Should we worry about the children?

My ‘conference friend’ Rich has a cool new job – good stuff, Rich! I started to reply to something he wrote but it got so long I figured I’d better put it here instead.

Read Our Future Colleagues Have MySpace Accounts for the context first.

Rich, If you’re a dinosaur…I must be petrified. New grads coming into the workplace are closer in age to my children than to myself. My kids (13 and 11) are growing up wifi; not just laptops but PSPs, Sidekicks and Nintendo DS and the observations about handwriting, spelling, jargon – are on point, but in my opinion it’s more reflective of our struggle to adapt, just like the dinosaurs.

Younger folks have always integrated technology and information pipelines better than older generations. Further, If I can use my kid’s educations are any kind of benchmark, they’re getting a lot more knowledge and academic challenges thrown at them at an earlier age than we did.

The ability of any given youth to function socially still boils down to the individual level. My daughter would appear to be a poster child for ADD-style overload. She’ll be texting in her room with the TV, laptop and sometimes video iPod (with one earbud inserted) going. Yet she got amazing grades last quarter and is a social butterfly with a large circle of friends. My son is a different archetype – he’s much more of a loner, with few friends but deep passions that he explores fully offline and online. One day he casually told me he corrected the Wikipedia entry on a book series he was reading – he’s the 11 year old. He couldn’t understand why I was amazed at that.

I do see one commonality that worries me, it’s less about social engagement and getting out than it is about our increasing inability to be alone with ourselves. I see people filling up time that was formerly contemplative with some other form of connection – cell phones. Better than 50% of people I see driving, walking dogs, out for a stroll are on their phones. I don’t fear a future where life is experienced from behind a screen but one where nobody is comfortable being alone with their thoughts.