The World According to Y

Inside the New Adult Generation

By Rebecca Huntley

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2006 Rebecca Huntley
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74114-845-9

Contents

Acknowledgments,
1: From X to Y,
2: Chicks before dicks, bros before 'hos,
3: Germaine Greer has left the Big Brother house,
4: Mr Right or Mr Right Now?,
5: Maybe forever,
6: A job for life,
7: The world is a fucked-up place,
8: It's painful to be sexy,
9: We decide what's cool,
10: The searching thing,
11: The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades,
Endnotes,

CHAPTER 1

From X to Y

The kids have got their own thing going. Good. 'The edge' is over.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND, AUTHOR OF GENERATION X

Each generation is a new people.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

ON SEPTEMBER 11 2001, I was sitting in my living room, having just returned from the first session of a fear of flying course I was doing. The latest episode of The West Wing was suddenly disrupted by a news flash about a plane ploughing into the Twin Towers on a bright New York morning. My family sat glued to the TV in horror and disbelief for the next five hours. The temperature of the world seemed to change overnight and 'terrorism' became a priority issue in remote and sheltered Australia.

As disturbing as September 11 was for every person who watched it happen on TV, for older generations this wasn't the first vision of mass destruction they have witnessed that shaped their worldview in profound and lasting ways. The GI and Silent generations have their images of the Holocaust and Hiroshima. The Boomers remember napalm bombings in Vietnam. Generation X, of which I am a younger member, grew up familiar with sepia-toned mushroom clouds and the threat of nuclear extinction in fifteen minutes flat. Those Grim Reaper ads on TV caused us all to fear a sexual black plague brought on by the spread of AIDS. But for members of Generation Y — commonly defined as young men and women born in or after 19821 — September 11 was the most dramatic global event of their lives so far.

Generation Y reacted to September 11 in a way that says a lot about Yers, their present attitudes and future direction. Most of them have only known a peaceful world, a world of quick and effortless techno-wars that are always won by America and her allies. They have only known a prosperous world, where the Dow Jones keeps going up and people only get wealthier. They were born and raised in a global society where consumerism and capitalism are natural conditions and go largely unchallenged. To them, technology is their natural ally, a necessity rather than a luxury, the solution to all imaginable problems.

September 11 was an event that threatened this new generation's sense of peace and prosperity. Monuments of corporate power were destroyed in a country whose economic and military dominance is practically unassailable. All the advanced technology in the world couldn't stop it from happening (although it ensured we got to watch it unfold live to air). The confidence of this rising generation of young men and women could have been fatally undermined by this event — but wasn't. September 11 did little to dampen the spirits of American youth, for example. A Harris Interactive Poll conducted one year after the attacks showed that American students remained optimistic about reaching future goals and did not have increased fears of a personal experience with terrorism. Many wanted to get on with their lives and not 'linger in the shadows of S 11'. Drake Bennett, in his article on volunteerism, found that instead of cowing them, the attacks provoked 'a general sense of solidarity and national duty' amongst young Americans.

Young Australians share the sentiments of their American contemporaries. Yes, there are parts of the world that are no-go zones due to terrorism (an annoying thought for a generation of compulsive travellers), but Generation Y's belief in its future possibilities and sense of personal freedom hasn't been curtailed in any serious way by the terrorist attacks in America, or indeed by those that occurred closer to home in Bali. Even the 2006 London bombings (in which both the perpetrators and victims were predominantly young people) seemed to have concerned but not panicked this emerging generation of young adults. Generation Y accepts, almost matter of factly, that living in today's world means you have to live with uncertainty.

In their study of wellbeing after September 11, researchers from the Australian Centre on Quality of Life found that younger people, especially young men, were less likely to say they were affected by September 11 than older people. My own conversations with young people suggest a similar conclusion. Steve, a young law student recently back from trekking around South America, doesn't feel as if events like Bali and S 11 affected him 'one bit'. He says, 'It affected the way I see world politics but not the way I think or view other people.' Laura, a young journalist, shares that view. September 11 didn't undermine her sense of security or wellbeing or stop her from travelling to Europe. Kirsten Hagon, Australia's Youth Representative to the United Nations in 2001, was in New York when the planes hit the World Trade Center. Did her priorities change? 'Not really,' she stated, in a report on her UN trip. For Kirsten, September 11 was a reason for action and hope rather than inaction and fear. She believes only her generation's commitment to removing poverty and intolerance will ensure international peace and security and a world where events like S 11 don't happen again.

I still think young people have the passion and the optimism and the desire to make a difference. The more we are able to participate today, the sooner we can start helping to solve the problems which plague our world and work for a better tomorrow.

In Australia, Generation Y's anger around S 11 was less about the event itself than the reaction of the United States government and its allies. Many young adults have reacted negatively to the media hype around the tragedy and the relentless and insensitive use of images of death and destruction to sell papers and increase TV ratings. And whilst this was Generation Y's first exposure to international terrorism on a grand scale, most Yers were aware that in so many other places around the world this kind of stuff happens all the time. For many of them, September 11 intensified their desire to enjoy life right now.

So it seems that even the most audacious and terrifying acts of public violence can't dent the ambition and optimism of what demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss call 'the Next Great Generation'.

Fast forward from September 11, 2001 to the beginning of 2003. I decided to return to casual university teaching, this time tutoring 18-year-olds in culture and communications at a regional university. Since I started teaching nearly a decade ago, I have run courses on everything from constitutional law to film studies. Every year my students seemed to get younger and younger. But suddenly in 2003, the gap between us felt like an abyss. These young people are something else. The differences relate not just to the music they listen to or the clothes they wear. The more striking differences are in terms of their basic attitudes and expectations about a whole range of issues — sex, marriage, friendship, family, politics, work, technology and the future. This is a generation with a...