A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much

I found this article fascinating…

I’m one of those people quick to call the younger generation slackers.  They are entirely too coddled.  Hence, my loving reference to them among friends and on my blogs as SJI’s (Slack Jawed Idiots).

But I’m ready to admit that there are other factors that aren’t so obvious.  Technology has changed the world and removed walls and barriers.  It has made it easier to blur the lines between work life and home life.

This Generation also sees things differently due to, not only being coddled, but due to the vast amount of information this technology has made so easily available.

They also don’t have the expectations many of us from my generation had- past tense-of having a job for life as long as they worked hard.

They know that social contract is null and void.

They therefore, appropriately, focus more on their real life.

In short, it’s a different world than the one we expected to see…

They may be more realistic than my generation was…

I’ll have to think about this some more.  This article in today’s New York Times is a good place to start…

But it still doesn’t excuse their poor style, fashion and cultural choices…

And three in four Americans believe that today’s youth are less virtuous and industrious than their elders, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center found.

In a sign of humility or docility, young people agree. In that 2009 Pew survey, two-thirds of millennials said older adults were superior to the younger generation when it came to moral values and work ethic.

After all, if there’s a young person today who’s walked 10 miles barefoot through the snow to school, it was probably on an iPhone app.

So is this the Laziest Generation? There are signs that its members benefit from lower standards. Technology has certainly made life easier. But there may also be a generation gap; the way young adults work is simply different.

MORE:   A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much – NYTimes.com.