Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 October 2006 09:23:17
Making Sense of Generation Y seems to have had the admirable aim of trying to make sense of the experience of a majority of "included youth" (i.e. middle class/ educated) within the 15-25 age group who make up the beginning of the generation which was born from 1981 onwards. Within this they made the assumption that most were involved in clubbing as a leisure experience, however as they acknowledge at the end of the book this may have been a mistake, as the market for this had matured and pretty much faded by the time they had finished writing up their research.
To me this illustrates a key issue with this type of research, it seeks to too easily and broadly define what a generation is. Clubbing as an example was something that actually bridged the second half of what they described as Gen X and beginning of what is described as Gen Y and is infact something that actually embraces what, for want of a better term, could be called "The Ibiza Generation" who were born between approx 1974 and 1986.
I think that this is important because the nature of the change which occured at the end of the 21st century means that I think traditional generational boundaries become difficult with these age groups. Unlike their older brothers and sisters the "Ibiza Generation" X'ers grew up with microwaves, CD's, VCRs and home computers as standard and so do not have the "issues" that other X'ers have and so have more in common with early Y'ers than anybody else as both were born after the microchip but just before the internet. I think because of the nature of their experience, which is very different to the rest of Gen X or Gen Y - they should be treated as a seperate generation in their own right.
The next generation ("The Wi-fi generation"?) should start in approx 1987, simply because these are the people who have gone through their whole lives with mobile phones, multi-channel tv, the internet and gaming as standard. Those students entering 6th form this year (born 89/90) were the first group to be born into a world with the internet.
As such I believe that this study is useful in understanding the experience of the "Ibiza generation" more than others and as they say much more research will be needed into the rest of what they will call Gen Y. Perhaps we should stop talking of generations in terms of historical time scales, but rather turn to looking at them in terms of technological time scales?
Getting back to the study, it also imposes certain views on fashion which do not even include those who it is seeking to embrace. In addition to the type of clubs it had identified indie and rock style clubs had also started to grow & so whilst it is true that clubbing was an activity that most young people were involved in they had actually taken a certain definition of clubbing & so through their use of certain music (that a DJ had recommended, which were good choices for those in to the dance culture) excluded alot of people. They acknowledge this to an extent in the book, but only in terms of saying they hadn't conducted research amongst Goths (which may have given them a greater insight into some other issues). To me this shows that they were making simplistic divisions which could not be applied to that time. Grungers were a major part of the sub-cultural landscape of the time and a major part of the age and class group that they were looking at, yet they were not included. Therefore there are questions to be asked of the sample looked at and the assumptions made by the (one assumes late Boomers or early X'ers who planned the research).
That said I think their main conclusion that Gen Y & what I have called "The Ibiza Generation" live by a "happy midi-narrative" that infact hides a darker experience of life and that this group is basically completely unchurched and without the religious literacy of previous generations is correct. I think alot of the conclusions they come to regarding the purpose of "clubbing" in the dance culture can be carried over to into different genres aswell.