A generational debate: What drives the youth of today?

I recently asked my 16-and-a-half-year-old son what makes his generation so different from mine when we were their age. He said, simply: “Our generation lacks respect.” I asked him why, stunned by his level of complete frankness (I’m not sure why I was stunned, he is his mother's child). “We are spoiled,” he replied. 

As Gen X, I was brought up under an adamant generation of Baby Boomers that demanded respect be earned and felt nothing to discipline with all and any means. They kept their word on punishment and carelessly revoked privileges (which were few and far between – all earned), “my mum would say crocodile tears don't work on her.” 

Another defining moment for me: my first deadline at work as a naive, smart, ambitious 22-year-old. I got the shade of green wrong on a waterfall graph and my manager threw my 20-page presentation from his desk, nearly missing my face and scattering pages across the floor around me. He said, “Don’t ever send me shit that your father would be ashamed to see”. 

That devastated me 

I didn’t care to explain that IT hadn’t loaded the company’s CI yet because I should have checked that I had the company stationary before I started. At that moment I heard my mother’s voice saying, “If you’re going to do something, do it right or just leave it and I’ll do it myself.”

We were a middle-class-income, Indian household growing up in an era of apartheid, which meant both my mum and dad had to work. We didn’t have a daily housekeeper, so my siblings and I had chores around the house over and above tidying up after ourselves, making our beds and respecting the home my parents worked hard for. We always took pride in it. 

I took it as a lesson. 

Throughout my career, it’s helped me ensure the highest standard. My partner often quotes the postapocalyptic novel by author G. Michael Hopf which reads: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”. It’s a cycle. 

We are always talking about this, as parents with very different styles whether we are raising privileged and entitled teenagers, whose only role in society is to study (and that too, my son feels sometimes is an option). They’re turning to so-called “social-media influencers”, who are driven by a self-fulfilling, materialistic motive and thus have not contributed to society (a generalisation, I accept), yet demand a seat at the table. 

I Googled influencers. The Oxford Dictionary definition is “a key individual with an extensive network of contacts, who plays an active role in shaping the opinions of others within some topic area, typically through their expertise, popularity, or reputation”. The question I ask here is the driving motive of these influencers, are they genuinely subject matter experts who understand that they are influencing the whole Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Forgive me, my CFO radar never switches off, when I look at the Influencer Marketing Industry which is set to grow to approximately $24 billion by the end of 2024, starting from $1.6 billion in 2016 to $16.4 billion in 2022. This has been propelled by boredom and the need for connection during the Covid-19 years. 

Then I randomly searched Top 10 influencers in varying categories – the majority of who are child stars, actresses, models, or pageant winners. The remainder are dancers, singers or lip-sync copycats.  We are driving vanity; a perfect size six body or a ripped body, the best makeup and diet routines, how to shake what your mama gave you, and how to do the perfect pout about daily life chores. This industry is being driven by profit without purpose. The “silly or sexy” approach on TikTok videos racks up millions of followers, but the content is 40% paid-for and 30% free products, creating a lot of misinformation for our teenagers to build the future from. Whereas Gen X influencers are psychiatrists, psychologists, life coaches, monks and religious leaders – this generation has achieved status and is now searching for meaning and identity outside of their children, careers, status, or wealth.

But, my question is as parents we are spoiling them into believing their biggest struggle in life will be studying for straight A’s and entering A-list universities, further perpetuating the situation. Is that appreciation or a call of duty? Are we driving them to become like us?

The impact of all of this materialises after school, when it’s time to face the real world. University will be their first point of failure, because lecturers don't care who you are and what greatness you achieved at private school with private attention and tutors. Your classes grow from less than thirty to hundreds to sometimes over thousands. Next, you’ll enter the income-generating decades (formal, informal or as an entrepreneur), where only the brightest with EQ (emotional quotient) and SQ (social quotient) will grow. It is also the time when conscious and unconscious bias kicks like a bull in the teeth – so now you notice things about yourself like gender, sexual preferences, race, and religion. 

If teenagers believe, like their social media influencers, that being pretentious is the key to life and reward, they will end up like the majority of Gen X, who are now between forty-five and fifty-nine (45-59), searching to remember who they were before marriage, mortgage and mortality.

I leave us all (parents and teenagers) with this: Collecting power without consideration for your impact is self-serving. Are we driving Intelligence that is empty? How are we building character and creating kind, caring and empathetic hearts? How do we help our children break their bubbles, find their own identity and then hold onto it?

To the privileged youth, what are you doing with what you have to aid those who don’t have the same privileges as you, to impact society and to contribute to your future? An education tests you on what is taught, life gives you the lesson most times untaught, and then you have to ask the questions.

Be impactful. Be you.