Gen Y Cartoon
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008Why is Generation Y called Generation Y you might ask. Here’s a perspective provided by French Canadian cartoonist Marc Beaudet, published at Journal de Québec on January 22, 2008.
Manchester Students on Gen Y
Friday, February 22nd, 2008This 10 minute video was put together one autumn afternoon in 2007 at the University of Manchester. The concept of ‘Generation Y’ was put forward to a class of over 100 MSc Students. The opinions expressed extend across Business, IS and Computer Science disciplines. Thanks to Martin Cahill for hosting the video.
Music is Young Folks, by Peter Bjorn and John.
Gen Y Conversation Skills
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008In response to surveys showing a lack of conversational skills stemming from an over-reliance on video games, text messaging and TiVo, a number of American mainline churches have begun to offer classes in fellowship and social conversation with Generation Y’ers.
“We feel this is meeting a real need in our congregations,” said Jerod P.Ainsworth, youth director at Loma Linda Presbyterian Church (LLPC), a leader in what some observers have called the “small-talk education movement.”
“This is causing a real rift in congregations that is breaking fellowship between the generations,” Ainsworth said.
The classes offered at LLPC include “Me and My Friends Alone: Clique Talk in the Foyer,” “Endless Conversations about One’s Children,” “Endless Conversations About One’s Grandchildren,” and “Biblical-Seeming Gossip.”
“These young people seem so immersed in their own world, they just cannot seem to share in this centuries-old tradition,” said Forbes McGintley, head of a commission designated by mainline churches to study the problem.
Suggestions offered by the authors break the problem into four distinct areas of instruction for the parents of Gen Y’ers:
1. How to talk about one’s children and family (and others’ families exactly like it) to the exclusion of all other topics.
2. How to network and bring up one’s job and/or profession in subtle yet profitable ways.
3. Exclusive vacation spots, including activities like skiing, para-sailing,kayaking, bicycling, and (of course) golf.
4. Talk about God-given possessions like cars, jet skis, pools and spas and “most importantly, improvements on the house.”
Howard Bowman, Wittenburg Door, January 30, 2008
Read the full article, How to De-Program a Gen Yer, at Wittenburg Door.
[SATIRE WARNING]
Willimon on Reaching Young Adults
Monday, November 26th, 2007William Willimon has recently posted on reaching what he calls The Abandoned Generation.
He begins by reflecting on the growth of binge drinking on university campuses, the increasing rate of violent crimes and suicide among young people. Despite these factors, however, Willimon observes that this generation is open to listening to the voices of older generations, in a way that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s.
I have found that today’s “Abandoned Generation” brings a new curiosity and openness to the gospel as well as a willingness to hear what their elders have to say, if we will speak directly to them. Therefore leaders of the church need to revise some of our conventional wisdom about the imperviousness of young adult hearts to the gospel.
Thomas G. Long is quoted:
“There is a growing recognition that it is not enough for the community of faith to wait around for the “boomers” to drift back. ….Conventional wisdom holds that there are three broad phases in religious commitment: There is childhood, a pliable and receptive age religious instruction can and should be given; there is mature adulthood, when people, given the right incentives, can be persuaded to take on the responsibilities of institutional church life. In between childhood and adulthood, there is the vast wasteland of adolescence and young adulthood, a time when most people wander, or run away from their religious roots. The most that a community of faith can do in this middle period is to wait patiently, to leave people alone in their season of rebellion, smiling with the knowledge that, by the time these rebels arrive at their thirties, they will probably be back in the pews and may well be heading up the Christian education committee. This conventional wisdom is wrong….”
Willimon asks if we can see the needs and problems of this generation of young adults as an invitation to proclaim the gospel with boldness, to beckon them toward a new world named the Kingdom of God? “If we can, we shall discover this generation as a marvelous opportunity for gospel proclamation.”
I agree that young adults are open to the voices of many people. However this is not the openness of naivety. There’s a sense of discernment and exploration of what it actually means to join the messenger in the development of a future with meaning. Younger generations will not listen long if it is obvious that the older generation is involved in one way communication. This generation has a marvelous opportunity to be proclaimers of the gospel.
Recruitment Perspective on Generation Y
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007With unemployment rates at an all time low, employers are coming under increasing pressure to attract, recruit and retain appropriate staff - enter the optimistic, confident and ambitious Generation Y.
Generation Y are career focused and know what they ideally want to achieve, in fact, a recent survey found that career was rated as the most important thing for the future, prioritised over health and other factors in their lives.
Candidates often receive more than one job offer when hunting for employment, making the competition for staff much stronger and leaving employers with a challenge to fill vacancies.
Managing Director of recruitment specialist Walker Technical Consultants, David Walker said that the skills shortage dominating the employment market calls for the need to understand tomorrow’s generation in order to take advantage of their developing skills.
“Generation Y know about the skills shortage development and realise that they have more options in the job market, giving them increased leverage in terms of benefits and work environment.”
“They will research your company and form their own opinions, so it is crucial that the messages you are sending out are positive,” Mr Walker said.
Statistics have shown that 72% of Generation Y will not apply for a role within an organisation if they do not believe in what it stands for and 42% would not accept a job if it did not provide perks.
“Recruitment agencies are as busy as ever working for both candidates and employers in order to match up the perfect employee with the perfect job and ultimately satisfy all parties involved,” he said.
Walker Technical Consultants hold alliances with accredited training programs to ensure the mentoring and development of candidates and address the skills shortage in the employment market.
Gen Y leaving MySpace
Friday, July 13th, 2007Melbourne-based marketing group Lifelounge says that Gen Y are leaving MySpace and other social networks because of the intrusion of corporate brands. The researchers’ annual Urban Marketing report, which measures the attitudes and trends of the young adult market in Australia, aged predominantly between 16 and 30 years, says that while 53.7% of young adults are still using MySpace to connect to their peers, the intrusion of corporate brands is sending them elsewhere.
Dion Appel, Lifelounge CEO, said while MySpace is still achieving phenomenal success as a social networking community, the style-surfers in the urban market are heading elsewhere.
“They are the first to get a whiff of corporate intrusion and will look at other destinations,” he said. “Our market is looking to the next thing already.”
Dean Hoge on Catholic Young Adult Identity
Monday, October 23rd, 2006On Friday afternoon I was part of a panel responding to Dean Hoge’s lecture on young adults in the Catholic Church.
Dean’s a Presbyterian who’s been lecturing in sociology of religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC for thirty years. He was part of the team that published the 1994 book, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers”. On Friday Dean was presenting research on Catholic young adults in the United States, to an audience consisting mostly of Catholic educators and youth ministry staff from Brisbane.
There were some eye openers for me. The top two values in a 1997 survey of Catholics 20 to 39 years old, relating to Catholic distinctiveness, were belief that God is present in the sacraments (no surprise), and a charitable efforts toward helping the poor (interesting). Fourth on the list was devotion to Mary the Mother of God. Emerging values identified in teenagers and young adults included a commitment to short-term projects and a strong will to protect the environment.
Dean took us through a national sample of American Catholics held in 2003, looking at issues of individual conscience and Catholic teaching, ethics relating to homosexual acts, abortion, pre-marital sex and birth control. It was clear that there was a strong delineation between Pre-Vatican II Catholics (63 years and older) and post-Vatican II Catholics (40-62 years of age). Young adults (18-39) were quite similar to the latter. Clearly a lot of the difference was related to generational change, particularly in the emergence of the Baby Boom generation.
Dean talked about the challenge faced by liberal denominations like the PCUSA and Uniting Church in Australia when it comes to identity. As denominations we highly value individual capacity for discernment, education and decision making. We are loathe to tell young adults what to do and believe. Some young adults stay around for that very reason. However many drift off because they perceive to be vagueness in doctrine and distinctiveness. The Uniting Church in Australia does not have much connection with the narratives told by the Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists in earlier years. We focus so much on being accessible and inclusive to Christians of all varieties that we’re in danger of being a generic brand, standing for nothing much.
My response included a reference to brand loyalty among emerging generations. People like Kevin Roberts at Saatchi and Saatchi prefer to talk about love than loyalty, thus the phrase “Love Marks”. We see that at work in the emotional connection many young Australian Christians have with Hillsong. I referred to Pope John Paul II and his inclusion in the Love Marks web site, between Pop Secret (pop corn) and Porsche. We have the challenge of nurturing passion that goes beyond consumerism, modelling this capacity for love in our own lives. I pointed out that organisations like Greenpeace found a following in the Baby Boom generation when a group of people now in their late sixties committed themselves to sharing their vision with students and workers ten years younger than themselves.
Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice (2001) at Amazon.com
Dean Hoge is pictured below (left) with my fellow panel members Selina Harris (Sunnybank Catholic Parish) and Paul Mergard, (right) photographer and Salvation Army church planter in West End, Brisbane.
Generation Y Spirituality Research in Australia
Friday, August 4th, 2006The Spirit of Generation Y project (2003-2006), is a national study of spirituality among Australian young people in their teens and twenties, conducted by researchers from Australian Catholic University, Monash University and the Christian Research Association. The research consisted of a survey of a nationally representative sample of Generation Y (born 1976-1990), with comparison groups from Generation X (born 1961-75) and the Baby-Boomer generation (born 1946-60), supplemented by extended, face-to-face interviews.
The project explored Generation Y’s range of worldviews and values, their sense of meaning and purpose in life, the ways in which they find peace and happiness, their involvement in traditional religions and alternative spiritualities, how they relate to the society around them, and the influences which shape their outlook and lifestyle.
Key Findings
Belief
48% of Generation Y (Gen Y) believe in a God, 20% do not, and 32% are unsure. Two-thirds of those who do not believe in God, or are uncertain, do believe in a higher being or life-force.
Spirituality
There are three main strands in the spirituality of Generation Y:
Christian: (44% of Gen Y)
Eclectic: (17%)
Humanist: (31%)
Christian
Only 19% of Gen Y are actively involved in a church to the extent of attending religious services once a month or more; (conservative Protestant denominations, 16% of Gen Y, have by far the highest rates of attendance); but many more believe in God and Jesus, and pray regularly. Religion is seen as a private matter, and there is a strong tide of movement among Gen Y Christians away from previous involvement or identification with a church, and even from religious belief.Eclectic
17 % of Gen Y have an eclectic spirituality, believing in two or more New Age, esoteric or Eastern beliefs (including belief in reincarnation, psychics and fortune tellers, ghosts, astrology) and perhaps engaging in one or more alternative spiritual practices (yoga, Tarot, tai-chi). Some of these people attend religious services but most do not. Such beliefs and practices are more common among young women than young men.Humanist
31 % of Gen Y can be classified as Humanists, rejecting the idea of God, although a few believe in a higher being. Of these secular-minded young people, almost half believe that there is very little truth in religion, and less than a quarter believe in life after death. They also largely reject alternative spiritualities.
Social concern
Gen Y are not notably more self centred and lacking in altruism than older generations. For example, 27% are involved in some kind of volunteer work per month. Those who are actively involved in service to the community and have positive civic values are far more likely to come from the ranks of those who have spiritual and religious beliefs and actively practise them.
Influences
The significant social forces shaping contemporary religion and spirituality - secularisation, the relativism of postmodernity, consumer capitalism, individualism - influence more than Generation Y alone, although young people, by virtue of their age and life stage, are more subject to their effects.
Conclusions
Generation Y are what their parents and Australian culture have made them. They have taken strongly to two late modern principles: that an individual’s views and preferences, provided they harm no-one else, should not be questioned or constrained, and that spiritual/religious beliefs and practices are purely personal lifestyle choices - in no way necessary. Despite moving away in large numbers from traditional religious sources of meaning, they seem to have a strong sense of purpose in their lives. There is no evidence from this project of a widespread plague of meaninglessness or social alienation among Generation Y, nor of a critical lack of social support.
Although broader support structures such as church and local community have grown weaker over the last century, families appear to have compensated by increasing the intimacy of family life, and young people also rely more heavily on friendship networks. By these means, Generation Y appear to be successful, for now, in holding at bay the threats to personal security inherent in the much more isolated status of the individual within society.
Much has been written and theorised about the changing spiritual landscape in late modern societies: the rise of alternative spiritualities, the increasing popularity of the New Age, the attraction of Eastern religions, the development of eclectic mix and match spiritualities and the emergence of nature religions and Neo-Paganism. This study did not find that Gen Y are a generation of spiritual seekers; less than one-fifth of Gen Y have a mix and match spirituality, while few are seriously exploring alternatives like Buddhism or Wicca.
Many young people in Australia are what we have called Humanists, following an avowedly secular path in life, rejecting belief in God and declaring that there is little truth in any religion, affirming instead human experience, human reason and scientific explanations. Some are angry at or disenchanted with organised religion, but most simply do not care or are not interested. This is not unique to Generation Y; their parents are the Baby Boomer generation, 23 percent of whom are Humanists, while a further 24 percent are nominal Christians - people who might maintain a residual belief in God and identify with a denomination, but little more than that. Non-religious young people simply reflect the broader secular context and the spirituality of their own parents.
Summary of the project’s final report (A book is in preparation)
A summary report of the project’s findings is available on the Gen Y Report website:
or to navigate more easily to the site, just put the word genyrep into Google.
Research team (available for interviews):
Dr. Michael Mason Australian Catholic University
Ph (03) 9817-9758 (Mobile): 0417 467 480
Assoc Prof Ruth Webber Australian Catholic University
Ph (Work) (03) 9953-3221 (Home) (03) 9686-4068 (Mobile) 0429 142 782
Dr. Andrew Singleton, Monash University
Ph (Work) (03) 9905-5836 (Home) (03) 9317-5720 (Mobile): 0422 696 651
Dr. Philip Hughes, Christian Research Association
Ph (Work) (03) 9878-3477 (Mobile): 043 870 8675
Youth Group Forever Young Music Video as Intergenerational Text
Friday, July 14th, 2006Forever Young, covered by Sydney band, Youth Group, is an intergenerational text that provides opportunities to explore faith in everyday language of popular culture.
The music video, released this year, shows teenage skateboarders taking part in a contest at the Coca Cola factory at Frenches Forest, Sydney Australia, footage originally shown on Australian youth show GTK (Get To Know) in 1975.
You can see the music video on RAGE, the Australian ABC’s equivalent of MTV on Saturday and Sunday mornings. More people see the video on YouTube.
What’s made the track so popular? The Youth Group recorded “Forever Young” for the third series of The O.C., a music-saturated teen US television drama series, and suddenly found themselves with an international hit, published around the world on The O.C. Mix 5 and now as an EP, Forever Young.
The original song, written by Marian Gold, performed by German synth band Alphaville in 1982 and re-released on the 1989 CD, Forever Young, picked up the uncertainty experienced by Gen X teenagers as they faced a world in danger of nuclear holocaust.
Let’s dance in style,
let’s dance for a while.
Heaven can wait,
we’re only watching the sky,
Hoping for the best
but expecting the worst.
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
Let us die young
or let us live forever.
Forever young,
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever,
forever, forever?
As I watch this video and listen to the song with my family and friends, I’ll be exploring questions relating to youth, aging and hopes for the future. I’ll be inviting Gen Xers to talk about their experiences of youth in the 1970s and 1980s, along with the realities of their lives now. In turn, teenagers will have their unique perspectives on the world of the twenty first century and what it might mean to become adults with a future.
The conversation could be rounded out with a reference to Bob Dylan’s 1973 song, “Forever Young”, first recorded on Planet Waves. It would be good to hear from people who despite their physical limitations can look back at their lives saying they’ve grown up to be true, courageous, upright and strong, living with joyful hearts, forever young.
Having explored the songs and video, it’s time to introduce a new intergenerational text for conversation, Ecclesiastes 12:1-2, paraphrased here in The Message.
Honour and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young,
Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes,
Before your vision dims and the world blurs
And the winter years keep you close to the fire.
You can read Duncan Macleod’s music video reviews at www.music-videos.duncans.tv.
Rebecca Huntley on Gen Y
Friday, April 21st, 2006
Rebecca Huntley is another Australian who has published on Gen Y this year. “The World According To Y” was published by Allen & Unwin in March 2005.
Rebecca develops a connection between the field of gender studies and generational research.
Rebecca begins with a clear sense of her own identity. She’s a member of Generation X considering the world and lives of a younger emerging generation. She’s not anxious about the weight of labels. But neither is she quick to make broad
generalisations about any generation. She’s developed the style of examining broad trends, the experiences of subcultures, and the stories of students and others she has encountered along the way. The result is a very readable walk through the journey of young adults in the early twenty first century.
I found a number of valuable conversation starters here. The phrase “Chicks before
Dicks, Bros before Hos” was used to preface one of the early chapters on friendship being valued before sexual companionship. I tested the vocab out at the dinner table and found my two older teenage children knew exactly what I was talking about. And they were able to inform me that ‘hos’ refers to the adaptation of the word ‘whores’.
There’s a strong emphasis by Huntley on gender and sexuality. That’s a helpful contribution considering that many studies of generational values overlook the distinctives found in each generation. Huntley manages to highlight diversity without discounting common experience.
The chapter on spirituality was interesting. Rebecca starts by telling the story of attending Hillsong’s ‘Powerhouse’, a rock-concert/praise and prayer session catering specifically for ages 18 to 25. She talks about the way in which Hillsong have
developed a positive message undergirded by a selfish, materialistic approach. She helpfully points out that despite the ’success’ of churches like Hillsong, Australian young adults are overwhelmingly agnostic and unlikely to attend any church. She explores possible factors - leadership marred by scandal, parents who have rejected church, and experiences of worship that are as insipid as overcooked vegetables - enough to put people off for life.
Rebecca points out that young adults, despite their materialism, do recognise a need for meaning and will explore ‘things spiritual’ in many ways. Consumption, the pursuit of material things, is clearly not enough to provide Yers with a reason to live, Huntley says.
Huntley concludes her book with her personal observations on the inter-generational relationships that will need to be developed over the coming years. Like Ryan Heath, she is concerned that Baby Boomers have and will write off the valuable contributions of the emerging generation.
Check out Rebecca Huntley’s interview with Richard Fidler online at ABC Brisbane Radio Conversation Hour: Windows Media Version
Online articles in 2005 by Rebecca Huntley
A consumer’s perspective on abortion 22/12/2005
Generation Y ripe for union picking 20/10/2005
Captain Wacky or ‘The Latham Lessons’ 6/10/2005
Barbie for president! 22/09/2005
Manhole or a personhole? A study of political correctness 30/08/2005
Political parties ignore Generation Y at their own peril 18/08/2005
