Digital Connections

It was with great interest this week that I read an article where the premise was that those of Generation Y are eschewing the purchase of a car. The foundation for this article was that Generation Y prefers to spend their disposable income on technology as opposed to a larger purchase of, and the resulting ongoing operating costs of, a vehicle.

This in itself was an interesting article to me, but what really caught my attention – and the focus of this article – is that the rationale for making this decision is that Generation Y is using technology to establish and nurture their relationships and connections. My first instinct was to be critical of Gen Y’s method of maintaining their network but I’ve been thinking of this philosophy for the better part of today.

It’s just occurred to me that I touched on this phenomenon in this article and I will take the opportunity to expand on my thoughts on this a little more.

I think that it’s just far too easy and lazy for my generation (the baby boomers) to be critical of Gen Y and have the mindset of “digital connections and relationships are not as real as flesh and blood”. There’s a small amount of truth to it – well, maybe not so much a truth, but at least a minute basis of reality. However, technology affects most things in our lives. I’ll even go far to say that it not only affects our lives but it can be impetus for evolution, so why wouldn’t technology fundamentally change how we relate to one another.

There’s no question that any relationship or connection generally has to have a physical foundation but perhaps that Gen Y isn’t so off base on this and that being able to stay in touch electronically is just another option that we have to maintain our relationships.

I think that every generation looks back to their parents and proudly shows how their generation is better than their parents – that they have evolved and that they will dictate how society evolves. Similarly, this same generation often looks at the generation of their children and thinks to themselves “They’re naïve, they don’t have the experience that I do and they just don’t know….”.

I suspect that this inter-generational hopscotch is the basis of how our society evolves, the “I won’t make the same mistakes as my ancestors” or the “my generation will make this a better world”.

Communication and connection needs are affected and driven by technology, as so many aspects of our lives are.

In the earlier days, our neighbours were not so close geographically. Where now, we might have tens of thousands in a geographic region, then, it might have only been a dozen or so. Not only were neighbours further away, but it took much longer to reach them before the advent of the automobile. In this day and age, it was critical to have “good relations” with one’s neighbours as it was so important to be able to depend on them if you needed help. If my barn burned to the ground, then I needed to know that I could count on the support and help from my neighbours to help rebuild. In addition, if I had a problem with my water pump and this wasn’t my area of expertise, I had to know who to count on and more importantly, I had to make sure that the connection was there with my neighbour so that he would be able and willing to come and help.

With the advent of the telephone and motorized transport, this became less important. The so-called “shrinking world” had the advantage of making more resources available and as such, developing these neighbourly connections wasn’t so critical anymore. This would be an example of how the introduction of technology has impacted our connections.

Taking this concept to the current Gen Y phenomenon of technology being an integral component to their connections, perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh and realize that there’s probably a lot of benefit to being able to instantly text, tweet, or post on someone’s Facebook wall what’s going on, or that they’re loved and missed.