Five Lessons from the Digital Generation

[MachineGhost]

Five Lessons from the Digital Generation
By P.J. O'Rourke

I haven't seen my teenage daughter face-to-face in years…

No, her mother and I aren't divorced. I didn't lose custody. My daughter and I aren't estranged.

It's just that her nose is buried in her iPhone. All I ever see is the top of her head.

Which gave me an idea…

Like many people my age, I'm puzzled by the "digital economy." What parts of it will succeed? What parts will fail?

A "digital generation" is coming of age, raised in a digital world. This generation's tastes, preferences, and opinions will determine the fate of the digital economy. They've already made some corporations, investors, and key players rich – and others broke. And that's just the beginning.

The digital generation's peak earning years are yet to come. We'd all like to know what will happen when today's kids run tomorrow's economy.

And here I was with a one-girl focus group sitting right across the breakfast table, so deeply involved in the digital economy that her hair was dragging in her nut-butter-and-chia-seed toast.

All I had to do was get her attention. "Honey," I said, "I've hidden your car keys."

"WHERE?!" she screamed.

"Inside a $20 bill," I said. "And I'm sure I can find them if you'll spend a few minutes letting me interview you about the digital economy."

"The what economy?" she said. I tried to explain. She got an A in her high school economics class… but she looked at me like I was talking crazy talk… which was my first lesson…

Lesson No. 1: When analyzing the digital economy, delete the word "digital."

People under 20 take the digital world so much for granted that "digital" isn't even a thing. This is because the Digital Revolution is over, and digital won. Everything we mean by "digital economy" has already been integrated into the economy itself.

Lesson No. 2: Put not your faith (nor your money) in high-tech devices.

Me: "What are the various devices that you use to listen to music, watch movies, TV, and videos, do your schoolwork, communicate with your friends, and stay in touch with current events and the outside world?"

Daughter: "My phone and my laptop."

Me: "Just your phone and your laptop? Are there any other devices that you'd like to have?"

Daughter: "No."

Me: "What about a smartwatch?"

Daughter: "They're stupid."

Me: "Google Glass?"

Daughter: "My friends would throw up laughing."

Me: "Fitbit?"

Daughter: "Why?"

As well she might ask. She plays three sports and eats nut-butter-and-chia-seed toast. At least she had the good manners not to suggest that I get a Fitbit.

Me: "iPad?"

Daughter: "It's a giant version of a phone that can't make phone calls."

Me: "iPod?"

Daughter: [rolls eyes] "Totally obsolete. The iPhone is the iPod with a phone and Internet."

The digital generation isn't impressed because something is high-tech. In their world, everything is high-tech and always has been. So much so that when my daughter was 5 and watched my wife try to find the cordless phone, she suggested, "Mommy, why don't you tie a string to this part of the phone and then tie the other end of the string to that part of the phone?"

Lesson No. 3: You're better off trying to win at three-card Monte than you are trying to predict which social-media platform is the best investment bet.

Me: "Twitter is big, right?"

Daughter: "If I'm really bored."

Me: "The appeal of Twitter is supposed to be that it's immediate."

Daughter: "I haven't checked Twitter in two weeks."

[She checks Twitter.]

Daughter: "Twitter is stagnant. No one new is getting on it."

Me: "How about Facebook?"

Daughter: "Overwhelming as a whole. Cluttered. Too much oversharing. A lot of old people are on it."

Me: "Therefore, I gather, Facebook is doomed."

Daughter: "No. It's the only social media where you can really get a message out, to adults and peers alike. The memorial service at church for the victims of the shooting in Orlando, for instance. It's a big public bulletin board."

Me: "What do you use most?"

Daughter: "There's an order to it, kind of a ranking. E-mail is formal. I send e-mails to my teachers and people like that. Texting is impersonal, for checking in with parents. Also for appointments and making plans. Calling is personal. I always call my boyfriend.

"I use Instagram for photos, it's less messy than Facebook, just pictures and captions. Snapchat is another way to send pics. They disappear within 10 seconds of being opened. It can be used to send nudes…

[Shocked look on my face]

"…but it's more permanent than people think, because you can take screenshots of the nude photos and send them all over the Internet."

Me: "OK, that's more than I needed to know. What about advertising?"

Lesson No. 4: Internet advertising is like no advertising you've ever seen. In fact, it's like no advertising at all, possibly worse.

Daughter: "I never look at it."

My daughter buys things on the Internet. So does her younger sister. So does my wife. We know the UPS man so well he comes for Thanksgiving dinner.

Daughter: "Internet ads are annoying. They're not effective. No one pays any attention to them. And I'm creeped out by the way the ads track what I've been looking at. If I'm looking at some sneakers on Amazon, all of a sudden sneaker ads start popping up. I hate them. I wouldn't buy what they're advertising."

Lesson No. 5: The digital generation isn't in love with the digital world.

Factor this in whenever you hear a "brilliant idea" about using "metadata from the Internet" to "change everything."

Daughter: "Everything we do on the Internet is tracked, which is creepy. I'd ban that."

And the digital generation doesn't necessarily want to be "more connected" than it already is.

Me: "What do you wish was on the Internet that isn't?"

Daughter: "There's already too much. I really don't want to know how much time I spend on the Internet, and I really wish I didn't do it. When it's in your hand, it's like automatic to go to, which I think is really bad. I hope I'll use it less in the future. I honestly have anxiety about picking up my phone."

Me: "You do?"

Daughter: "But it's mostly because of all the calls from you and Mom about where I am and what I'm doing."

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke

Source: Stansberry Research

[Maddy]

Just wait till they turn 40 and their eyesight starts failing. And they can't remember what button to push for what.

[Kriegsspiel]

When these kids turn 40 they'll just inject nanobots into their eyeball and they'll fix everything. Of course, at that point they'll have uploaded their souls into little robots that will be pulling apart Mercury and Pluto in order to add them to the Matrioska Brain.

[MachineGhost]

When these kids turn 40 they'll just inject nanobots into their eyeball and they'll fix everything. Of course, at that point they'll have uploaded their souls into little robots that will be pulling apart Mercury and Pluto in order to add them to the Matrioska Brain.

I intend to do that first long before them! I thank my lucky stars I'm not a Baby Boomer but right under them. Catbird seat.