- In the 1950s – the outsiders
- In the 1960s – the hippies
- In the 1970s – the hangover
- In the 1980s – the punks
- In the 1990s – generation X
- In the new millennium we have the age of empowerment
As a society, we’ve always had ‘the younger generation’ that bucked the status quo. In every decade we’ve heard how people will rise up and change the world. The difference between then and now is youth has a voice- the Internet.
The spin in favor of Google began today- it’s not big brother, it’s little brother peering in on you. With Google & the Internet, you can do and say almost anything with little fear of being silenced- there isn’t much the status quo can do about it. What I find most interesting is that I believe the status quo is actually listening to its younger generation, maybe for the first time ever. The simple fact is- the younger generation is dictating how major corporations operate, speak, walk, talk, look, and even profit in some cases.
When I joined Facebook two weeks ago, it told me what I already knew- folks in my hometown in the midwest have no Internet presence. My friends from school do not exist, and I’m onlya younger thirty-something. Their family businesses have no web address- it is as if my generation has vanished. For reasons I can only guess, my peers are still either on the fence, or afraid of the Internet and have yet to be brought into this so-called ‘age of empowerment.’ The proof is there for all to see, when I searched Facebook, I didn’t see my old high school sweetheart, I saw her children, when I searched for my best friend from high school, I saw his son, when I searched my family, I found my younger brothers- not my parents.
This new reality goes far beyond the walls of real estate, and it is profound. Anyone who says we’ve seen this before is dismissing the voice our younger generation has- they’re even stars in their own universe now crossing over into our universe, or are we crossing into theirs? The question really becomes, how far will we ‘the elder generation’ go in bending to the demands to the empowered generation? How far do we flex to the so-called ’empowering professionals’ like Zillow, Redfin, and others who believe that by simply waiting out the mainstream, providing the medium, this new generation will meet them in the middle. We as a society are being twisted and contorted into something different- something we’ve never seen before…
No company or person has written the book on the social generation, in fact, it’s being written before our very eyes. How we as professionals and regular people design the next generation is up to each of us individually. Any company that believes they have the fix on how to proceed in this new era is blinded by themselves and may well be the ones who ultimately fail in meeting this generation in the middle. It stands to reason that standing still and observing may very well be the best advice for those looking for the way forward- or you could find yourself diving head first into the history books with other failed cultures of the past.
