Validity for MB

In my recent “Facebook, approved" article, one of my previous (favorite) co-workers, who happens to be a generation x, posted a comment. And after reading it for the sixth time, I feel the need for a second post.

This is not a retraction. Just a spin-off. Thanks for the comment, MB.

I don’t hate. But I do understand that sometimes my words and thoughts, when pertaining to social media, can be skewed against generation x. It’s not that I loathe or am bias against said generation, it’s simply that as young professionals, we are looked down on. We look young. We act young. We are young. We don’t have experience – same shit, you know the drill.

But as MB put it, generation x’ers need some validation. And I agree. At least, some generation x’ers do. It’s true that they didn’t grow up with the Internet (MB, please note the capital I), cell phone, digital cameras, texting, etc. I get that. And I can understand how hard it would be to begin learning these new initiatives. But my point is simple – things are changing. And when things change, we must change. And lets face it, messages are changing. How we send messages, how we receive messages – everything, it’s all evolving. And in an effort to stay with it and continue to move forward, you can’t be sour about learning new initiatives, you have to adapt. Life-long learning, right?

So, here’s my validation. Some x’ers are changing. One example: text messaging. You may notice that some parents are beginning to text. It’s not because they want to, no one wants to. Rather, it’s because they know if they want to get reach out and contact their children, they have to adapt. They have to change their medium. They have to text. OMG! Social media is another example. X’ers are getting onboard. They are learning, slowly but surely, how to function on the Web. In fact, in the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 on Facebook has doubled. WTF!?

Numbers don’t lie. The older, wiser and more mature generation is catching up. As a social media fan, I can appreciate the frustrated questions from x’ers regarding adding friends, re-tweeting or searching for high school sweethearts. I can appreciate the time spent on finding out what the hell these things are and how they work. I appreciate the change.

Professionally speaking, I recognize that this new phenomenon really only pertains to communication based fields, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for the baby boomers to give these social media entities a shot. Try them out. See for yourself. If you don’t like them, it’s pretty simple – press the delete button.