Playing with ideas

I'm thinking about how extended adolescence, and rapid societal change in my generation.

Historically, young people grew, and once they were physically & mentally mature and understood their society, they were adults, and behaved as such.Then decades later, after so much change, you had old people who told their grandkids about how things were "back in my day".

But now, things are changing so rapidly, that the generation who were kids at the start got caught in a tidal wave. A chain reaction. Their society continued to change as they grew - so the rate of change matched their rate of growth. At the point where previous generations had come in line with their society, this generation just had to keep on growing/changing to keep up with things.

If adolescence is the time of coming to terms with/ growing into your society, then maybe an extended adolescence isn't unusual where a period of extended societal growth is underway.

So people who were kids in the 90's have experienced as much societal growth in just a decade, as previous generations experienced in a lifetime. They can't settle into their 'place' in society, because society hasn't settled yet - they might aim for a place and a year or two later, that place no longer exists.

So their generation 'hovers', and awaits a place to land, just like all other generations. It's just that the land is moving a lot more than usual.

Back in my day, you watched videos. Everyone had a home phone number, and it didn't usually change much. You got a mobile in your mid-to-late teens. The internet was something new in high school. University required assignments submitted on floppy disks.

All of a sudden, mobiles shrank, and everyone had one - including your 9 year old cousin, and he knew more about how to use it! Camera memory went from MB's to TB's in a few years, and what you got for graduating university is crap compared to what 13 year olds get for their birthday. EVERYTHING you learned in school about technology was obsolete by the time you hit 21.

We were trained for a world that ceased to exist. Like the industrial revolution, except it's ten times faster, and keeps on changing. I'll be curious to learn how the next generation does things, once they hit adulthood. They would be the ones born after 2000, who never knew a time without smart phones etc.