prone to violence as a puppy.  This is true too for my stepson, Casey, who has logged hours playing Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty and other violent video games.  I don't see him desensitized to violence or acting in an aggressive way at all.

I'm sure violence - whether it be in film, print, or video games - can negatively impact certain individuals, but is that reason to ban it completely?

Or maybe for many, violence in film, print, or video games is simply a release or way to vent, as it was for me growing up.

#8  Does the Net Gen Have a Misguided Sense of Entitlement and a Bad Work Ethic?

Here is what some are saying about this generation:

"They are woefully ill-prepared for the workforce"

"Net Geners are entering the workforce with unrealistic expectations.  They want to be rich and/or powerful - without putting in the work"

"We are developing a generation that is going to be codependent upon the parent"

True? False?

Tapscott gives one example from Jim Quigly, CEO of Deloitte: "'I have a simple measure for how capable this generation is -- billings.  Our new recruits deliver far greater value for clients than any previous generation -- and this is reflected as a significant increase in the average revenue generated per employee.  They do more good work and our clients are happier.'"

I don't know if that's a truly typical example or not, but I think just as with any generation, there are hard workers and there are slackers.

Several years ago I was talking about the work ethic of this generation with my brother, who is in upper management at Crystal Sugar in Crookston.  He said, "If Dad's generation had to dig a hole, everyone would grab a shovel and dig.  If my generation had to do it, we'd grab a shovel and there'd be two people watching us work.  If your generation had to do it, half would work and the other half would watch.  But with this generation, they'd complain first about the job, then one or two would finally get around to digging while the others simply refused to do it.  Then one of the two digging would later file a workman's comp claim."

Not rosy is it?

But I think that might be romanticizing my dad's generation a bit too much.  I recall him telling me stories of when he and a close family friend named Sherman used to work for a farmer in Crookston, and it sounded like not a lot of work always got done.  In fact, I remember Dad - and Sherman confirming this - that on rainy days the farmer's wife would enlist Sherman to help her with household chores.  So on rainy days, Sherman would hide in the gravity wagon or in a truck trailer to get out of work!

I think what this generation - more than any other generation before it - objects to is the style of work, or maybe a better way of saying is that they object to the old school management system that their parents had to adapt to.

I see this in class.  If I expect my kids to sit still and absorb a lecture the same way I had to, I'm fooling myself.  After all, that approach didn't work all that well on me.  How can I hope that old school approach will work with this generation that grew up in the most interactive and stimulating environment in the history of humankind?

My students have certainly caused me to change and I think they'll help innovate and challenge their managers and supervisors too.

9.  Are They Narcissistic?

Any one who doesn't understand social media must obviously come to this conclusion.

I mean they post such banal information on FB or Twitter as if anyone really cares.  They post hundreds of photos per year.  They want everything customized to their tastes and their thinking.

I think this is all true.

However, study after study confirms a few surprising things about the millennials: they smoke and drink less than my generation and certainly less than the Baby Boomers.  They volunteer more.  They commit fewer crimes.  They attend college in record numbers.

I look at some of my step-daughter's FB posts and just shake my head.  But then I ask myself, would I have acted any differently if FB had been available to me back in 1990?  Of course not!  So I judge lightly.

Then I think of a student several years ago who had lukemia.  Her classmates sold t-shirt to help support her.  I think of students who run food drives and all the garner for that.  Or how many students work the Blood-Drive.  Or how many students travel to other countries to help build homes.  What some of these kids do is just plain amazing.

And I'm proud of them.  Despite their trivial FB posts.

10. What About Their Values?  Do They Just Want to Be Rich and Famous?

Research does show that this generation puts premium on making money.  But as Tapscott states, "But who can blame them?  Their college debt load and housing costs are much higher than it was for boomers."  True.

And the Net Gen have jobs available to them like never before.  Part of that is many jobs have low wages - wages that wouldn't attract a 30 year old, but would be perfect for an 17 year old.  Part of that is employers are happy to offer part-time jobs instead of full-time jobs with benefits.  And the Net Gen is eager to take those jobs.  So they are used to generating income to help pay for all that they have the opportunity to have (and there's a lot of stuff they have the chance to buy that my generation never had.  What did I ever have to buy?  Give me a Walkman, a stereo, and a constant supply of cassettes and issues of Fangoria, and I was pretty much set.  Not so with this generation though).

However, this generation isn't just about work.  They have seen what blind careerism has done to their parents and they aren't buying in to sacrifice for a company and work weekends and take pay cuts when that same company turned around and fired their Dads or cut their pensions.  

I can't say I blame them for that attitude either.

Overall, and I might be in the minority here, and maybe it's because I have young children, but I'm a big fan of this generation.  I see my College Comp I and II kids do work that is absolutely light years from the work any of my classmates ever produced.  I  see them working a variety of jobs and volunteering.  Sure, they have their digital distractions and negative habits, but I shudder at the habits that Lon, Lance, and I had when we were their age!

Maybe that's why I score a 93/100 on the millennial quiz!  I fit right in with them.