Some key points:

New generations ‘grow up’ digital
Avatars are integral parts of identity *in all contexts*
People are comfortable managing multiple on-line identities
People expect to own their digital identities and personal information
All relationships have a digital focus or aspect
Brands are seen as people (and vice versa)

There are many new digital generation gaps
Rapid socio-technical changes mean multiple ‘digital generations’ co-exist
Digital generations are not tied to real demographics
Digital maturity is greatest for digital identities created in the present
Demographic maturity is the opposite!

I disagree strongly that our younger folk are particularly rebellious or distant from their parents. Au contraire! The phrase “helicopter parent” was not invented for the Boomers (early or late) or the Xers. We have college students who call their parents multiple times a day.

The Boomers created children very different from themselves. They’ve created a kind of call option on the in loco parentis role for schools and other institutions. Their kids have grown up in a stable economic environment and are NOT used to searching criticism of their work. (I think part of their fascination with reality TV shows where people get chewed out for incompetence is almost pornographic. The idea of a world like that is appealing as a fantasy, but not if you actually have to live with it.) This cohort’s use of social media and constant connectivity is interesting and important, but I don’t think it is defining.

Here’s the thread:

K: “skillful in managing the portfolio of selves”
wow. that has my mind boggling. i don’t always feel like i master that one.
but it would look cool on a new media cv.
that last par of grant’s is good. especially in light of the series 3
heroes we’ve been watching today.
I’m also perhaps showing my gen Xness in saying I’m not sure if I
invented myself or found myself in a corner of a bar somewhere, or just
kind of stumbled upon myself having randomly wandered along the road of
life not really reading the road signs very carefully.

M:It’s not often you see “ideational” used in a sentence.
Yah, like you, “masters of our own fate, authors of our own
circumstances, inventor of our selves” sounds great in theory, but I
suspect my preplanning was lackadaisical and my execution was probably
a bit random.

K: true but he was talking about millenials, we are X
I’m also still puzzling over his use of the word ‘catholic’.
does it have another meaning other than the obvious one ?

M: You’re right. Great word, interesting usage, but what does it imply?
Singular in focus? As in a singular God?
Willing to embrace things unseen based on faith?
Ritualistic?
Dichotomous? It fits or it doesn’t fit?
Prone to guilt?
Focused on own belief and unwilling to accept others?

This has been the case in the West at least since the introduction of the “New Math” in the early 1960s (set theory, cuisenaire rods, etc). Most parents were unable to help their children with their homework from this time on.

In terms of popular taste, teenagers have listened to music abhorred by their parents at least since the Swing Era in the 1930s, and perhaps before.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2008/04/the_millennials.html

However, one key thing to keep in mind, is that although we like to think of ourselves as individuals, we still cluster in groups. That clustering is still an important part of our identity. However, our affiliations are not solely based on generations or geography as they once were. Further, our affiliations evolve and change. This is well documented in Transformations and worth the read.

It’s funny how often this issue comes up in marketing: how to address the contradiction of satisfying the believe of one’s individuality, which is instilled, confirmed, or re-enforced by a community.

What I have been thinking of lot lately is how the Internet is changing the dynamics of parenting. I just read a rather extensive study on young people’s attitudes towards the Internet and their parents. It turns out that young people are painfully aware of how “out of it” their parents are when it comes to the Internet and young people are actually protective of their parents, meaning that they don’t disclose pretty much anything that they do online or who they talk to, because they know their parents would not understand or know how to handle the situation.

I can’t really think of a historical precedent for a situation like this where the gulf between generations is so wide in face of a techno-economical-cultural change (for a lack of a better word) as big as the Internet. Can you? In a way it’s almost like the printing press, only that one generation knows how to read and the other does not.

How does it change the dynamics of families when kids don’t look up to their parents or seek their advice on a subject that consumes a lot of their daily attention? What are the cultural effects of this? Rebelling and breaking away from your parents is part of growing up, but do kids mature and become independent sooner (or rather, do they THINK they are mature sooner), and if they do are they mature enough to handle life? Does the “Internet gap” make kids ignore advice from their parents on other but meaningful aspects of life? I think there have been some alarming signs of where this kind of attitude can lead, for example in cases of sexual predators befriending teenagers on the net and the like.

On the subject of Obama’s presidential election, it really had a global effect. I saw people who didn’t even vote in the recent municipal elections post messages supporting Obama or celebrating his victory. In many ways, I think young people are feeling more kinship with peers that transcend geographical boundaries. Your social circles are a matter of finding like-minded peers, but also a matter of geographical convenience. The net is somewhat removing this geographical convenience part. This will have some interesting effects, as you really can’t escape your geographical location, either.

This subject is a rather sore one from I hail from, Finland. As you may know, there has been two school shootings here within a year of each other. The two shooters found inspiration and like-minded peers on the Web and their parents had basically no idea what they were up to online. The interesting thing about these shootings is the fact both these shooters were from small towns (not only in the Finnish shootings, but in the majority of shootings worldwide during the past decade) and they all seemed to have a similar formula: outcast youth shunned from its local and homogenic community finds peers online and becomes even more isolated, leading to the eventual shooting as a “expanded media suicide”, as some experts have dubbed it.

It’s hard to forecast what would have happened to these shooters if they hadn’t had the Internet. Maybe they would have conformed to their peers, or maybe they would have taken their own lives silently, or maybe they would have gone on with the shootings anyway. But I think some people forget that the Internet is capable of driving people apart, as well as bringing them together.