Generation Gaps

I remember my father lamenting about the Generation Gap when I was a teen-ager. He didn’t understand me, and I certainly didn’t understand him! I vowed that there would never be a generation gap between me and my children, and for the most part I’ve been successful in this effort with my two sons. I recently signed on to “Facebook”, and I am getting an education on how the younger generations (the x’s and y’s) keep up with each other, communicate, and stay connected. And now I am in the mix, and am thoroughly immersed in my new Facebook experience. My sons and I stay in touch with each other, and now with Facebook, I can easily get their attention in a brand new way! I’ve even found Friends who were school buddies of mine, and we are having fun communicating with each other through this new avenue.

One thing really bothers me, however, about some of my young friends who are in one of these two alphabet generation categories.

Yesterday, one of my younger friends commented to me when I saw him in person, “You have to understand, Jennie, that I don’t reply to voice mails.” OK. That really makes a lot of sense to me. I make a phone call, which the recipient doesn’t answer, and I leave a voice mail with the gist of the reason for my call, and request a call-back for a live conversation. That’s the end of it. I don’t get a call-back, I don’t have the opportunity to actually talk to the person I need to contact, and I am left dangling in the air, gazing at my cell phone, wondering what’s going on. This may be a generational thing, but to me it’s just a sign of rudeness. I then attempt an email to the person, in which I briefly explain my need to be in contact, and end with a terse “please let me know.” With a particular young friend, the above mentioned attempts are still unanswered. I give up. I now have a Facebook page, but this person doesn’t have one yet, so I can’t even leave a message on her Wall! Unless I run into her on the street somewhere, I don’t expect to hear from her anytime soon.

I find a similar experience with emails to other people who I need to get in touch with, and get very frustrated with the absence of response to email messages. The least a person could do after receiving a message from me would be a simple “Thanks” or “Got it.” Instead, I hear nothing, and am left wondering if I typed in the correct email address, or if the person I sent it to ever received my message. It could be lost forever in their spam folder for all I know.

I may be an aging Baby Boomer, but one thing my father, who was of an even more archaic generation, taught me was manners. I have made the error of expecting the same from my young friends, and I am left disappointed and questioning of my friendship with some of them. I thought that friendship would transcend the generation gap and the age difference, but I now question that this is possible in some cases. How can a relationship develop when it is completely one-dimensional, flat, and consists of recorded messages which dangle and collect somewhere in cyberspace? Even with Facebook, voice mail, text messaging, and email, I am seeing more clearly that many of the relationships that develop aren’t real. They end up being excuses for actually talking to one another.

I need to call my sons soon and leave them a voice mail message, or maybe I’ll go to Facebook and write on their Walls. One thing I can count on is that they will respond. If I was successful in only one thing in bringing them up, it was teaching them manners, like my Daddy taught me.