Without referring further to the story, I'll give some of my data regarding the dystopian vision of the future held by a huge number of Digital Natives (born after 1997). The writer of the following message is near the cut-off, though technically still considered a Millennial. I thought, however, that his honest assessment was spot on and I see it only amplified as we reach down to age eighteen, like the characters in Dark Side.
Why do we want to die?
It's kind of a joke, and kind of an expression of a very real feeling of powerlessness and dread.
As a generation we are crippled by student loan debt. Can't buy a house because the housing market is a catastrophe. Trapped in meaningless service sector jobs, gleefully exploited by large corporations, not unionized, and feeling the full force of wage stagnation. Retirement seems like a hilarious fantasy. And that's just the economy.
The US is a cultural wasteland. Our movies are remakes of remakes and the cynical reselling of our childhoods back to us. Our computers and social networks actively spy on us. We're always connected, yet statistically very isolated. We're going to be around when the full effects of climate change set in and start fucking shit up. Our taxes are wasted in fruitless military adventures overseas while our politicians refuse to take real action on the exploding costs of education and health care. Our national politics in general are in absolute shambles.
Personally, my life (age 26) is going quite well. But as a cohort we don't really have much to be optimistic about. There is much to be concerned about, and many potential futures to dread.-from Zeebuss
Generations are not defined by the literal time it takes to mature and reproduce like it might be with dogs or orchids. In human generations, the seemingly arbitrary cut-off of 1997 as where the Digital Native generation starts is based on those who can remember 9/11 and those who really can't. So, consider what this generation is all about. They are twenty-one years of age or less. (When my generation was in that age range, we were burning draft cards and bras. We were marching in the streets for civil rights. We were putting flowers in her hair, flowers everywhere. We do not remember a world without the threat of nuclear destruction.)
Today's 18-21-year-old does not remember 9/11
Has never known privacy and has no real understanding of it outside of sneaking behind the garage to smoke pot (and that will be photographed and posted for everyone to see on flickr)
Never had a phone with wires
Always had a cell phone and a home computer (probably was given Mommy's smart phone to play games on while shopping
Never knew broadcast television (it's always been cable, OnDemand, and satellite TV)
Never bought an entire CD to get one song they wanted (yet have a library of over a thousand pieces of music they like, or did when they bought it)
Stands a one-in-six hundred chance of having had a live shooter in their school during their twelve years of education (those starting school this year stand a one-in-three hundred chance) and believe no one cares enough to stop it
Have had more live shooter drills in school than fire drills (of course, my generation had duck-and-cover drills to protect us from nuclear holocaust)
Will spend upwards of 100-150,000 for a four-year college degree that will get them a $40,000-a-year entry level job
Or, elect to do a job that does not require a degree and struggle to work their way up to $15 per hour in wages
Either way, they will start their working life either in debt or in crippling debt
Will live with parents as long as possible (BTW, the parents of today's 18-21-year-olds are mostly not Millennials, but the tail end of Gen-X, sometimes referred to as Xennials.)
Have no hope of ever buying a home, retiring, or being able to afford marriage
Fear having children because that would truly be the end of hope
Have never known a time when the US was not at war someplace in the world
Consider the world, and especially the US, to be a corrupt and hopeless place
At the same time, they want to go to concerts, buy cool clothes, smoke pot, drink to the point of alcohol poisoning, and discover true love via sex. All of those are an escape from what they consider reality to be. Like all such escape mechanisms, they are self-defeating as they consume the limited cash resources that they have and spiral back into more hopelessness. But any attempt to tell them they should save their money and not spend it on all that frivolous stuff is responded to with disbelief that we of the older generations would take away the little joy they have in life.
Sex is a cheap pleasure, but my generation-the generation of free love-has pounded into them that sex is dirty, that it is a form of abuse, that it can't be enjoyed in a way that doesn't require one party being used by the other, and that it inevitably leads to AIDS. We have convinced girls, transsexuals, gays, and non-binary people that men cannot be trusted, and then we proved it. We have further done our best to keep quality sex education out of schools (abstinence only), to deny reproductive health services, and to convince both males and females that sex is nothing more than a marketing tool.
Is every Digital Native so despondent? Of course not. We are a diverse culture. "Smart Girls" will find a 40-year-old electrical engineer to seduce and graduate from college at sixteen. [*sarcasm* for those of you without a clue] Or win the lottery. Some will truly be so smart and dedicated they will rise to the top no matter what. Some will already be members of the privileged class whose parents will support them, pay for college, house them, and get them started in life. As we move from Gen-X to Millennials as parents, we find fewer and fewer who are capable of doing that as the gap between the economic classes widens and people who were once upper middle class discover the erosion of the economy has moved them down and widened the gap between them and the upper strata they aspire to. And those who were just at the edge of making it find their savings gone, mortgages that consume 50% or more of their income, health services increasing in price as health benefits are reduced, and mounting credit card debt that was only supposed to see them through a tough spot and became a way of life.
Dystopia? Only if you define the reality of our world and society today as dystopian.
No comments:
Post a Comment