Varying Generations with Various Communication
Andrea Osváth
Institute of Applied Social Sciences andaosvath@gmail.com
Key Words: the communication of the generations YZA, conscious use of inter- net, changing knowledge and literacy, the relationship between the personality and the virtual world, the role of families in communication, new norms, new feedbacks, new forms of language.
Knowledge has become measured by minutes, the members of generation Y and Z – not to mention the Alphas – were not brought up in the old, ‘Prussian’
schooling system like we did, but their main source for search is the internet, whatever they are looking for. They precisely search events and phenomena based on an expression or concept – their key word is instant. In this concept, however, we can find the failure of knowledge retention – in the long run at least. Maybe this is not the greatest problem after all: instead, the question is whether the members of the young generations live in the virtual world with proper awareness and recognize the threatening dangers? If not, is there some- where they can go? Can the institution of family give safety and confidence to these youngsters? Eszter Bakos studied the appearance of new kinds of knowledge, such as, audio-visual, digital and media knowledge: internet can be a source of numerous threats and conflicts for those who do not know it and so they do not use the rules that could protect them. Learning how to use the in- ternet consciously and legally has absolute priority.1
Their relationships
Interpersonal communication and way of life have also changed thoroughly – and is changing all the time – in case of the young of the generation Y, Z and Alpha. Making friends quickly and instantly, the continuous presence, hyper- links resulting in changing reading methods have evoked significant changes in everyday life as well. Relationships often work only in the virtual space; per- sonal presence is missing. This includes many factors that often have more weight in communication, for instance, ‘the chemistry’ between two people, eye
1 BAKOS Eszter, „A felnövekvő generáció számára fontos új műveltségek a XXI. században”, E-tudo- mány, 9(2011) 1. sz. Online: e-tudomany.hu – December 2019.
contact, pose, series of non-verbal elements resulting in missing instinctive and honest reactions to certain topics and opinions – all that (could) help getting to know the other person more deeply.
‘For the young, who are defined as ‘digital natives’, the omnipotence of in- ternet manifests in their communication the most. The online function has two main channels of communication: the community page(s), that are used for keeping in touch, making friends and mostly conversations, and the other one is the blog, which is for narrating their own stories like in a journal, however, as it was accommodating to the modern age it lost its long-kept original role:
the intimacy of the private sphere.
The short text message (SMS), which had been so important and modern for them, are only used in their offline function. Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Pa- tricia Greenfield made a research studying what the young people’s relation- ships and communication were like with their friends and family members in the cyber space, since it is proven that they are the ones who use the online space the most often.2 According to the research, the young communicate easily on the net with their contemporaries, but it is getting harder for them to find common voice with their parents.3
The community portals can keep up steady relationships and organize meetings just as it can help keeping contact with friends who they do not see often. If the child does not take his phone with him to school, the knowledge of not knowing can cause symptoms of anxiety, the feeling of being left out of something vital.
It is also a question whether the generations YZA regard the virtual world as the primary platform of communication for relationship? Where do they make friends, do they look up from their smart phone screen, can they leave it behind and make contact, flirt, talk in the school, in the library, in front of the cinema or the theatre? In the world, their real, living environment?4
Communication with the family has also significantly changed in the past years. It is not surprising since there are more and more parents and grandpar- ents of the YZA generation members are on the internet. Family communication increasingly retreats compared to relational communication. It is much easier to write than to say an emotion-free and neutral message, not to mention when
2 Kaveri SUBRAHMANYAM és Patricia GREENFIELD,„Online Communication and Adolescent Relati- onships”, The Future of Children, 18(2008) Nr. 1. 119–146. Online: futureofchildren.org – March 2019.
3 OSVÁTH Andrea, „Ki tanít kit? Valódi generációk és változó kommunikáció a kibertérben”, Szellem és Tudomány, 4(2013) 1. sz. 52–63., 55.
4 OSVÁTH Andrea, „Kimondani a kimondhatatlant – Kommunikáció a párkapcsolatban”, Szellem és Tudomány, 8(2017) 1–2. sz. 128–145.
there is emotion and passion in it, because there is no need to look in the eye with the other person and you do not have to endure sudden gestures and re- actions. You do not have to bear the emotions coming from the other person’s reaction, you can just go on easily and fast.
‘However, Annamária Tari says that children are actually alone in the vir- tual community and therefore it is really important for parents to talk with them. Mutual tolerance and understanding are needed. It is also important that the parent should not postpone the conversation and the conflict since even if it is strange, the child does not like to be let free. It causes him feel fear, lack of love and anxiety and he probably wants to signal to the parents with his aston- ishing behaviour’.5
The foregoing obviously poses the question of how much these youngsters are happy, and do they know the concepts of happiness, contentment, peace and notions in connection of feeling satisfied, or the deeply hidden differences among these concepts?6 What are their happiness-factors; do they exist in the reality or just in the virtual word?
How does the virtual world affect the personality?
For the generations YZA, the virtual space where they are always online is be- coming weightier than the real world still more genuine scene where they get into conflict, comment aggressively without consequences. It is anonymity, sometimes the distance itself giving the courage to do these things. There is no fear or retentiveness. They live in a world without consequences – at least they think so.
Nevertheless, there are or there can be consequences. On the one hand, legal – we are not focusing on this one – and the other is psychological results.
Anger and passion are also present in the virtual space but the ongoing shares of posts, opinions and advice result in an instant but not considered decision- making. Furthermore, tensions resolve in a short time, there is no time for one to evaluate the conflict, express his anger and give time for himself coming up with a solution to the problem that well-founded, linked to his own personal values and a decision of his own.
As the virtual scene lacks the passions we would need to face in real life, the pattern is the online world, so they cannot or just partly can interpret and
5 OSVÁTH, Ki tanít kit?, op.cit. 56. Quoted literature: TARI Annamária, Z generáció, (Budapest: Ter- cium, 2011)
6 OSVÁTH Andrea, „Miért (nem) vagyunk boldogok?”, Szellem és Tudomány, 6(2015) 1–2. sz. 189–
200.
live the real situations packed with tension, so they often react quickly and poorly, fearlessly and not knowing respect.
It follows that the cognitive response of the members of the YZA genera- tion is super-fast, their emotional processing is, however, very slow. It is be- cause they want to share their problems instantly and they do not undergo nat- ural processes which could help them live and resolve their hurt and pain. They get a ton of information in no time, most of which they do not even need. They are used to the quick editing of TV shows and movies and after some time they imagine it to be real and try to conform to that speedy rhythm.
‘Reality becomes an impoverished environment, the time period of keep- ing attention drops and along with that the power of imagination is threatened as well, which is an important factor in forming their personality and identity.
Without imagination the magic world coming alive from fictional stories and reading does not exist and cannot be formulated in children; instead, visuality through media and internet prevails, the principle of getting everything ready.
Our childhood stories and later our readings help creating that inner world in- side of us, that has heroes and scenes coming to existence only in our imagina- tion and it is always only ours. Novels and adaptation of stories can never pro- vide the reality that we have formed into pictures, and that is why so often we do not experience <the aha moment> when we watch a movie after reading the book.7
New Norms, New Feedbacks
Children are looking for role models, to whom they can look up to, so it would be important for parents to provide a good example. Technological develop- ment has brought significant changes in such a short time, that we cannot really accommodate to yet. Traditions, values have changed and even if we are trying to shake the feeling off, the ugly truth is that we cannot sit idly because there is no one who knows where all this is going. One thing is for sure: old norms will disappear, and we need to relearn our grandmas’ upbringing techniques. Fam- ily must be the foundation again.
‘In the summer of 2012, there was a round table discussion with dr. Imre Csernus, who defined the lack of honest communication within the family as a distressing phenomenon. The kind of economical, emotional and self-expres- sional crisis acts as a barrier for open conversation that is building up person- ality and community. Lacking responsible and critical self-knowledge, parents cannot and do not dare to honestly speak with their children, who compensate
7 OSVÁTH Andrea, „Kommunikáció – internet – stílus”, Szellem és Tudomány, 2(2011) 1. sz. 214–223., 214.
the missing direct and mutual interactions on Facebook. The community page is nothing but a partly typical, partly special tool of the consumer society that makes someone, who is afraid of change and the resulting pain, tend to be pas- sive and make him spend his free time pointlessly or poorly.
Contemporary communication used to be saturated with excitement and heightened emotional impulse when children were chatting in parks next to the school or called each other on landline telephones. Since it is easier to get at- tention easier, faster and more spectacularly on Facebook than in real commu- nities, direct communication mostly gives them failure and lack of self-confi- dence. Therefore, the affection of keeping contact virtually becomes an addic- tion for the person and it will be a typical phenomenon characterizing the spe- cific age-group’.8
The psychological process behind liking prove that Facebook works well as a negative booster in a short term. Like me, so love me! – that is the slogan of the compliance that is not met in real communities, which is based on the lack of self-confidence, the inability to accept and love ourselves. The inner tension, however, is silenced only for a while, the intensity of negative comments evokes and elevates it. In the virtual world based on fast interaction there is no time for speaking about or working through the pain. ‘It is connected to the fact that users feel obliged to continuously give an account of all of their minutes: the young often call them <Every3Minutes>, since they keep posting but there is no way of liking because the posts get lost behind the new ones. It is clear if there is no time for friends to react then the interpretation of feelings cannot possibly happen in the user either. Reasonable thinking, emotional understanding and processing are fully missing.9
Because of the speed, this generation has created a new type of language that is yet to be learned by other generations, because they tend to use the ab- breviations and English phrases in spoken language as well. It is a frequent problem in writing tests in the school: there is an unknown phrase or abbrevi- ation in the essay for the teacher – this new written language takes in parts of traditional script as well, creating a kind of e-Babel.10 Some examples: Bb – Bye, bye; Hh? – How come? Comin’ – I am coming; Np – no problem; Omg – Oh my God, Ööööö….ööö… – thinking, but doing something at the same time etc..
It is inevitable to adapt to this for all earlier generations, otherwise they will lag behind. It is true vice versa as well, since the expressions of the Baby
8 OSVÁTH, Ki tanít kit?, op.cit. 56–57.
9 OSVÁTH, Ki tanít kit?, op.cit. 58.
10 OSVÁTH, Ki tanít kit?, op.cit. 59.
Boomers and Generation X are often unintelligible for the generations YZA, but they are essential for preserving traditional values.
Further references:
Susan GREENFIELD, Identitás a XXI. században, ford. Garai Attila, (Budapest: HVG, 2009)
Manuel CASTELLS, Az információ kora: Gazdaság, társadalom és kultúra, I, A hálózati társadalom kia- lakulása, Az információs társadalom klasszikusai, (Budapest: Gondolat – Infonia. 2005)
SusanKENYON, „Internet Use and Time Use: The importance of multitasking”, Time Society, 17(2008) Nr. 2–3. 283–318.
URBÁN Ágnes, „Az új médiaszolgáltatások terjedése”, Információs Társadalom, 7(2007) 2. sz. 31–53.
Z. KARVALICS László, „Információs társadalom – a metakritika hiábavalósága és gyötrelmessége”, In- formációs Társadalom, 7(2007) 4. sz. 107–123.
My major publications on the topic:
OSVÁTH Andrea, „Kommunikáció – internet – stílus”, Szellem és Tudomány, 2(2011) 1. sz. 214–223.
OSVÁTH Andrea, „Ki tanít kit? Valódi generációk és változó kommunikáció a kibertérben”, Szellem és Tudomány, 4(2013) 1. sz. 52–63.
OSVÁTH Andrea, „Szabad véleménynyilvánítás és digitális állampolgári szabályok a virtuális világban”, Szellem és Tudomány, 5(2014) 1. sz. 97–110.
OSVÁTH Andrea, „Miért (nem) vagyunk boldogok?”, Szellem és Tudomány, 6(2015) 1–2. sz. 189–200.
OSVÁTH Andrea, „Kimondani a kimondhatatlant – Kommunikáció a párkapcsolatban”, Szellem és Tudomány, 8(2017) 1–2. sz. 128–145.
