Brave New Decade

I was born on January 10, 1982, meaning I turned 18 and legally became an American adult almost exactly as the last decade began. As we all shook off the in(s)anity of Y2K I got full legal recognition, the right to vote, and an Army draft card in the mail. I also suddenly faced the immediate prospect of Growing Up. And what, exactly, is an 18-year-old supposed to do with that?

There were, of course, millions of others grappling with the same question at roughly the same time I was, a cohort that was at some point tagged Generation Y in an astute bit of alphabetical sequentialism. It’s a title that I’ve never cared for, both for its lack of imagination and its vagueness, but there is perhaps an accuracy in its uncertainty about what to do with us, as it seems that many of us seldom know what to do with ourselves. To some extent that confusion could fairly describe any generation, but due to a combination of the kind of world we grew up in and the one we’re growing into it feels as if the question mark hanging over our collective heads is a bit larger than it was for those before us.

As if the cusp of adulthood wasn’t enough, we had the great fortune to grapple with it during a decade where seemingly everything that had been understood to be this turned out to be that. Of course times are always tough, and every generation has no shortage of problems to cope with, but, looking back on the events and crises of the 00s, it’s hard to imagine a collection that could have brought more uncertainty or cast more doubt on our assumptions of how the world works.

A brief look back: A U.S. presidential election where paper tabs resulted in a vote decided not by voters but a court; 9/11; the rise of global terrorism; the near destruction of a major American city; two wars involving American and Aussie (and others’) troops, the rationale for which was improvised, malleable, and never sufficient; the ambiguous threats of anthrax, bird flu, swine flu, and SARS; the near total collapse of the global financial system and the bleak economic outlook it’s given our generation; the first signs of global warming’s devastating consequences.

Most of these were either spit-take events – That can happen!? – or borderline Kafkaesque: unknowable as to why they were happening, or even if they would, and that we seemed completely unable to do anything about.

The transition from youth to adulthood is normally a transition from uncertainty to certainty. We make decisions about what we’ll do, where we’ll live, who we’ll love, and who we are. But in the world as revealed by the 00s, that’s even harder to do than it used to be. One of the major traits of Generation Y is that we’ve put off getting married, getting a regular job, buying a house, and the other commonly accepted rites of passage into adulthood longer than the generations before us. Sometimes this is ascribed to immaturity; sometimes to a greater sense of independence, but when everything around us seems to lack guarantees it may, more than anything, simply be a reaction to the world we live in.

So as we step into a new decade, given all this, who are we, and what now?

Generations are never really accurately defined until they’ve been around a while, and we’re still relatively new. But there were of course characteristics declared when the label Y was first given out, and it’s been rather fashionable lately to describe and classify us as we step into the grown-up world. The two most common tags, though, both seem to ring empty to me.

One of the things we keep hearing is that we’re the most tech-savvy generation ever, which is true, but also really no more descriptive than saying we’re the most recent generation. If there had been pundits at the time, and not just hunters and gatherers, I’m sure they would have been saying the same thing about the Wheel Generation’s advances in respect to the Fire Generation.

The other is that we’re terrifically globalized and cosmopolitan. To some extent: also true. My peers and I are on average far more well-traveled than our parents, we listen to music from all over, we’re globavores when it comes to our eating habits, and we’re generally attuned to what’s happening in the world. But when it comes to who’s counted when we think of our generation, we usually think of others in our own country or, at the broadest, our peers in the West. However, over 50% of the population in the Middle East is under the age of 24, not to mention the millions of young Chinese, Indians, etc., but how often do these groups come up in discussions of Gen Y, despite how much you hear about these places’ influence over the coming decades? They will have as much if not more say over what happens in the world in the future as do those of us from Australia, the U.S., or Europe.

And don’t look now, but it’s our generation that really will begin to have that kind of influence in the 2010s. In the coming decade those of us who were some of the earliest members of Gen Y will be hitting our thirties, and some of us will be turning precocious youth into real positions of influence and power. 28% of Australians and Americans are members of Generation Y, and worldwide, more than half of the world’s people are under 30. Before long it will be our peers sitting in boardrooms, getting books reviewed, and holding public office. There’s a little bit of awe and incredulity that accompanies this thought for me, but this should also be a prospect that excites us and that we embrace.

This will happen, too, in a world that seemingly everyone, not just our generation, deems more uncertain than ever. America’s future feels vague, it’s unknown what China’s rise will mean, terrorism remains a threat, global warming a bigger one, and no one thinks this economic slump will be going away anytime soon. That’s a huge mess for us to deal with on top of the equally important issues of figuring out our careers, our friendships, our relationships, and what we want to get out of and contribute to life.

What we need to realize, though, that it’s also an opportunity. Without being too disrespectful to those before us, it feels as if the Baby Boomers and Gen X have fairly botched things. The result is a world that’s undergoing enormous changes exactly at the time that our generation is arriving at the point where we’re capable of shaping and influencing them. We’re equipped with tech skills and a global understanding that generations before us weren’t. Hopefully, too, the capricious world that we’ve grown up in has left us with the adaptability to cope with whatever comes next. What matters most, though, is if we’re equipped with the head, heart, and guts to use these.

We’ve always said that we wanted the chance to change the world. Well, here we go.

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