"I wanted to hear what someone else in Generation Z had to say about how it feels to go to bed every night and wake up to a world of metal, concrete, and screens." Michaela Pecot
Every generation says that they feel misunderstood by the people ahead of them in age. There is and probably always will be a distance between the current group of young people and the older people that produced them. That is the nature of time and progress.
A lot of technology’s advances occurred during the late 20th century. This is about the same time people of Generation Z, those with birth dates in the late ‘90s (2000s birth dates are also sometimes included) were born. Advancements have not slowed down since then, but sped up. Just look at this device with which you read these words. It is ready at your command to access the web, read this article, and take you just about anywhere you want to go.
But, at the end of the day, all of this rapid advancement can be overwhelming. I talked to one of my long time friends, Somaya Abdullah about this question—something usually not discussed among peers. Somaya is an 18 year old who has lived in California her entire life.
Michaela Pecot: When were you born and when were your parents born? How does this time gap effect your relationship?
Somaya Abdullah: I was born in 1997--Oh my god I don’t know the year. I think 1980 something. I mean my mom is like 41 or 42 and like my dad is like my dad is like-was like the same age as her, maybe younger. My mom is like considered a “young mom”, she had me when she was like 23. They got married when my mom was twenty and my dad was 19.
The fact that she is young has made me able to relate to her more. My mom is really youthful and she calls me dude and we can make inappropriate jokes with each other. But there are some ways, some mentalities she has that are different from mine simply because she was born in a different time.
M: Do older people understand you in general? Do you understand them?
S: That's a hard question. By older, what range?
M: 50s and upward
S: I feel like in a lot of ways, no. Generally, I don’t really feel comfortable talking to them about personal things because I think that a lot of the time they have a lot of different views than me. Even among liberals, often those like fifty and up have more conservative view on things like casual relationships, even like veganism or something.
I guess I don’t--like I understand them in the context of knowing what mentalities were popular at the times when they grew up. In other ways I don’t understand them simply because there is disconnect in our opinions and I am like “why do you think this?”. Like, I literally don’t understand the logic. But I feel like if you have something in common, like whether that's a musical preference or art, there is always a way to connect regardless of age.
M: How do you feel about being this old given the state of our planet and society? Like the political system, how Donald Trump could be the republican nominee. But climate change is also happening. How does it feel to be young right now?
S: Its feels really scary. I kind of wish I was dying at this time. But I would be really concerned about the future of the planet. It's something I have been thinking about recently, like when I hear about people having kids or see people with kids. I think about would want to bring life into the world right now and the answer is no. I’m very glad I'm not a young child or just being brought into the world because
There's just a lot of things, in technology, that are influencing kids to grow up too fast and develop really bad ideas of themselves and their place in the world, especially for young girls. I feel like it's a really crazy time because there's so much injustice being bombarded upon us. There has also been injustice but right now it feels like something we can’t really tackle.
I feel like a useless person. In the past I'd be driving, have a job, but right now there is not really an expectation for that.
M: How often do you use technology? What do you think it offers you? What do you think technology costs you?
S: I use technology so much. I check my phone probably like 100 times a day. It offers me entertainment and also a way to learn. I’ve always been someone who wants to learn more about the world and school is not always the best way for that to happen. But now if I have a question about something I can just research it, look it up. My phone is also a way to communicate with people and make plans.
What does it cost me? It costs me my entire life. It costs me so much of my time. It really just takes away most of my time I could be using for productive things. My attention, definitely. Having ADD and social media is a bad combo. It costs me a lot my self esteem because I see a lot of celebrities that are social media famous. Technology--I don't know, I can’t think right now.
As a person of your identity, whether that be a person-of-color/woman/queer, how do you feel about the concept of advancement? And how as we advance, things are supposed to get better for us, for all parts of our minority identity. What does that mean to you?
Honestly, I feel kind of overwhelmed. I think that all of the forces that contribute to pressure have always been stressors on people’s lives who identify as a minority. I don’t know what it was like during my parent's times, but I do feel like there were more faces of the revolution whether that was like Malcolm X or someone else. Just more artists and activists, but now that's happening everywhere, everywhere constantly and it's a little overwhelming, and not so much because its a unified movement. I mean it kind of is because everyone's participating.
It's just not simple right now, I do not know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean in terms of advancement, there's a lot of good things that have been happening, like gay marriage being legalized as well as laws being put in place to protect women's wages. And Obama being president. It makes me feel good and hopeful if I do have kids, maybe there will be laws protecting them. One thing that is really intense and overwhelming is that all this advancement brings about people who don’t support it, and that's really stressful.
We are labelled as the sensitive generation that needs trigger warnings but it's this bombardment of two different things that's causing this sensitivity. If you are hearing about all this injustice and you are supposed to face all these people who don’t support you, of course you are going to be sensitive.
I wanted to hear what someone else in Generation Z had to say about how it feels to go to bed every night and wake up to a world of metal, concrete, and screens. I used to dream about being born during another decade. As a thirteen year-old, I believed that iPhones were the bane of my existence and that technology has done nothing but separate and divide humankind. I despised being a part of Generation Z. I’ve talked to some of my friends about feeling the same way, wishing to be born in another decade, the 80s or something.
Today I could not say I feel the same way. Today, I also own an iPhone. It has given me a way to see the young people of this day and age. I am more quickly able to see the hopes and fears our young people have for the future, and what they are absorbed in at the current moment. Technology allows more for more exposure. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what people choose to focus on. Like Somaya said, now everyone (speaking relatively, some people do not have access to iPhones) can, in a virtual way, express how they feel about the state of our planet. Whether that be the financial state, political state, or even the spiritual state is up to the user.
A lot of technology’s advances occurred during the late 20th century. This is about the same time people of Generation Z, those with birth dates in the late ‘90s (2000s birth dates are also sometimes included) were born. Advancements have not slowed down since then, but sped up. Just look at this device with which you read these words. It is ready at your command to access the web, read this article, and take you just about anywhere you want to go.
But, at the end of the day, all of this rapid advancement can be overwhelming. I talked to one of my long time friends, Somaya Abdullah about this question—something usually not discussed among peers. Somaya is an 18 year old who has lived in California her entire life.
Michaela Pecot: When were you born and when were your parents born? How does this time gap effect your relationship?
Somaya Abdullah: I was born in 1997--Oh my god I don’t know the year. I think 1980 something. I mean my mom is like 41 or 42 and like my dad is like my dad is like-was like the same age as her, maybe younger. My mom is like considered a “young mom”, she had me when she was like 23. They got married when my mom was twenty and my dad was 19.
The fact that she is young has made me able to relate to her more. My mom is really youthful and she calls me dude and we can make inappropriate jokes with each other. But there are some ways, some mentalities she has that are different from mine simply because she was born in a different time.
M: Do older people understand you in general? Do you understand them?
S: That's a hard question. By older, what range?
M: 50s and upward
S: I feel like in a lot of ways, no. Generally, I don’t really feel comfortable talking to them about personal things because I think that a lot of the time they have a lot of different views than me. Even among liberals, often those like fifty and up have more conservative view on things like casual relationships, even like veganism or something.
I guess I don’t--like I understand them in the context of knowing what mentalities were popular at the times when they grew up. In other ways I don’t understand them simply because there is disconnect in our opinions and I am like “why do you think this?”. Like, I literally don’t understand the logic. But I feel like if you have something in common, like whether that's a musical preference or art, there is always a way to connect regardless of age.
M: How do you feel about being this old given the state of our planet and society? Like the political system, how Donald Trump could be the republican nominee. But climate change is also happening. How does it feel to be young right now?
S: Its feels really scary. I kind of wish I was dying at this time. But I would be really concerned about the future of the planet. It's something I have been thinking about recently, like when I hear about people having kids or see people with kids. I think about would want to bring life into the world right now and the answer is no. I’m very glad I'm not a young child or just being brought into the world because
There's just a lot of things, in technology, that are influencing kids to grow up too fast and develop really bad ideas of themselves and their place in the world, especially for young girls. I feel like it's a really crazy time because there's so much injustice being bombarded upon us. There has also been injustice but right now it feels like something we can’t really tackle.
I feel like a useless person. In the past I'd be driving, have a job, but right now there is not really an expectation for that.
M: How often do you use technology? What do you think it offers you? What do you think technology costs you?
S: I use technology so much. I check my phone probably like 100 times a day. It offers me entertainment and also a way to learn. I’ve always been someone who wants to learn more about the world and school is not always the best way for that to happen. But now if I have a question about something I can just research it, look it up. My phone is also a way to communicate with people and make plans.
What does it cost me? It costs me my entire life. It costs me so much of my time. It really just takes away most of my time I could be using for productive things. My attention, definitely. Having ADD and social media is a bad combo. It costs me a lot my self esteem because I see a lot of celebrities that are social media famous. Technology--I don't know, I can’t think right now.
As a person of your identity, whether that be a person-of-color/woman/queer, how do you feel about the concept of advancement? And how as we advance, things are supposed to get better for us, for all parts of our minority identity. What does that mean to you?
Honestly, I feel kind of overwhelmed. I think that all of the forces that contribute to pressure have always been stressors on people’s lives who identify as a minority. I don’t know what it was like during my parent's times, but I do feel like there were more faces of the revolution whether that was like Malcolm X or someone else. Just more artists and activists, but now that's happening everywhere, everywhere constantly and it's a little overwhelming, and not so much because its a unified movement. I mean it kind of is because everyone's participating.
It's just not simple right now, I do not know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean in terms of advancement, there's a lot of good things that have been happening, like gay marriage being legalized as well as laws being put in place to protect women's wages. And Obama being president. It makes me feel good and hopeful if I do have kids, maybe there will be laws protecting them. One thing that is really intense and overwhelming is that all this advancement brings about people who don’t support it, and that's really stressful.
We are labelled as the sensitive generation that needs trigger warnings but it's this bombardment of two different things that's causing this sensitivity. If you are hearing about all this injustice and you are supposed to face all these people who don’t support you, of course you are going to be sensitive.
I wanted to hear what someone else in Generation Z had to say about how it feels to go to bed every night and wake up to a world of metal, concrete, and screens. I used to dream about being born during another decade. As a thirteen year-old, I believed that iPhones were the bane of my existence and that technology has done nothing but separate and divide humankind. I despised being a part of Generation Z. I’ve talked to some of my friends about feeling the same way, wishing to be born in another decade, the 80s or something.
Today I could not say I feel the same way. Today, I also own an iPhone. It has given me a way to see the young people of this day and age. I am more quickly able to see the hopes and fears our young people have for the future, and what they are absorbed in at the current moment. Technology allows more for more exposure. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what people choose to focus on. Like Somaya said, now everyone (speaking relatively, some people do not have access to iPhones) can, in a virtual way, express how they feel about the state of our planet. Whether that be the financial state, political state, or even the spiritual state is up to the user.
