IT IS often with great condescension that older generations look down upon the young. They are considered weaker, spoiled, and made of lesser mettle compared to the older generation. It is a cyclical process and somewhat a rite of passage that the young are required to prove themselves to the old. Just as the baby boomers who experienced the destruction of war and rebuilt their societies from the rubble up are perplexed about what for them are the misplaced angst of the lost Generation X given their access to the abundance of unbridled capitalism and almost limitless education; now, it is the turn of the X’ers to weigh the millennial youth of today and it is almost always that they are found wanting.
The youth of today, referred to somewhat derogatorily as millennials, have been at the receiving end of criticism from older folks like us. They are also accused of taking for granted the luxuries that previous generations have prepared for them that they now wantonly enjoy. Apart from these, they are regarded as incapable of committing to an idea or a long-term task and always sought approval or verbal reward instead of just plodding on consistently and faithfully with work. The millennials, in other words, have evolved to become a generation of short-attention span robots who need to constantly feed on social approval to spur them into action. Sometimes, you even wonder if they are still even human.
All these are, of course, the unfair criticisms of an older generation getting back on the young ones for the bad rap they received from their own parents.
Remember when our parents, the baby boomers complained about our TV habits? Well, it is the same with our current disdain for the young’s digital lifestyle. The children, whose parents complained about how the television set occupied their waking time, have now become parents themselves who, this time around, complain about their children’s gadget habits. Truth be told, we are also enablers of their addiction because these modern gadgets equally enamor us and are actually quite useful in rearing pesky energetic children.
It is the same story actually. The archaic television set and these new communication devices both fulfill a similar function; they are very good as technological surrogates to a baby sitter or a yaya to busy parents looking for some quiet or private time. Both Generation X’s strengths and weakness can be attributed to what the idiot box showed. Their sense of purpose and messianic tendencies could be traced to the countless superhero and underdog narratives that defined their Saturday morning cartoon fare at the same time their passiveness and cynicism can also be blamed on this couch culture that gradually replaced the viability of real world transformation in favor of pop culture utopia.
Whereas before the bone of contention was how far it was and how long it took to reach school, and then how difficult it was to do one’s homework especially if you did not have encyclopedia sets at home; older generations scoff at the convenience the young enjoy with the advent of the interwebs. Millenials don’t have a clue how tedious the process used to be just to get your needed information from the library. Nowadays, it just a click, type, and a scroll in google.
The young cannot be faulted for the technological advancements they now enjoy since these are the unstoppable consequences of human progress. But there are serious issues about the effects of these same technologies to their socialization as a generation. It could actually be true that the young adults poised to take over society in the coming years are the first generation to be reared and socialized almost completely in social media. This observation becomes the basis for the curious question: are the young people of today still classifiable as humans or have they evolved some kind of cyborg existence that is unfeeling and incapable of empathy as what social media has actually become?
Watching the #marchforourlives mammoth demonstration all over the US denouncing the unbelievable laxity in their gun control laws in the wake of the Parkland shootings, where thousands upon thousands of the so-called self-centered millennials went out into the streets to register their demand for government action as a manifestation of their care for each other and others, is a heart-warming retort to this question.
In the local front, upcoming local bands such as Ben&Ben, whose unique flair in distilling the complex musical movements in OPM in the past five decades in their sound and then adding that refreshing and innocent perspective with their lifting lyrics and melodies, makes one think that the baton has been rightfully passed. As long as the struggle to be human continues, amidst the onslaught of these new technologies, the kids will be alright.