An older Millennial feels… well, old

May 7, 2010

I’m one of the oldest of the Millennials, a generation characterized by our comfort and proficiency with computers and the Internet. And while I’m one of the oldest, my dad’s something of a computer nerd, so I grew up with a computer in the house and my dad introduced me to things like programming and BBSes and the DOS shell from an early age. I liked science and math and computers so I kept working with them, spending a lot of time on the Internet in middle school and taking elective science classes in high school. In college I majored in math and got a minor in computer science (and minors in religious studies and English, too, just to round things out) and now I continue to do Internetty things like blogging.

A few weeks ago my supervisor in interlibrary loan was telling me about how ILL worked before the department had computers and Internet access: they relied on print-based lists of what each library had and requests had to be sent out via the postal service. While I could intellectually understand the process, I couldn’t really emotionally comprehend how work and research would have been like then. I think that my familiarity with computers and basically not knowing about a world before the Internet has led to me scoffing at things like MARC records because I know that computers now can handle things like extraneous whitespace and keyword searching–and I want to see that reflected in our technology and standards. I’m not content to just see how far we’ve come; I want library technology and standards to feel current.

But I am one of the oldest of the Millennials and for the first time I’m starting to feel it. A few weeks ago the Pew Research Center published a report on teens and cell phones; one of the findings was that texting was the primary mode of communication teens use. While I, too, am a daily texter, I also rely heavily on email–something only 11% of teens use on a daily basis. Previous research has also found that teens don’t really use Twitter (just 8%, even fewer than use email on a daily basis), but Twitter is one of my top tools. So for the first time in my life I’m starting to feel like I’m old–or at least, older than the age group that I need to be interested in. And I’m only 25! I’m finally starting to understand what it’s like to look at teens and not really get it. And I finally can’t depend on my own experience to understand my patrons.

People who are 15 now are the youngest of the Millennials (depending on how you define the generational cut-offs, I guess). While the Millennials are just now starting to enter the workforce and be grownups and shape the world, we have a whole new generation that’s been even more immersed in technology growing up (I didn’t get a smartphone until I was 24–but the well-off among this emerging generation will practically start out on smartphones) who will be entering our libraries and schools soon. And they’ll be even more different than the younger people of my generation, who are already beginning to seem distant and different. (For a little fun, take the Pew Research Center’s “How Millennial Are You?” quiz. I got a 95, so I guess I’m safe for now!)

I’m going to need to develop new coping strategies to keep in touch with teen culture and to stay on top of emerging trends. I can’t just rely on myself and my peers and my cousins anymore, seeing myself in my teen patrons–and that’s new for me. I’m sure that once I’m working regularly with teens, especially if my future library has a Teen Advisory Board, I can use my patrons themselves to know what’s going on in their lives, but I’m also going to understand those lives as being more and more different from my own. I guess I’m finally starting to feel like a grownup now.

Further reading: “Disconnects Between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values” at EDUCASE Quarterly (from 2006).

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Tags: millennials, pew reports, social networking, teen services