The iGen

Welcome to the iGen (added more)

(FYI.. this is a work in progress, i am not done with this yet, i just wanted to share what i have thus far)






We have grown up with the tagline of the electronic age, the Millennials, the Internet generation (iGen), Nintendo generation, yet in the early years our attention spans were not being held hostage by electronics as they are now. We've witnessed the birth of the internet in 1992, which as much of a positive impact it's had on the world, the rise of the internet, has been perhaps the greatest technological set back to human communication skills. Since the beginning of man humans have developed and evolved with the changing culture. Nations developed their own languages, children were raised with an understanding of some form of written and oral communication, the brains were engrained to appreciate the beauty of the written/oral language and the diversity of syntax, grammar, consistency, and clarity importance to know foreign languages. Today, we seem to be traveling back in time on a downward spiral, to an era where "phrases" are abbreviated (now becoming a weird form of mnemonics) let alone truncated to a language of illiterate jumble of numbers and consonants, the art of using beautiful expressive language now one has to delve/ decipher the mumble of dashes- ascii/- emodicons. There was a time when people did not have the "luxury" of spell check, and if they made an error, your only options were whiteout or redo that page, a time when people actually learned how to spell and use proper grammar. There was a time were you had to write your own essays and term papers they did not have sites (no internet) to purchase prewritten papers, or a time when Spark Notes was used as a study helper instead of being used in place of reading the actual book.


I am such a kid at heart. Sure I made have a blurred vision of how things where in the past, when I was younger, things may not be that dramatically different from how it was in my youth generation to how things are now. TV shows and Movies these days are horrendous (okay there are some decent ones out there, but they seem to be a diamond in the rough. We used to embrace the outdoors. Remember climbing any and all trees and building make-shift tree houses? Or how about building forts in people's backyards or in random fields creating secret hide-outs with your best friends, yet to create it sometimes you have to become adventurous by bushwhacking your way through the roses and thorny plants but in the end your battle scars were made victorious but how amazing your fort was? All the fun times spent creating forts and fortresses in your homes using blankets, sheets, towels, pillows and whatever else we could get our hands on/think of in the attempt to build the best fortress ever. I remember in my youth, though I still do this now, when I loved to get lost in the midnight stars, just laying in the fields or my driveway looking up trying to find shapes and play connect the dots with the twinkling stars. Looking up and being able to see for what seemed forever, realizing how small we all actually are, but how beautiful it all is. Even during the daytime relaxing and sitting with friends trying to find shapes of animals, flowers, etc in the pillow like clouds. During the rain, we'd run outside and play in the puddles, or in the neighborhood park, we didn't care about getting down and dirty (perverts.. I'm not talking sexually here I mean like literally falling down in the mud), we loved getting soaking wet then drink hot cocoa by the fire place. Okay okay I'll admit all of this today, and it's amazingly fun. Yet sadly people these days have lost interest with the little things life has to offer.


Whatever happened to the good old days? Think back to how things were around 10 to 15 years ago; remember the types movies we grew up on and the television shows we watched? the lifestyle that we (the majority) of us led? A time when people actually used land line phones to call up our friends for homework help our to see if they wanted to play, an era in which the majority of telephones still had cords, it's shocking I know, yes we once did not have the freedom to walk and talk, hah We actually hand-wrote letters/cards to our friends, family, pin-pals. etc, and got excited/giddy every time we received one in the mail (snail mail).

We grew up spending hours on end running/playing around outdoors, playing with friends from the split second the school bell rang to mark the end of the day in elementary school up until the dusk, even then we pleased with our parents to let finish whatever we we're doing or we would race home to catch re-runs of our favorite television shows (remember TGIF? or even god ol' Nick? or when MTV was music television?). We grew up with a daily unstructured outdoor playtime, where girls and boys spent long afternoons playing basketball, hopscotch, jump roping, hula-hoping, skip-its, and a time where you didn't care if you got all bruised, dirty cut up while playing games (or maybe that was just me?), kids went on random outdoor adventures, sure some of if was make believe trips, but at least we were having fun and stimulating our minds. Children spent hours on end bike riding for fun (now less than 36% of kids bike); the glorious games of red-rover-red-rover, freeze tag, 4-square, tetherball, handball, dodge ball, and many more were an almost daily activity, it seems as though our time after school hours was consumed with the outdoors, we in a way getting exercise but never once seemed to look at it that way, since we were laughing and smiling the whole way through.

We grew up in a time when kids cared more about owning the best slammer so we could dominate at pogs and play for keeps; remember not wanting to play your favorite pogs because you didn't want to give it up/ if you played for keeps and you lost you'd try to convince the others that you never agreed to play keep-sies; some of us (myself included) would read comic books then precede to trade with your friends books for the week. We spent time getting lost in as well as the steady decline in youth spending time in museums, zoos, parks and playgrounds (I still love doing this, though), a time when we thought it was a treat and something special to go to out to the movies. We seemed to not be over consumed with technology, half of our lives we did things now considered the "old fashioned way"

If you think about it, we are probably the last generation to see/use laser disc, 35 mm film (or any size print frame) or Polaroids; let alone vinyl records (12in, 10in, 7in) or even 8 tracks, VHS tapes, cassette/tape players (remember how annoying it was when the tape came off the spools and became a gigantic mess of tape?), Kids these days are so spoiled, what with their entire networks of cartoons showing them all day long, remember waking up extra early on Saturday and Sunday morning just to catch your favorite cartoons, and how cartoons (minus magic school bus and a few others) only ran on the weekends? It was a time when the movies and TV shows weren't plagued with reality television (kids never wasted away watching other people live their lives, we actually lived our own through our own eyes and experiences). The world was not over obsessed (as we are now) with the lives of those in the media (minus Spice Girls, haha). We actually had shows and movies that all kids could relate to, they were coming of age, some were inspiring, almost all ended with a moral- some shows were even educational! Almost every time you turned on the tube you got something from watching it (as for these days you just lose brain cells from their stupidity), actually had actors/actresses who played their ages. Our imaginations were stimulated thanks in Part to Mr. Rogers or LeVar Burton for creating Reading Rainbow; now imagination is sucked out of children by simple a cathode nipple Most girl wanted to play football, thanks to Ice Box; go on a treasure adventure (Goonies) or become a babysitter at 12 thanks to the BSC! The nightly news, actually was about what was going on in the world and in the states, where as now the top headline story is what actress/ actor is pregnant or going to jail,etc. Honestly who cares?

In the late 80s, early 90s they were fewer grey areas between right and wrong.. Our society has become so permissive that what's wrong today is right tomorrow, our culture cares too much about the image of celebrities, people are too obsessed in the "scandals" of those celebrities and sadly kids are using them as role models. What ever happened to being inspired by someone who actually made a difference/impact in the world? Why is it that kids know more about the lives of the movie stars/singers than they do about the world around them? How did a culture of striving for individualism, intelligence, cultural awareness, deep experience and long inquiry become hijacked by the venal instincts of a single existence of a greedy generation?

We've witness to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, NATO, watched/read about Margaret Thatcher's resign(ation); we also witnessed the break up of the Soviet Union. We're one of millions glued to TV screens during the OJ Simpson Trails; we were alive to feel the racial tensions during the Million Man March, which caused Americans to be more concerned about racial equality than at any time since the 1960s. We've seen radical changes and advancements in science: Dolly was cloned, extra solar planets orbiting stars other than the sun were detected, Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Space, Hal-Bopp showed itself for the first time in over 4,300 years, DNA (blood/fingerprints/saliva..etc) was finally used in court cases/ paternity tests..etc; we discovered/invented genetically engineered food "safe" enough for human consumption - gave the ability to pack food with nutrients. Dark matter and energy, were confirmed to be real/true in their existence .etc, We've experienced and/or have been witness to a decent amount of events in our short lifetime. We were one of the last youth generations that were not that desensitized to murder/death. These days the average kid witnesses over 1500 murders (in which 99% are thanks to television- not real murders) before s/he is twelve years old. Even with the rise of news being accessible 24-7 via internet and t.v. today's average citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago, pre-internet era, pre-CNN, when people read the newspaper daily. People seem to be over consumed with filling their brains with knowledge of celebrities then they are of the world around them; they can name who is sleeping with whom, who is pregnant, who just broke up.. but when asked about What Countries are involved in the Axis of Evil? or name 5 countries in Africa? or even What the President talked about during his State of the Union address on Monday; they are clueless and have no idea. Americans read more tabloids than newspapers. Book reading seems to be a dying past time and now less than 10% of Americans read (books) on a daily basis, and sorry, but those gossip and fashion magazines do not count as true reading.











some interesting information on Reading Rainbow (i found lots more on this but i wont bore you, though i found it interesting:
Based on 141 shows- 585 books were read, the characters featured
66% white (382 books); 39% black (228 books); 22% hispanic (129 books)
17% native american (99 books); 16% asian (92 books); 6% other ethnic characters (33 books); 40% mixed ethnic (235 books); 11% featured those with disabilities (65 books); 38% old (223 books)