Did you know that there are six separate generational groups living in our society today? Do you still know anyone from the GI generation? Born during WWI, fighting during WWII, and living through the Great Depression, this generation faced some of the greatest challenges we have come to know. Do you know anyone from the Mature/Silent generation? This generation may include your grandparents or great-grandparents. They faced Vietnam and Korea and got to see the progression of Civil Rights in America.
Maybe your grandparents or parents consider themselves Baby Boomers. This generation ruled rock and roll and was the first generation to have TV. Baby Boomers are also the largest generation in existence. Your parents are probably members of Generation X. Late to marry and quick to divorce, this generation is quite entrepreneurial, but deep in debt. Generation X felt the change from written based knowledge to the digital world.
Now, Generation Y, the millennials. That's us, guys, like it or not. We're the 9/11 Generation. We schedule EVERYTHING. We feel enormous academic pressure and have never known a life without computers. Lastly, your little brothers and sisters may fall under Generation Z, or the Boomlets. Boomlets probably own a cell phone already, and they know what they want and how to get it. This generation has barely reached adulthood, but are already tired of hearing about the environment and all the ways we can save it. (More information can be found
here.)
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"You mean I have to know how to talk to use this thing?"
(courtesy of Greg Lagrosa) |
Throughout history, our ideas, values, and culture have changed. Significantly. The generations that define our population have been shaped by major events and cultural changes. One of the greatest changes that millennials have experienced specifically, has been the increasing amount of stress over college. In high school, we were pressured to get into the most elite schools. We created an industry from test prep. We've experienced PSATs, SATs, ACTs, subject tests, and every other standardized aptitude test you could think of. We're pressured to be involved in as many activities as possible and to cram as many leadership positions as we can on our resumes. We've experienced a major decline in the high-school dropout rate, but the most significant change has been the price of college. College costs have soared and so has our debt. This generational shift has put a large amount of stress on individuals of our age, and when talking to our parents, is incomparable to the educational pressures they experience or the lack thereof.
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Probably Stu(dying) for the SATs
(courtesy of enflip) |
Another major shift our generation has experienced is our obsession with going green. Going green is no longer reserved for the granola-crunchers and the tree-huggers. We're taught from a young age that our carbon footprint is something we should be conscious of. It seemed like every year we were challenged to time our showers and turn off the water when we were brushing our teeth. Our cars are hybrid. Heck, we can even plug our cars in. We recycle, EVERYTHING. Littering is comparable to sin. Organic foods plague our supermarkets. Power from the wind and the sun is the only respectable kind of power. All of our office and university buildings are going green. Personally, in my residence hall, we have about a dozen different recycling bins and our toilets have two settings to conserve water. Going green has evolved from a movement to an obsession, but what would you expect from a generation plagued by consumerism, waste, and global warming?
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"I'm only going to use that if it's organic"
(courtesy of tracitodd) |
As our population continues to grow, develop, and age, we are sure to experience a variety of new cultural shifts. Many of these shifts continue to cycle through our culture and re-emerge after spending time in submission. Maybe someday saggy pants and 80's hairstyles will come back into fashion.
You raise a very interesting point about environmentalism being a massive paradigm shift. It is now so ubiquitous that I have almost forgotten that there was a time before environmentalism, but upon further reflection it is clearly an excellent example of a paradigm shift. You could use either topic in an essay, but if you were to do generational shifts it would be best to focus on one trait that has shifted rather than generations shifting overall.
ReplyDeleteThe first topic really interests me, probably because I will be one of those poor college grads with student debt up to my ears very soon! I think it's also a very important topic, that you can connect with the ever flowing and changing economy. Why has college become so expensive? or maybe we should be asking, how can colleges ask for so much money, but also be guaranteed to receive it due to a strong demand for higher education globally.
ReplyDeleteI love how you connected both ideas at the end! I like how you described each of the 6 generations you mentioned! And it's true, I remember when my cousin who is 5 years younger than me already knew how to use a cell phone, when I had just gotten a small flip phone! It's insane how fast technology has made kids grow up. I also feel like your right, our generation is so used to knowing what going on, or easily accessing what was going on! I think though you should narrow down possibly to two generations to talk about, seeing as 6 generations are a lot to cover! The going green movement is also kind of a broad topic. Maybe picking an organization, or more specific example, of going green to talk about would help!
ReplyDeleteBoth ideas are great and already well developed. I was really interested in the first topic about the generational shifts because each generation has something that they are defined by due to the circumstance during that time. But I also think all those details could be a little difficult to discuss because there are so many and could be hard to organize. The recycling shift is great because everything that we know now is recycling and we tend to forget that.
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