Technology and uptake is not just about the young #demographics

It really should be put to rest, this idea that the younger you are the more adaptable, motivated and interested you are in today's technology. It's assumed that new tech uptake is aligned (magically) with your label: ie Baby boomers vs Gen X or Y or even Next; when these are really just vaguely useful pop culture demographic labels with little or no correlation with anything, other than age and raw number.

Take this for example: Radwanick concluded that current assumptions about who might use a technology first might need to be reconsidered. “Not only teenagers and college students can be counted among the technologically inclined,” she said. “With those age 25 and older representing a much bigger segment of the population than the under 25 crowd, it might help explain why Twitter has expanded its reach so broadly so quickly over the past few months.”

Rather than assume that the young will drive new tech uptake, look instead at the real drivers (and/or impediments to uptake) like access, need, wealth, depth of responsibilities and available time. These things can occur at almost any age, and to varying degrees - but we can generalise a bit about who typically has a need for a short-message, quick contact microblogging service; who has the time, or lack of time to use it; and who has the connectivity and hardware platforms to make it happen. And who's mature enough to appreciate it, too.

Quick and dirty assumptions don't always stack up.

HR mythology: Gen X and Y - repeated assertions make it so

If you want to believe in something as trivial as the difference in managing "gen Xers" and "gen "Yers", go right ahead, but don't foist it on everyone else just because you can. Yes, every person is born into a very slightly different world with a marginally different set of circumstances, and yes you can make broad generalisations about people based on what technologies have been popularised in their childhoods or the mean wealth their families may have accrued. You may even believe in the "soccer mum" theory that has supposedly led to a generation of high-expectation children. But as I keep pointing out, relentlessly, the demographics of many, many countries was massively distorted in a very real way by 2 successive 'world wars'. Now war robs us of young men in particular and creates (hopefully) temporary deprivation and profound uncertainty. These world wars (and the Great Depression for that matter) were not trivial, they reshaped nations and cruelly influenced succeeding generations in many profound ways. The so-called Baby Boomers were identified as the generational change that came after those events, and was measured as a surge in babies born immediately after WWII. I have no argument about that obvious, real and characteristic demographic bump, and I further accept that analysis has revealed correlations with many societal changes in attitudes and behaviours that can reasonably be attributed to that post-war "generation" and its circumstances.

But the increasing trivialisation of "generations" based on increasingly weak correlations (or pure assertion) is stretching belief too far. To imagine that the computer, the mobile phone and the "soccer mum" is a driver of social conditioning comparable to a world war is frankly, quite silly.

OK, everything has an influence and we are a product of our environment as well as our genetics and social circumstances. Yes, the technologies that we use in our daily lives influence how we live, interact and behave. But to assert that we should manage people "differently" because they are labelled "Gen X" or "Gen Y" is making some gross - and to my mind pretty shallow - assumptions about them as individuals. In fact we should manage people as individuals and drop our preconceptions before opening our mouths.     

More 'Millennial' madness

Had enough of mindless Millennial drivel? Too late, I've got more... and the bottom line is that "we", the non-Millennials, "should" know and identify these Millennials, and somehow expect them to be different from other humans. And of course they somehow deserve 'different' treatment because of that. Heck, they may not even be human!

So take a read of this, from BNET: "The teens entering college over the next few weeks were probably born around 1990. Here are five observations that jumped out at me from the “mindset list”:

1. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available
2. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib
3. Caller ID has always been available on phones
4. Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born
5. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

According to Benoit, 'The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are ‘wired’ and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.'"

OK there's good stuff here. The ever-decreasing size of Western 'family units' will show up in a larger proportion of kids who have never shared a room with a sibling. It may shape some attitudes about sharing, although I have seen no research on that. And there are also more blended families, so what does that mean with regard to attitudes? And although they may be living somewhat different lives from people born 10, 20 or 50 years ago, what evidence is there that it actually makes a difference?

As for the rest of it, whether you are familiar with computers, cell phones and whatnot all of your life or whether you have adapted to it as it has evolved is of little concern, surely? We all live in the same world and have embraced gizmos to greater or lesser extents, irrespective of age. Yes, to be older (on average) affects our uptake of new stuff. So does relative wealth, culture and religion, amongst many other things. It's a continuum, a sliding scale of influence and uptake - not the black and white of the dime-store demographers. Plenty of Millennials actually don't care for the latest and greatest stuff, and plenty of so-called Boomers do. 

Now we can try to analyse it to death, but people are people, and should not be labelled just for the heck of it. But humans love to label, and having labelled them we should not try to second-guess how we should treat them, or ascribe values based on untested theory. It's so easy to say that young people 'these days' prefer part time work, shifting careers and lower levels of loyalty when we have brought them into a world that has created exactly that environment. There are fewer full-time jobs, more service-oriented jobs and entirely new careers that didn't exist even 5 years ago.

On the one hand we say 'they want this stuff' but on the other we didn't give them a choice - it's how it is!     

That generations myth again

Are we really so stupid as to put up with this sort of weak, sloppy analysis? (And I mean on BNET's behalf here - c'mon, please don't just repeat what's told to you, actually do some work here!) 

From BNET: Lack of authority and an inability to see where their contribution fits into the big picture is leaving Generation Y, or Millennials, disengaged and disenchanted with work, according to a report by BlessingWhite.

What's wrong with that statement? Well, first up, what is BlessingWhite and what axe do they have to grind? Unsurprisingly we find that they are "engagement" specialists, ie people who make money out of advising others how to "re-engage" and "re-align" a disenchanted workforce. So they are hardly likely to want to report a solid "engagement" situation, are they? (Not that I'd suggest they would distort the figures, but they may unconsciously ask the wrong questions of the wrong people, or simply leave out the good stuff.) 

Secondly, where is this report, how was the research conducted and how valid are the results? Well if you click on the link and look at the free summary reports (as against the $500 'full analysis') they do tell us that it was an online survey of employees (invited by email and broken up by the usual demographics)  backed up by manager interviews. BNET doesn't look into it, but one wonders (doesn't one?) what the (multiple choice) questions were and how the invite-only email addresses were obtained (randomly, or from prior interest shown in surveys?). Of course such surveys are only as good as the final sample size and distribution, and the questions posed; and only as accurate or truthful as the respondents care to be. Which is to say they probably mean little but look fabulously interesting when graphed.

One interesting takeaway from these reports was that the HR industry in North America was the most engaged of all - doesn't that suggest something? Either the HR industry is the most adept at engagement - what they'd suggest, I wager - or simply the best (or most "aligned") at answering "HR"-style surveys.  Groan.  

Anyway, to get back to BNET - it all revolves around generational labelling again. Like, somehow, it matters. Well it's interesting to label things - or in this case people - but what does it mean? Millennials or Gen Y are somehow, surprise surprise, the least engaged and empowered, the Boomers the most. Heck, guys, this isn't because of their birthdays - this is because Boomers have grown up, have had their kids, settled their affairs, saved some cash, travelled, gotten used to life and probably found their way into an "empowered" and respected role in their working lives. Whereas young adults are just starting their journey. Where you happy about starting at the bottom when you started out? Where you more likely to look around and try different things when you had no kids and no responsibilities except to enjoy your youth? Of course you feel less empowered doing "assigned" or "donkey" work - when you get into senior management and settle down a bit you may be a bit happier about it, eh?

Let's face it - just thinking of Western democracies now - we had 2 massive World Wars in a row that seriously distorted our demographics - robbed us of our sons, if you like. The generation after that was a release from fear and war and an opportunity to rebuild populations. Early 'boomers' really had to face some changes, some deprivations, and built some real prosperity out of it. That was a real thing, and those that came later lived off that prosperity and rapid post-war change. And whilst the aftershocks matter, that's all they are. To dream up correlations with "engagement", "technology" and "soccer moms" just for the sake of it, and to apply these funky X, Y and Z labels simply because we once had a real demographic post-War bubble... is just a convenience for the researchers, the marketers and the booksellers.

Get over it.