The times they are a-changing - Bob Dylan :

I don’t tlk. i txt. K?

Aditha DISSANAYAKE

The Net Generation and the iGeneration have turned the concept of communication upside down. It is now all about texting, Facebooking, Skype-ing - pretty much anything but talking live or on the phone” - Dr. Larry Rosen

I doubt if I would have ever got to know there is a major difference in the point of view of those of my generation and those of my parent’s, called the generation gap,had I not read Ivan Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’, or James Michener’s ‘Drifters’, as a teenager. If not for Arkady in Father’s and Sons who calls his father an outdated coin, if not for Joe, Gretchen, Cato in The Drifters, who defy the conventional lives of their parents, I would not have known there were rifts in the way the young and the old looked at life.

Naive? Perhaps. After all, there was hardly any conflict between my parents and I when it came to my ideas and beliefs regarding my career, religion, marriage and yes, even politics. (The differences at any rate were not strong enough to drive us into fierce arguments.) If ever I differed in my preferences it was over the choice of music. As a teenager, as a young adult and even today, as a thirty-something hovering on the boarder of mid life, mid career, mid education, I find the songs of Amaradeva and Jim Reeves far too melancholic for my desolate temperament.

Yet the Gap does exist. In an exclusive e-interview with the Daily News, Professor of psychology at California State University, Dr. Larry Rosen explains that “up to now people have agreed on two generations – Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) and Generation X (1965-1979)” and adds “after that there is no consensus.”

Recent research, however, has termed the new set (those born after 1979) the “mini generations” which according to Dr. Rosen are coming up more rapidly than the previous generations. “In our research looking at thousands of children, teens and adults, we have discovered three distinct generations that we are calling: the Net Generation (born between 1980 and 1989), the iGeneration (1990-1999) and Generation C (2000+).”

Which generation do you belong to? Are you a Baby Boomer? Or do you belong to generation X? Or perhaps generation Y and C? (the letters of the alphabet used to describe the last three categories in Dr. Rosen’s list). Either way you must surely admit the battle guns have cooled, that the home front has been quite peaceful of late. So peaceful that many have begun to call this phenomenon the “gentler generation gap”.

Except when it comes to technology. Whereas in the past when young people said to each other, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” they meant anyone who had outdated views on religion, marriage, work, today, when they send a text message to a friend saying “he’s 2 old.” they mean someone who is still living in the era of stamps and envelops, landline phones and newspaper boys.

Dr. Rosen admits he enjoys watching the rapid changes in technology and how all of us are adapting or not adapting to them. Having researched extensively, the impact of technology and media on generational differences, he finds the new generations differ from the Boomers due to the barrage of technology in our society. “They are distinct in the ways that they use technology and the ways that they see the world. We believe that it is the rapid changes in technology that have brought about these new mini generations.”

Dr. Rosen recounts how this point about the “mini generational differences” was driven home on the day a man was seen walking around his campus with a gun. Asked to stay inside his office, he had telephoned his elderly parents, sent emails to his two older children and texted the two younger ones. “How I connected with members of my family signaled a turning point for me” he recalls. “For each family member, my message was the same, “I’m O.K. Don’t worry.” Only how I relayed it was different, and that got me thinking about how rapidly changes in how we communicate are taking place.”

Dr. Rosen thinks the final two generations, who are called Generation Y and Millennials are defined not by a letter or by their birth year but by their use of technology and media, their need and ability to multitask, their rapid acceptance of anything new and their view of the meaning of technology. “All of which lead to differences in personal and work values and often to disharmony in the family, school and the workplace.”

The good news is, all is not lost, yet. If you have parents worrying over your obsession with your phone and laptop, if you have teachers who try to make you read books and pay attention in class, if you have bosses who want you to hold meetings and write progress reports, Dr. Rosen offers words of comfort (to the parents, teachers and bosses). “Those pesky multitasking kids are the smartest generation ever, with high professional aspirations. Some may call them narcissistic, but they are really a highly social generation (albeit with much of the socialising done online); they consume massive quantities of information (again, much of it online) and are the most “communicating” generation yet.” He adds “We may not like it, but we have to admit that they are happy, successful and engaged with all their media and technology.”

But beware. If this boosts your ego far too high, remember that there are two year olds out there who can already find their favorite nursery rhymes on Google all on their own. In their eyes you are already an “old fogy”.

No wonder Bob Dylan’s “The Times are a-changing” is a song for every generation whether you listen to it on a gramophone, on an MP3 player or on an ipod.

“accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone... you better start swimming

Or you’ll sink like a stone”. JK!lol :)

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Meet the iGeneration

Here are a few of the generational differences Dr. Larry Rosen describes.

* Increased media consumption: In anonymous online surveys, we asked about daily hours online and a number of activities, including music listening, video game playing, talking on the telephone, chatting, texting, sending and receiving e-mail and watching television. While we computed a total score, we know that many of these activities are done simultaneously. Net Geners and older teens spend more than 20 hours per day using media and technology followed by younger teens who spend slightly more than 15 hours per day.

*Multitasking: Older teens report doing the most multitasking; according to them, they perform nearly seven simultaneous tasks.

* E-communication: Baby boomers prefer face-to-face or telephone communication along with e-mail. Gen Xers embrace cell phones, e-mail and instant messaging. It is with the Net Generation that different communication approaches emerge, including social networks, Skyping and texting. But it’s the iGeneration that is rapidly redefining digital communication. To them, a phone is not a phone. It is a computer (or likely soon to be a tablet) that they use to tweet, Facebook and of course, text, text, text. For them, peer relationships are all about connecting by any electronic means. To them, WWW stands for whatever, whenever and wherever.