People Persons

Anti-social or just getting more picky? Baby boomers are less socially engaged than people the same age 20 years ago according to a Stanford Center on Longevity study. How do you define social engagement you might be asking? The Center defined it as something measured by involvement with family, friends, neighbors, spouses, as well as work, volunteer or community activities.

Are we deliberately pulling back on social commitments or is it due to lack of time or other pressures. Baby boomers are the sandwich generation after all, and they may be caring for elderly parents while their children may still live under their roof. The need to continue working for financial considerations is also a factor. Boomers have also moved frequently during their careers and that has limited longer-term interpersonal relations.

I recently had a discussion where a group of baby boomers agreed that while face to face socialization and bonding over common interests might be desirable, the same connection via the internet might be more satisfying and even more efficient. A hypothetical group of stamp collectors might dislike each other’s politics if they met in person, but the internet interaction helps to keep the focus on stamps. So even polarization has been a factor in discouraging more face to face interactions.

Texting and email have definitely made it easier to stay in touch with “your people.” Is that a bad thing? I don’t believe it is, but some of the Stanford researchers are concerned about what’s lost when boomers back away from meaningful engagement. Keeping to ourselves may not be good for our communities that need volunteers, mentors and civic minded participants.

I don’t foresee boomers becoming so isolated that their communities suffer as a good percentage of them will continue to be socially engaged. We may be trying to find that happy medium where we maintain quality real time people interactions along with social media interactions. Bottom line, it’s too soon to label boomers and people who don’t need people. In fact, we need people more than ever but we’re redefining how we maintain those relationships.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, Head Above Water which can be purchased on Amazon here. You can also visit his author page here.

C U LTR

PRW TTYL.

“Parents are watching. Talk to you later.” There – that wasn’t so hard was it.

Does the text generation think we are so brain dead that we can’t figure out texting short-cuts? For crying out loud (4COL), we can be educated. We can use the Google to figure it out like W does. Did you know that 9 also means parent is watching and 99 means parent is no longer watching? URSAI (you are such an idiot).

We’ve gone from emoticons – those idiotic smiley face iterations that contribute nothing useful to our civilization – to cryptologic letter sequences that defy solution. And for what? So we can type fewer letters. The real barrier to boomers being able to text like their children is that we don’t have elf-sized thumbs. GMAB (give me a break)!

Before there was texting, we were best friends (BF) and maybe even BFF (best friends forever). Now, we are such good friends we can’t talk to each other in person or on the phone, because texting is such a superior form of communication? ISH (insert sarcasm here).

Now your kids and their friends text each in the backseat of the car so that you can’t eavesdrop on their conversations. All you hear is thumb clicking and iPod overflow from their earbuds. HWIT (how weird is that). In the interest of truth in texting, I just made that last one up. Turns out that all they are saying half the time is WAYD (what are you doing) and the other person says IDK WAYD (I don’t know, what are you doing).

Sadder still are the parents who try to keep up with their kids by trying to text them. It’s just pitiful to see them punching away at the tiny keys because they don’t know enough short-cuts. Writer Adam Gopnik relates in Through the Children's Gate that he thought LOL meant lots of love, and his adolescent son humored him for a long time until he told him that it meant laughing out loud. At least now they both have agreed to use it for lots of love. It’s a lot like telling your parents to stop yelling, BECAUSE THEY’RE TYPING EVERYTHING IN CAPS.

@TEOTD (at the end of the day), I’m waiting for speech recognition to become so efficient that I can speak to my cellphone and it will transcribe it and send the message for me. Better still, what if reads my mind and sends that message. OST (on second thought….made that one up too), maybe it’s better if what goes through my mind doesn’t get out there.

B4N (bye for now).

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.