The Liberal Utopia - What if..

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texas_ex2000 said:
I don't know why, but I felt compelled to post this article here:

From The New York Times:

What Happens When Millennials Run the Workplace?

At Mic, a media site created by and for 20-somethings, oversharing, acting entitled and second-guessing the boss are the norm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/fashion/millennials-mic-workplace.html?mwrsm=Email
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I think most of the stereotypes about millennials are basically true, and I've whined about how ****** up their priorities are. However, for the most part we get our values or lack of values from our parents, so at what point do we start assigning some blame to the parents of millennials? Why didn't they teach them that laziness, disrespect for authority, hypersensitivity, and entitlement are poor values to have? Are us Gen Xers (and older) really better than millennials, or did we just have more responsible parents who beat our asses when we displayed crappy values?
 
Mr. Deez said:
I think most of the stereotypes about millennials are basically true, and I've whined about how ****** up their priorities are. However, for the most part we get our values or lack of values from our parents, so at what point do we start assigning some blame to the parents of millennials? Why didn't they teach them that laziness, disrespect for authority, hypersensitivity, and entitlement are poor values to have? Are us Gen Xers (and older) really better than millennials, or did we just have more responsible parents who beat our asses when we displayed crappy values?
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For me, the definition of a millennial is someone who has always known, from their earliest memory, the Internet as a fundamental, established, and accepted part of their life.

I believe the Internet, arguably the most disruptive technology in human history, is a multiplier like no other in natural cultural evolution. World War I might be the closest comparable, but still a distant one. This disruptive technology makes things easier, and even moreso, makes things SEEM easier. The value of gaining wisdom through experience and learning from those who have been working their tails off for decades is completed diluted because all that knowledge is easily accessed through blogs and social media. It took centuries to go from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, and a more than century for the Industrial Revolution to turnover feudalism. We're seeing the same kind of change but in decades.

I don't buy the apologetic, "millennials are just the flappers and hippies of today, so stop complaining." Millennials are a departure.
 
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As amazing as the internet is, the generation dubbed "millennial" are so dependent on their devices it fills me with a great sorrow. Yesterday, I spent 20 minutes texting with my niece. It drove me crazy. I asked her if she could just pick up the phone (she can text 12x faster than me so it made the conversation bizarre, I would read something and be texting to one comment and she was 4 comments ahead)
This young woman was raised correctly, by my strict brother and his witch of a wife. My niece was multi-tasking about 5 things at once while we texted, and she said the phone "ties people down".

I think if the fault lies with the parents, it is in not restricting the time spent on devices.
I hate to sound like "that old lady", but when I was in high school, my time was spent in various clubs, cheerleading, and being involved. Being a team member, or the face of a school or club augmented the values my parents taught me. Now, with people a click away, it seems there is no reason for anyone to get together and have human interaction. Lack of human interaction breeds low EQ. I also blame the rise of obesity on all the screen time. I was looking through some pictures from high school and college recently, and there just weren't many heavy or overweight kids.

Honestly, sometimes I feel as if our society is slowly returning to the stone age. Teachers no longer teach kids how to write, not just grammatically, but how to form actual letters in school. Emoticons remind me of cave drawings. And why spend time writing all of the letters when lol will suffice? Everything IS easier for this generation, and I feel if they do make an effort, it will most likely be an effort to find even more short cuts.
All of my 4 nieces still write actual thank you cards that come in the mail, but aside from that, it is all done via computer or devices. I still have some old love letters, cards, drawings from my boyfriends, friends, and deceased parents, that I absolutely cherish.
What will be left for the millennials and beyond?
In 20 years, if the planet were to be frozen in time, it would be a sad graveyard of ugly griege computers, with little proof of new art, literature, etc.
If I were a parent today, you better believe time spent on devices would be as limited as the time watching TV when I was a kid.
Now, there is an episode of "Matlock" I have on VHS that isn't going to watch itself! >hitches up elastic-waist jeans with a tissue tucked in the band, and scurries off< (I don't really wear elastic-waist jeans. I have to watch my rep a little!)
 
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Now, there is an episode of "Matlock" I have on VHS that isn't going to watch itself! >hitches up elastic-waist jeans with a tissue tucked in the band, and scurries off< (I don't really wear elastic-waist jeans. I have to watch my rep a little!)
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OK that was funny right there.

Another way I can see us "returning to the stone ages", so to speak, is that men are going to start eschewing college in favor of technical or vocational training (the ones that can stand any kind of physical labor, that is) because wages in those areas are rising due to low supply of workers who will actually show up and work hard. Now, I know this flies in the face of the "laziness" of the millenials that is being decried here, but I believe first and foremost in supply-and-demand, and as wages go up, these jobs will get more and more attractive to middle-class-raised men.

Over Christmas, I was watching the high school playoffs on Fox, and they were sponsored by something called "Energize Houston" IIRC. They were advertising for people to go to any of, I think, 7 community colleges in the Houston area, and be trained on welding and process tech and such, for 2 years, and they were touting earning 6 figures right out of school. At about the same time, I had spoken with 3 different men in about a week who owned businesses such as HVAC, and all 3 complained they could not get good workers any more. One guy summed it up this way, "Nobody wants to work anymore."

So demand for such jobs is far outstripping supply, because we as a society have decided that all our kids MUST go to a 4-year college at a minimum. We have just about put vocational training out of business, certainly at the high school level. When this happens, wages go up and up until someone takes the job. I *hope* there are still some young men out there willing to step up and take on this opportunity to earn a good living without going to a traditional 4-year college, where they will be kicked out of school for kissing a girl when she was drunk, anyway.
 
I agree with texasex above. Millennials are a departure. Yes, they do look for efficiency in everything they do. Of course, that has brought us tremendous disruptive companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Sure the founders may not be millenials but make no mistake, these companies are being shaped with forward thinking ideas like User Experience by millenials.

I vacillate on this idea but I'm coming around to thinking the problem with millenials isn't them but us. They don't fit the mold of what we expect them to be. Of course, we don't fit the mold of what our parents expected us to be. Our parents likely worked 1 or maybe 2 careers in their lifetime, often with 1 company. Now the average Gen X'er will have 5-6 career changes and stays at a company <5yrs. Our kids don't want to work for a single company. They want to be independent, work for multiple companies simultaneously on gigs of their choosing. They aren't lazy but simply work differently. In many (most?) cases they are more ambitious than Gen X. Already I'm seeing them start to pass me up in the Tech sector. I still remember the day when I worked in IT at Starbucks when it was announced our new CIO was 33yrs old. I was 36 at the time.

Overall, us old codgers need to change our perspective because these millenials aren't going to change. We need to stop with the "parents didn't raise them right" line of BS because this is the generation that will be driving innovation for the next 20 years.
 
Hollandtx said:
If I were a parent today, you better believe time spent on devices would be as limited as the time watching TV when I was a kid.
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It's not that simple. Deez, Jr. just turned 2 years old. (At 39, I'm old to have a child that young.) We try to emphasize books and toys that involve him using his hands over flashy toys that have lots of electronic audio and video. However, what happens when he's in school and every kid he knows is running around with an iPhone? What happens when he's expected to use a laptop or tablet for a large part of his schoolwork? As a practical matter, he's going to be heavily exposed to electronic technology, and it's going to be a huge part of his life no matter what we do. Furthermore, as SH indicated, technology and innovation are the future (and the present), so do we really do him much of a service by keeping him away from devices that will be essential to functioning in normal society by the time he's an adult? I don't think so. I also don't think technology or the internet create an inherent problem.

The point that I think is getting lost in the discussion is one of values, not technology reliance or usage. Your niece shouldn't expect you to text her for the same reason I don't expect my 92 year old grandmother to e-mail me. It's disrespectful to expect an elder to change his or her preferred method of communication when the younger person can easily accommodate the older person. Texting and e-mailing aren't wrong. Being inconsiderate and rude to elders is.

Chew on that while I put down my beer and yell at a couple of punks to get off my lawn.
 
Mr. Deez said:
It's not that simple. Deez, Jr. just turned 2 years old. (At 39, I'm old to have a child that young.) We try to emphasize books and toys that involve him using his hands over flashy toys that have lots of electronic audio and video. However, what happens when he's in school and every kid he knows is running around with an iPhone? What happens when he's expected to use a laptop or tablet for a large part of his schoolwork? As a practical matter, he's going to be heavily exposed to electronic technology, and it's going to be a huge part of his life no matter what we do. Furthermore, as SH indicated, technology and innovation are the future (and the present), so do we really do him much of a service by keeping him away from devices that will be essential to functioning in normal society by the time he's an adult? I don't think so. I also don't think technology or the internet create an inherent problem.

The point that I think is getting lost in the discussion is one of values, not technology reliance or usage. Your niece shouldn't expect you to text her for the same reason I don't expect my 92 year old grandmother to e-mail me. It's disrespectful to expect an elder to change his or her preferred method of communication when the younger person can easily accommodate the older person. Texting and e-mailing aren't wrong. Being inconsiderate and rude to elders is.

Chew on that while I put down my beer and yell at a couple of punks to get off my lawn.
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In full transparency, I live in Microsoft's backyard. Schools are moving to being technology oriented. By next year, every kid in our school district will be issued a 2-in-1 PC (converts to a tablet). Yes, K-12. Soon, all tests will be taken on these tablets. It's this push for technology that will give our children an advantage over other nations, IMHO. My wife is a middle-school social studies teacher who is constantly looking for ways to leverage technology to enhance the students education. On the flipside, she caught 2 kids plagiarizing off each other just recently through http://www.turnitin.com.

We've made the decision not to fight the technology but to embrace it to set our kids up for the future. My 3 teenage sons will be taking technology courses of their choosing over the summer. One will take a video game programming class, another a sound editing class. These classes are offered for free by a local technology consortium. With luck my eldest will have a paid internship with Microsoft heading into his Senior year of HS.

I sat through an Accenture "The future is now" presentation a few weeks back. I didn't realize that college classes are being taught by software now. Arizona State is now the biggest school by enrollment in the entire country. Take one of their math classes online and you won't be taught by a human. The "robot" can tailor the course curriculum to a student's learning style. Auditory learner? The course can detect it based on your course work and shift accordingly.

Sorry for the rabbit hole. I think we need to teach kids how to use technology responsibly, just like anything else. What I continually tell my kids is "too much of anything is bad". They also play year round sports. Do we fight to put the phones away at dinner? Yes, but they do it. Of course, I was frustrated with my sons recently and started a group text with a deep conversation. My eldest son immediately joined in saying "Dad, this is not the right medium for this discussion" saying in person was more appropriate. Apparently, texting is more for fun or non-emotional conversations per my son. He recognizing that it's not a place to have a deep conversation.
 
Seattle Husker nailed it.
Obviously I wouldn't want any child to have only the vaguest notion of computers, internet, etc. But, everything in moderation.
When I see a family eating out and every kid's head is buried in their IPad, something is wrong. I saw a poignant photo on Facebook the other day.
One was a picture of the 3-4 year old son of a friend, staring intently at a dandelion. She then posted a photo of the same boy, now 8, but staring intently at his IPad while he was in Colorado on vacation.
She posted it, knowing that she needed to tighten things up regarding how her son spends his time. You are right-it is values, but there is also a responsibility on the parents to prevent the "head buried" morning, noon, and night.
Now, I need to go fix dinner. It's almost 5:00! I guess I spent too much time picking up pecans in the back yard.
 
I was out a dinner with the family a year ago and noticed a group of young college students having dinner a few tables over. They had stacked their phones in the middle of the table. Impressed, I started the tradition with my family. All 5 of us have smartphones (I previously worked for a Big 4 wireless telecom) thus whenever we have family time we all put our phones down.
 
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