Generation Gap

Generation gap – a gap that defines the difference in experiences, beliefs and opinions of people born at different times under different social standards – is a concept that has been accepted and understood for a long time. Everyone accepts that the world their children live in is not the same that they inhabited while growing up. Parents and grandparents know that they cannot relate to the youths of today and the youths are also fully aware that their knowledge may become obsolete by the time they have kids of their own. 

However, while it previously took 40 to 50 years (an actual generation) for the generational gap to materialise, it now takes less than a decade thanks to the rapid advancements in technology. An individual born in 1990 saw a phone as a luxury while one born in 2000 saw it as a necessity. A person born in 2010 encountered the internet and social media before he could even speak and the children being born today are going to grow up in a world driven by artificial intelligence, algorithms and big data. As a result, not only are parents failing to keep up but so are elder siblings, cousins and even peers a few years apart in age.

The generation gap we have today is solely shaped by age and evolving societal values but also, and arguably mostly, driven by technology. The generation gap we have today is a technological one.

This is perfectly illustrated by a 2019 study by America’s Pew Research Centre which showed that 92 per cent of millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) owned internet-connected smartphones, compared to 85 per cent of Gen Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980) and 67 per cent of Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964).

The study also looked at the way the different generations utilised smartphones and found that older people used their phones to only make calls while the youngsters used them more as a computer in their pockets. Since Baby Boomers spent most of their lives around landlines, they can only conceptualise “phones” as devices used to make and receive phone calls. GenXers were able to encounter early cell phones while growing up and thus, understand that a phone can be a calculator or a radio too. Still, the full potential of a smartphone baffles them, unlike millennials and Gen Zers (individuals born between 1997 and 2012) who are perfectly comfortable on their smartphones and by extension, on the internet.

Even in a country like ours, which has yet to fully digitise, people younger than 30 years of age practically live on their phones. Hence, they also consume media over it. A 2017 study in the United Kingdom seemed to study that only older people watched TV. Younger people still consumed TV content but on their phones through streaming platforms or sites like YouTube. Sitting in front of a TV set is fast going out of fashion around the world and in the urban areas of Nepal, too.

This also corresponds with a decrease in screen sizes. The younger you are, the smaller the screen you prefer, the same UK study showed. Younger people prefer to watch stuff on their phones while Boomers and GenXers need desktops or tablets. To be fair though, this may have something to do with eyesight as older people may not see smaller things as clearly as younger people do.

Always on the lookout for the hottest new tech, younger generations were, to quote Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, “born in technology and moulded by it” while the older ones merely “adopted it.” That is to say that Gen Z, in particular, has never lived in a world without “smart” tech. The omnipresent technology latched itself onto their lives and became an integral part, whether they liked it or not. GenX and Baby Boomers though spent most of their lives “offline.” They framed themselves around the physical world and built themselves on mechanisms that never envisioned connection and digitisation. For them, the present technology is a convenience rather than a necessity. But that also makes them hesitant.

People above a certain age fear innovation because they do not know what it entails. They need a lot of convincing before buying a new phone or joining a social network. Millennials and Gen Z though, eagerly accept whatever the market throws at them. This is not necessarily a good thing and is one of the reasons cybercrime is on the rise worldwide. But this keeps them more updated with the world than their seniors.