Boomers: Just Do It
Gen Xers: Why Do It?
Millennials: Just Did It
We Boomers have ruled to roost since the '60s. For 40 years, style, fashion, products, politics have been Boomer led. Youth culture in the '60s; sexual revolution in the '70s; 'greed is good' in the '80s; and Soccer Moms in the '90s. Yet MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Skype are not Boomer phenomenon. Boomers are in power in venture capital, technology, media; and for many years have reaped benefits of marketing to themselves. Now they must market to their kids. Do they see this? Has the mantle been passed to a new generation?
The Millennials are the Boomer Babies. Their generation starts in 1981 with the Reagan Revolution (and Baby On Board stickers on Boomer cars). It ends around 9/11. They were a generation coddled, the first generation to have a home PC, a cellphone while still in school, a Nintendo, and an iPod for Xmas. They grew up with digital toys and have taken to them. The Internet is their medium. They are great multitaskers. You see them with multiple IM dialogs open, music playing, and *maybe* schoolwork, all on their PC. The TV is often on nearby as well. To Boomers they appear ADD - to Millennials it is an adaptation to the info flux.
They are quite different than Xers. Gen X grew up with Vietnam, Watergate, Oil Crisis, Jimmy Carter. They are understandably cynical of authority. They are familiar with technology, and quick to discard it if it takes to much effort to learn. Their time in the generational spotlight sun was all too short - they have the misfortune of being stuck between the prolifically effervescent Boomers and the up and coming Millennials. They are the middle child of generations.
A Millennial has no time for deep thought - too much going on! - so lives with bumper stickers and ad slogans. Here is how to explain the generation differences to Millennials:
Boomers: Just Do It
Gen Xers: Why Do It?
Millennials: Just Did It
Boomers learned email. Xers took to email. Millennials use IM. Email is for teachers and parents.
Millennials are civic-minded, team-players, conformists. They listen to authority. They work well in hierarchies. They respect their parents! But keep their secret digital life to themselves. At college they sleep in much later than Xers, and haunt the night hours, but when they enter the workforce, the re-orient their patterns and get to work on time. They are more cautious about sex, avoid drugs, but drink way too much. Their tastes are more conventional.
We can extrapolate how Millennials will develop by looking at generational patterns going back hundreds of years. Much has been written on this, and it is on the web. A glance at Wikipedia shows it is an area of high disagreement - about the names of generations, when they started/stopped, and so forth. But a consistent pattern emerges from the minutia of academic wrangling. The current generations exemplify the pattern:
GI - civic minded. Lived through the
Depression, fought the war. 82+
Silent - adaptive. Coasted on the
GI Gen success. Gray flannel. Good #2's. 62-82
Boomer - idealistic. crusaders.
moralistic. Spiritual awakening. Age of Aquarius. 42-62
Gen X - reactive. cynical.
risk-taking. Worried the good times will end. 25-42
Millennial - civic minded. Will live
through the disaster the Boomers create. 5-25
These generations go back in the same pattern for many cycles. Before the GI Generation was a Lost generation much like the Xers - an inter-war generation (WWI - WWII) who lost it all in the Great Depression. Before them was a missionary generation sometimes called Progressives and sometimes Missionary, that drove the Progressive Era at the turn of the century. They were like the Boomers - idealistic, moralistic, crusading. Where the Boomers fought tobacco, the Progressives fought Alcohol, just as much earlier the Transcendental Generation fought slavery. The pattern can be simplified as:
War - lived through a disaster and
won the good fight: Revolution, Civil War, WWII
Silent - quietly ran the institutions
rebuilt by the War Generation
Idealistic - grew up in good times with a
spiritual awakening that drove them to crusade
Lost - grew up in the mess created by the Idealists and doubted for their future.
The Millennials therefore are likely to grow up like the Boomer parents. Civic minded, focused on rebuilding the fallen infrastructure left to them. Cleaner water, air. Will want to stop Global Warming but for practical reasons. Will rebuild international institutions that are fraying under the current Boomer crusade against people who do not share their ideals. Will view their community as stretching across the Internet to other cultures. Are very comfortable with diverse, multi-cultural workplaces. Will use their digital tools in work and play, not seeing a barrier between them. Are comfortable with hierarchy and structure. Behave as rationale problem-solvers. Will likely have large families again. Declining interest in religion except as a community institution. Very outward focused, it is not about the inner-me.
The key message is that the mantle has been passed in the Internet Age to the Millennials. They will drive markets for Internet-connected products, not the Boomers. The Boomers will grow increasing conservative as they age, and drive focus on health and activity products that prolong their illusion of youth. For venture firms, technology firms and media conglomerates, look to the Millennials.
