A Closed Mind
"If you are not willing to learn, then no one can help you. If you are willing to learn, then no one can stop you." Zig Ziglar
As I age, I have discovered a frightening aspect about my demographic peers - the baby boomers - regarding learning, knowledge, and open mindedness. As a baby boomer, my cohort is now at the edge of retirement. So, many are relaxing and look forward to a stage of life that delivers calmness, relaxation, travel, family time, and peace. But, what appears to be happening in concert with this transition is a collapsing of the world. Not literally, but figuratively anyway.
When I say, collapsing of the world, what I mean is that their lens or view on the world regarding its size and scope of their personal dominion is being greatly reduced. The universe as these folks understand it is changing, it is collapsing and therefore, their appreciation and understanding of the world around them is also morphing into something new. This seems to be a natural transition.
However, this new baby boomer domain is shockingly closed and limited from a social media perspective beyond all logical congruence against the overall transformation. What I am seeing are people who have stopped learning, have grown stagnant in their knowledge, accept myths and unsupported points of contention as basic truths, have ceased to question everything and anything, and stopped exploring new ideas - they have adopted a closed mind. Most pointedly regarding social media acceptance, but perhaps not regarding all topics or interests.
These people are not stupid, nor are they uneducated, but for some odd reason they are choosing to be ignorant, at least regarding social media anyway. They are greatly isolating themselves from their immediate and extended community by resisting adoption of social media. So, what is it? Are they just lazy and unwilling to work at understanding new and different ideas? Learning may be much harder for some compared to others, especially as you age. But, if you do not use your little grey cells, they atrophy. It is essential to continue to be fully engaged in life and be a part of the woven fabric of your community. My contention is that as the extended community moves online, so must you. If you wish to remain engaged in the lives of your children, grandchildren, friends, and colleagues, then social media is where you need to be found. The gap between the users of social media is startling wide based upon generational demographics as can be seen in the graphic below.
Evidence of this closed mindedness is profound when it comes to adoption of social media. Many of my peers grew up in an age without social media and without computers and many of the modern technologies that we all take for granted today. The technology for this generation is television. Therefore, I can only assume that these computerized social media things are foreign and scary to them. Rather than making even the slightest effort to embrace these technologies, they push them away and claim that they pose too big of a risk and offer no intrinsic value to them. Can this be true?
This graphic breaks down the usage by age groups. The smallest slivers are the grey slices, perhaps to symbolize the grey haired people. Sadly, this is my demographic cohort. So, my observations are validated by statistical evidence from these top social media sites.
Instead of becoming digitally literate in social media, they bask in their lack of digital knowledge and ridicule users of social media as mindless and stupid. "All they do is paste pictures of what they ate on Facebook". "Hackers steal your identity on LinkedIn". "I do not need to be on Instagram, it is just about pictures of Kim Kardashian's butt anyway. I do not even know who she is anyway". "Twitter is for fools". All of these comments were heard by me in the past three days alone from my friends. Not online, but face to face over coffee. (Stop, do not jump to any conclusions about me, I enjoy social media greatly, but often push away the keyboard and get out of me chair to socialize face-to-face too.) This fierce resistance towards all social media is fascinating to me, especially considering the huge size of this demographic cohort.
Why is it like this? Why are they so resistance? Most are cleaver people with stellar careers behind them underpinned with great educations as engineers, architects, business owners, teachers, consultants, doctors, and much more. They have wealth and have now retired to comfort and indulgence. So, what is it about social media that has made them so resistant and adamant in their position of absolute and total rejection of anything to do with it?
Analyses within subsamples of research defined by generational age breaks further suggest that social capital production is related to Internet use among Generation X, while it is tied to television use among Baby Boomers and newspaper use among members of the Civic Generation. Maybe the problem is that this is simply the wrong media for them? The baby boomer generation is clearly the TV generation. So, social media was never centric to their lives, why should I expect it to be now in their twilight years? Why should I expect them to accept change and learn something new? Maybe they are just embracing their comfort zones?
These strong and highly bias baby boomer perceptions range from the initial unanimous, strong negative to the more positive but cautious, and to the eventual willingness to actually contribute content. Therefore, it would be unfair to suggest that all people over 60 years old share just one point of view, this is not the case. Obviously I am here and engaged, but am I a statistical outlier?
So, how can we change this paradigm? Effective educational strategies are necessary. Privacy appears to be the primary concern and key perceptual barrier to adoption. We need to develop and share education to overcome their privacy concerns, including (a) introducing the concepts before introducing the functions; (b) responding to privacy concerns; and (c) making social media personally relevant.
While in line at the bank yesterday, I watched as an older gentleman paid a number of bills - cable TV, telephone, cellular, etc. My thought as I grew impatient waiting was why was he not paying these bills online? So, maybe it is a grander computer literacy problem and not just limited to a social media engagement issue?
My conclusion is that fear and relevance seem to drive this resistance to adoption and fuel this ignorance. Privacy concerns are critical to the baby boomers too. However, as the physical community is migrating to a virtual presence, so must the baby boomers if they wish to remain connected to the extended and society at large. Most importantly if they wish to be connected to younger generational cohorts, friends, and family, they will need to shift to this social media driven virtual community. Otherwise, the social isolation increases dramatically and as their universe compresses, they will lose out on many important and valued aspects of life. Physical and virtual connections and interactions are critical to a happy life. Television just passes time, but it is not really a social interaction.
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About the Author:
Michael Martin has more than 35 years of experience in broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless and digital communications technologies. He is a Senior Executive Consultant with IBM Canada's GTS Network Services Group. Over the past 11 years with IBM, he has worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He was previously a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN:TSX). Martin currently serves on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO:TSX) and previously served on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX:TSX.V). He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) and on the Board of Advisers of four different Colleges in Ontario as well as for 16 years on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section. He holds three Masters level degrees, in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has diplomas and certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology.
References:
DOI: 10.1080/03601277.2010.544580. Bo Xiea, Ivan Watkinsa, Jen Golbecka & Man Huanga. Pages 282-296.
DOI: 10.1080/105846001750322952. Dhavan V. Shah, Nojin Kwak, R. Lance Holbert. Pages 141-162
The business communication expert | Helping tech companies to win more business | Author of Connect, Convince, Convert | 35+ years in the tech sector | Keynote Speaker | Author | Content writer
8 年Michael, I really enjoyed your article, and have certainly heard the comments you shared from your cohort. I am very close in age to the baby boomers you talk of, and have recently started my own business after 30 years with IBM. I love social media as a great tool for maintaining contact with my network and growing my business. It is also a fantastic way of keeping up with friends in my native UK, despite living in Australia. I know there is a lot I still don't know about social networking, but I am really keen to learn, and importantly I think, not afraid to ask the dumb questions. I also highly recommend using social media consultants as there is a lot of skill and knowledge out there, and like any other subject, it is a lot easier if you have a good teacher, rather than just trying to pick it up as you go along. It is sometimes scary, and there is frustration in that just as you think you are getting to grips with the tools, there is always something new. But in my mind, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.
Operations Professional
8 年I am inclined to agree with the majority of claims presented in this article. My grandmother is a part of the stubborn yet vibrant baby boomer generation and the technology we buy her on every occasion never fails to collect dust. I always notice an intense look of confusion in her eyes as she attempts to 'turn on' her ipad we recently got her for Christmas but you can tell she really wants to know how to use the device but just doesn't have the patience. She's at a point now as my siblings and I grow older where she wants to stay in touch with us more. She's no dummy.She notices we are always connected to our cell phone hence understanding that the best way to be connected to us is possibly to be connected to her phone as well. Moral of this response is that my grandmother needs a Facebook account.
IT Development, Product/Brand Management, and Operations Executive at IBM
8 年While I see much that is true in the article, I also find it to be something of an oversimplification. Social media is a very powerful tool and, like all powerful tools, comes with positives and negatives. It is far from a cure-all for everything and everyone. On the plus side, it enables you access to a much wider world. On the flip side, however, it enables a much wider swath of the world to have access to you. The comments that your friends made to you exist because there is an element of truth to them. Many older people are used to a smaller group of friends and family with a higher level of personal and more intimate relationships. Social media, by its very nature, encourages more relationships, many of which will not be as deep. The communication is more likely to be targeting a broad audience. Older generations are used to, and seem to prefer, a form of push communication - where people communicate with you because they have something to say to you. Social media is more aligned with pull communication, where you share information and people decide what to take in. That, of course, is another very broad generalization. Social media has a push element, in that once you step into it, you will be bombarded by non-specific information that you have to wade through to decide what you want to pull. All in all, people are different. Not embracing social media has downsides, but, hard though it may be to imagine, you can stay involved in your grandchildren's, children's, etc. lives just fine without it. If your community moves online, then it behooves you to as well. Of course, if the community that you care about does not, then there is no impetus. Pushing people to go on social media like this will achieve just the opposite - more resistance. I think that privacy and security are major issues, but I think that the overwhelming volume is also a big deterrent. There are a lot of things on social media that many people would call mundane or trivial - it cannot be denied. You could argue that no one has to read any given item, but the only way to know that it isn't relevant is to read it to some degree. Social media also has dropped many of the social conventions that older generations are used to. Religious and political statements that would never be made in person are routine on social media. These are all reasons that people may eschew social media for more traditional methods.
Realtor at BHHS
8 年Brutally true article about the baby boomer generation's hesitancy to embrace social media. It is true that many of the most resistant are highly educated, successful people so perhaps it is fear of admitting to not understanding this new social world. I find it encouraging that larger numbers of those boomers are actively becoming engaged and often thanks to grandchildren are making the effort to learn. It is never too late.
Technical leader | Innovator | Enterprise, Solution and Service Architect | Proven delivery
8 年I would be interested to know whether the greying cohort in the population who do not use social media have acquired an appreciation about the technology of PC's and the Internet. Michael and I spent a working career understanding this domain. We ought to be comfortable with it. My siblings are also comfortable without the same professional background. Clearly many of our age peers are not comfortable. Are there other barriers than just lack of curiousity?