WordPress.com



Tom PriceCOMMUNICATING WITH THE CULTURE OF THE iGENERATIONedited version of a talk given at the TISCA London meeting 9 June 2015-4508520891500The term iGeneration (which I shall use synonymously with Generation Z) comes from Larry Rosen, who in 2010 wrote a book called “Re-wired: Understanding The iGeneration And The Way They Learn”. Here is a paragraph from that book:So what is the problem? They hate school. Why? Education has not caught up with this new generation of tech-savvy children and teens. It is not that they don’t want to learn. They just learn differently…. Their minds have changed: they have been “re-wired”. With all the technology that they consume, they need more from education. The educational content is not the problem. It is the delivery method and the setting. Today’s youth thrive on multimedia, multitasking, social environments for every aspect of their lives except education.In what follows I shall open up this theme. I want to point out how radical Rosen’s proposal is, although I do not buy into it unreservedly myself. He says you cannot go forward with a technological monasticism: you must fully embrace the educational implications of technology. I shall be looking at four areas which are of central importance for people from the iGeneration. [Note: in what follows I shall use the abbreviation iGen to mean either the iGeneration or members of it, whom I shall also refer to as “they”]. The approach I follow will include both sociology and missiology. As I ask how we can use the sociological analysis, I am conscious of Acts 17, where Paul carefully studied the culture and went to where the people in Athens were as a starting point, then leading them into God’s purposes for them.Defining termsThe term iGen is used to describe the group born from 1996 till the present. What marks this generation out as different is that they were born connected with the internet. It has always been there for them. They have devices around all the time. iGen are expert multi-taskers, social networkers, the first to rush and adopt any new technology. They seem to be able to jump to the next wave of technology without missing a step. Rosen reports that in his interviews with parents of iGen, parents are worried that their children don’t seem to want to go outside and play. They would rather chat online and play digital games. They are happiest when the phone is buzzing and the computer is flashing with alerts. It alarms parents to see the way their children seem to be cocooned with all this technology in their rooms. On the other hand the parents are confused. Their children are doing well at school. Their grades are improving. They are a generation who can create tech businesses before they even finish their education. They are thinking through their educational career and aspirations. 1) Technology driving change.How is technology driving change? It is always there, always switched on. Some research was done recently on facebook use among 18-34 year olds. For that generation, it was found that 48% of them check facebook before they get out of bed. 57% said they talk to people more online than in real life. 49% said they would answer an electronic message during a meal. For iGen there has been a move away from facebook, but the same usage patterns are being observed in the new social networks and apps they are using: the most important of these include instagram, twitter and snapchat.I interviewed an 11 year old boy in Oxford. He told me that some 12 year old girls in his school are uploading as many as seven selfies to Instagram each day. Because google is always there to ask, some commentators think their ability to retain information is lower than in previous generations. Rosen argues that they are able to do as well while multi-tasking as they can when doing a more narrowly focused study. I am not sure that I agree with Rosen on that, and I wonder if it is partly due to the different expectations of the educational system in the USA where he did his research.5397537401500We also see new types of technology addiction where they cannot withdraw from technology. They must have wifi and a data signal for their phone. If they don’t have it, they start to feel anxious, even to panic. This has led to issues of them being unable to concentrate in school. And yet they are media-creative. They are able to leverage the power of many of these technologies: video, picture and words. They are able to express themselves in coherent and powerful ways. Yet beneath it all there is this question of the beast: are they too naive about the internet? I was speaking to a Headmistress of a well-known school a couple of days ago. She said that they are seeing more and more of these duplicitous lives where you have one identity in school and another identity online: sometimes those online identities are dark, troubling. They are also being exposed to all sorts of nasties out there. The internet is not a kind, gentle place, a place for children to play without boundaries. It is a dangerous place. They play happily right next to the traffic. They are only one mouse click away from seeing things that will rob them of their innocence and may even change the trajectories of their emotional lives. There is a time bomb waiting to go off for this generation. As Christians, we have only a limited number of strategies with which to combat the effects of that bomb when it explodes. 2. Selfie discoveryWe could describe iGen as the selfie generation. Taylor Swift, who is seen as an icon of iGen, says “The selfie is the new autograph”. Fans are constantly coming to ask for a photo with her. Pictured is Zoella. She is a vlogger (a video-blogger). These vloggers have extraordinary followings. Zoella boasts over 8 million subscribers. She just has to post a video and 2 million people will watch it within a week. It is mostly centred around hair and beauty advice, the outward appearance of a person. The only authentic way to function is through a kind of individualistic self-actualisation. That is a dogma that comes over and over again: “Just be yourself, be who you are”. The question is: can you feed the beast without being eaten? Can you go down that road of playing with narcissistic individualism without getting consumed by it? I wonder whether these vloggers are playing with fire and it is beginning to consume them. There is a huge degree of emotional literacy and vulnerability in the way they talk to each other. They see real value in vulnerability. Vulnerability is a kind of test of orthodoxy for iGen. They want to see how it is. That presents great opportunities for connection with the gospel. The gospel presents hope for people out of narcissistic individualism and out of self-deification.Some have expressed concern that iGen are not engaging face-to-face. But they use technology in such an interactive way (skype conversations, simultaneous texting etc.) that they seem to be developing quite a high degree of emotional literacy. Selfies and instagram are the new medium of communication. They are thinking about their future work and careers. Appearance has become the new identity: you can post your instagram picture, drawing your sense of identity from how you polish it with an app before you complete the post. How many people like it will give you a sense of self-esteem. There is the reality of digital narcissism and echo boarding, where the people who will follow you on twitter are self-selecting. With the social media choices they have made, unlike with facebook, they will choose what they see, and they choose followers who will affirm their own perceptions. So when you ask them about an area of philosophy, or of faith and life, they may respond with a simplistic meme which they think is satisfactory because they have had so much reassurance from the echo board echoing their own voice back to them when they have reiterated these things.They prize honesty and vulnerability. They will trust that over much else. This is one of the reasons why Zoella is so hugely popular. Her camera style is straight, looking into the face, engaged all the time, the direct look. You can easily sample her videos on You Tube. Most of the videos are upbeat, although she made one particular video recently which is unusual because of the fear and anxiety she expressed: “There are demons, and sometimes they become too much for me”. -6604047625003. Global citizens Because they are connected, they jump straight from the individual level, bypassing the community level, to a global level. That is part of the reason why we have problems with radicalisation. They have an international vision which is refreshing. They don’t have this intermediate bit of the community and, interestingly enough, that is the bit that the church is good at. The church is good at the community, the small group, the family – in between the individual and the global. So there is a real danger that the church has vacated the areas where iGen is to be found. There is a fear about the future. Global events shape individual personalities. iGen has seen economic instability, wars in the middle east, all sorts of intractable conflict. Some have even seen shootouts in their own schools. They have seen unpredictable, dangerous behaviour. So they are fearful about the world. Zoella is a case in point. She has a huge voice and is well listened to. Yet, aware of the danger of playing with image, she is very fearful: she will not leave the house. She has bought herself a luxury holiday home in Brighton and yet she rarely ventures out.5159375-696214000Often integrity is questioned. They do not know if they can trust friends or leaders or those with whom they are in relationship. Two sets of films are good at summarising the fears and aspirations of this generation: 1) The Hunger Games series; 2) The Divergent series. They are gripping yarns when you read them, although I am not sure of their literary quality. In the Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss Everdeen is a character who is born into an oppressive, dangerous world. She is under the oppression of the Capitol. She emerges as a reluctant freedom fighter. Friendship is weaponised. You don’t know whom to trust. You don’t know who is on the Capitol side, who is on the rebel side. It is well worth reading the books by Suzanne Collins or watching the movies to get an insight into the type of hero that is emerging in the kind of literature and film that appeals to iGen. Katniss does appeal to them: she is a strong, heroic female character, committed to the truth and willing to make hard moral choices.4. Philosophy/ideas/aspirationsThey have a deep desire for structure and order. This partly comes from their parents and the way they have been parented. They like to have systems, looking for a way out of their narcissism and individualism. There is an underlying scientific confidence. Because of their love of technology (and it is almost a worshipful kind of adoration), they acknowledge anything coming from science as a real benefit for humankind. Faced with challenges like the fears they have about the world, fear of human nature, fear of death, they would put their trust in a scientific or technological solution, because technology has already given them so much and they are so thankful for it. The name for the significant emerging philosophy which underpins these ideas and aspirations is trans-humanism. It is probably going to be the major philosophy for the next 300-400 years. It raises questions about who we are as human beings. Can we make modifications? Can we make ourselves more intelligent? Can we have wifi chips in our brains? These will be the questions to which the church will have to respond. I fear the church has withdrawn from some of the philosophical discussions we are having in society: and yet we have at this moment an opportunity to engage in this area with a subject that is breaking. A significant conference in Oxford last year looked at human modification. There is a philosopher named Nick Bostrom,?the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute?at Oxford University and author of “Superintelligence”. He is advocating the use of technology in advancing human beings. 267970024568150015240-55880000They believe the universe is cold and mechanistic. That means that everything (including culture, how you present yourself) is fundamentally trivial. They therefore move to striving for existential fulfilment (how can I get people to like the way I look?). We have seen how a society can buy in to a metaphysical world or cosmos that is just cold with no love behind it: that has an effect on people’s view of purpose, significance and identity. That is part of what they are wrestling with. A question that will become ever more acute is this: what does it mean to be human?Five big questions that we see being raised in cinema and TV.1. Can we know the truth? Who is good, who is bad? Who can be trusted? This is behind the massive rise in detective and related fiction, film and TV (Sherlock, Morse, CSI, House). What tools should we use to find reality and truth? 2. What is right? There are all these blurred grades. Biotechnology is driving us into this situation where we have to respond to ethical dilemmas before we have a chance to catch our breath. iGen are going to be more and more in this dilemma about beginning and end of life issues and body modifications.3. How can you keep love? They love love because they are human and emotional. One of the reasons why I was so transformed by discovering Jesus at university was the answer to this question. It is about the structure and reality of God’s love for us. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to connect with a question that they are really asking.4. What is wrong with us? What is wrong with human nature? Why do I have all this fear about the world? What is wrong with people and how can we get through?5. What is worth living for? Is there something I can believe in or is it all purposeless? Where should I go? What should I do?Tom Price is an academic tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, working with RZIM. [Quote bubble] What do you think?-6358636000“We live in a random universe and you're living a meaningless life, and everything you create in your life or do is going to vanish, and the Earth will vanish and the sun will burn out and the universe will be gone”. - Woody Allen 0190500 “The nature of Christian ethics is determined by the fact that Christian convictions take the form of story, or perhaps better, a set of stories that constitute a tradition, which in turns creates and forms a community. Christian ethics does not begin by emphasizing rules or principles, but by calling our attention to a narrative that tells of God’s dealing with creation.” – Stanley Hauerwas ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download