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Virtually everything discussed in this chapter in terms of the “generation gap” between digital natives and digital immigrants centers around the technology used for communicating and “staying connected.” And though under acknowledged by the generations that have come before, no group in history has been more interconnected than Generations Y and Z! In 2009, more than half of American teens logged on to a social media website more than once per day, with nearly a quarter of teens logging on to their favorite social media site ten or more times per day.¹⁹ That same year, a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that three quarters of U.S. teens owned a cell phone, with 88 percent of them texting regularly. Boys typically sent and received thirty texts per day; girls sent and received eighty per day. Girls age fourteen to seventeen typically sent at least one hundred texts per day. A more recent Pew study shows the median number of daily texts among teens age twelve to seventeen has risen from fifty texts per day in 2009 to sixty texts per day in 2012, with older teens, boys, and African Americans leading the increase, though girls ages fourteen to seventeen remain the most avid texters, still averaging well over one hundred per day.²⁰ The survey also revealed that texting is now the primary mode of daily communication between teens and their friends and family, far surpassing phone calls, face-to-face interactions, and email.²¹

Consider the opening sentences of Associated Press writer Martha Irvine’s June 2012 article “Is Texting Ruining the Art of Conversation?”

Anna Schiferl hadn’t even rolled out of bed when she reached for her cellphone and typed a text to her mom one recent Saturday. Mom was right downstairs in the kitchen. The text? Anna wanted cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Soon after, the 13-year-old could hear Mom’s voice echoing through the house. “Anna,” Joanna Schiferl called, “if you want to talk to me, you come downstairs and see me!” Anna laughs about it now. “I was kind of being lazy,” the teen from suburban Chicago concedes. “I know that sounds horrible.” Well, maybe not horrible, but certainly increasingly typical.²²

The fact is digital natives are often more comfortable texting than talking—live or on the phone. And this may not be such a bad thing.

Brad, a tech-savvy member of Gen X, recently flew from his West Coast home to visit family in the Midwest, including his parents, sister, and her three teenage children. He’d not seen the kids in more than a year. Brad writes:

We had three generations at dinner one night. My parents, my sister and me, and my sister’s three kids—ages 17, 14, and 11. I keep up with my sister’s frequent Facebook posts, so I know what my two nieces and my nephew are up to, and sometimes I’ll send one of them a congratulatory text for making the honor roll or doing well in baseball or a dance competition. But I don’t post much on Facebook, so they don’t know a whole lot about me—only what my sister tells them, and she’s pretty busy so that’s probably only the basics. While I was catching up with the adults at the table during dinner I felt my phone buzz, informing me I’d just gotten a text. I checked and saw it was from Kris, the 17-year-old. “What is it that you do?” she texted. I turned to her and said, “For a living, you mean?” She nodded. So I briefly explained to her and the rest of the family my career as a writer. They asked a few questions, which I answered as best I could, and then we moved on to greener pastures. Later in the meal my phone buzzed again—another text from Kris.

Kris: “Are you gay?”

Brad: “Yes. Is that OK?”

Kris: “Yeah, we’re all cool with it, but your mom and dad don’t like to talk about it.”

Brad: “They’re from a different generation.”

Kris: “Tell me about it. I just wanted you to know that David, Ashley, and I know, and we love you.”

Brad: “Thanks. I love you too.”

The most meaningful exchange of my entire five-day visit occurred during a family dinner—in private, via text.

Would Uncle Brad and Kris’s exchange have ever happened before texting existed? “Probably not,” says Brad. Even if Kris had been able to find a moment alone with him, it’s likely she would have struggled to approach her uncle so directly. For Kris, the “digital buffer” of texting made this very intimate exchange much easier, and yet for Brad the conversation was no less meaningful because it was texted.

In summary, we offer the following overriding concept: human interaction and communication may be no less meaningful or productive simply because it is in digital form. And further, it is this concept that separates most digital immigrants from most digital natives. Older people, based both on a lifetime of experience as well as their earliest developmental experiences of social interaction, more often want and need face-to-face interpersonal interactions, or at least a telephone exchange, where they can listen to another person’s voice. Younger people, on the other hand, seem to feel that communication is communication, no matter the format, and why wait to see (or talk to) someone when you can text them right now and get an instant response? They ask, “Why would you be disconnected when you can post on Facebook, text, and tweet to let your friends and family know what you’re up to, and they can do the same to keep in touch with you? Why not stay connected?”

Consider another example in Irvine’s article, this one about how Lisa Auster-Gussman, a senior at the University of Richmond in Virginia, uses technology to stay in touch with people in her life:

For her, there are simply particular tools she uses to communicate, depending on the recipient. Email is for professors, yes. Phone calls and maybe the occasional texts are for parents, if the parents know how to do the latter. “But I don’t communicate much with older people. So much of my life is set up over text.” ... Meanwhile, last summer, when she was away from her boyfriend, she went days without talking to him on the phone but texted him several times a day. “But I felt like I was talking to him all day, every day,” she said.²³

Lisa’s experience is relatively common among digital natives. However, it’s difficult to fathom many sixty-year-old boomers, for example, thinking that “texting and checking in via Twitter” feels the same as talking face-to-face. And that is the crux of the interpersonal communications generation gap—live versus electronic communication, analog versus digital. Is the split a big deal? Does it make a difference how we communicate? The answers to these questions are, not surprisingly, both yes and no. Had Uncle Brad been unwilling or unable to communicate via text he would have missed out on an incredibly powerful conversation with his niece. On the other hand, if he hadn’t been willing to show up in person, he would have missed out on some wonderful moments with his parents. For him, the method of communication doesn’t matter much. “I prefer face-to-face,” he says, “but there are definitely times when texting is faster and easier.” For his parents, though, and also for his niece Kris, talking versus texting does matter.

Ultimately, the most successful communicators among us are able and willing to engage others utilizing whatever media is most useful at the time, while recognizing the most appropriate circumstance for each method. They neither avoid nor insist on a particular mode of interaction. Instead, they work hard to make sure their message is heard by whomever they’re trying to reach. They assimilate. According to educator Timothy VanSlyke, “cultural assimilation rarely entails a wholesale abandonment of previous customs or practices; rather, it typically involves a flexible process of negotiation and adaptation, wherein certain elements of both cultures are retained in a new combination with one another.”²⁴ In other words, the most successful communicators today accept and even embrace the idea that they need to live in and communicate fluently in both the digital native and digital immigrant worlds. They evolve with technology.

Unfortunately, for those entrenched in the idea that “the way it has always been is the best way,” this kind of cultural assimilation is not an easy task, and therefore it feels easier to judge and avoid than embrace. This may be why the current digital native–immigrant generation gap is not as volatile as previous generation gaps, such as the openly acrimonious split between the baby boomers and their parents in the 1960s and 1970s. And it may well be that the roots of what currently appears to be a relatively serene generational divide lies in the fact that older and younger generations don’t even know what their differences are since they’re rarely sharing ideas in the same space! Perhaps we lack proper discourse because digital natives and digital immigrants aren’t “in the same room,” thereby avoiding vociferous disagreement yet sacrificing mutual understanding.