I know there are many of us who can’t wait to see the end of 2016. It’s been a horrible year and even one day before New Year’s Eve, there are people saying, “Hey wait, it hasn’t ended, let’s get through 2016 first.”
It’s like we’re constantly bracing ourselves for more bad news – which celebrity is going to die next, which city is going to be attacked next, which country is going to go far right next. Now that could be because we spend our time poised on the knife’s edge of social media anticipating the next self-inflicted cut or maybe that’s just how life is.
Time does not differentiate between years, it just cuts through them inexorably and inevitably – and so expect 2017 to be more of the same, if we are lucky, and if we are not, worse.
Simon Sinek cites “failed parenting strategies, technology, impatience and environment”.
I want to spend my last column of the year however on the M word – Millennials and related to that, Mobile. This has been a word that’s obsessed most of us, chiefly, how do we get them to buy from us and work for us, and just like China was a must-have item in a conference agenda in 2016, so was the M word.
In the last month, there’s been a video that’s been circulating on social media – that of Simon Sinek speaking of the four pieces that have shaped this generation and that have made them “entitled, narcissistic, self-interested, unfocused, lazy” – the forces being failed parenting strategies, technology, impatience and environment.
Jason Dorsey: “We do not see diversity until it’s absent.” Photo credit: JasonDorsey.com
At the Expedia Partners Conference in Las Vegas earlier this month – wow, it feels much longer than that – I heard yet another speaker Jason Dorsey, the co-founder and Millennials and Gen Z researcher at The Center for Generational Kinetics.
Now when you speak of an entire generation, you can’t help but generalise and there will always be outliers who say, “I am not like that”. I cringe in my seat too when I hear speakers talk about women for instance or baby boomers because everyone of us like to feel we are different but at least Dorsey was entertaining as Sinek is articulate.
Dorsey had lots of great soundbites. Here’s a collection of them.
“We will quit a job to go to a concert.”
“We do not see diversity until it is absent.”
“Technology is only new if you remember it the way it was before.”
“Real friends don’t call.”
“We do not read blocks of text.”
“We are not tech-savvy, we are tech-dependent.”
“We like unique, customising is for baby boomers.”
He spoke of checking into the Venetian and was given a paper map. “What’s that?” he asked.
Specifically about technology, Sinek spoke about its addictive effects and the “dopamine” rush of social media and argued that unlike other addictive substances which are restricted – drugs and alcohol – social media is a free-for-all and that this addiction takes away ability to build long-lasting relationships which take time and patience.
He spoke of the loss of “innocuous small moments” which can give rise to ideas because we allow our minds to wander. Smartphones should be banned from meetings, he said, and we should leave our smartphones at home when we go out for dinner with friends.
Listening to Dorsey and Sinek as the year winds to a close, I can’t help but think that actually Mobile is generation-busting, and that the behaviours they both talk about are true of everyone with a smartphone, no matter the age, race or gender.
Older people are as addicted (if not more) to social media than younger people. Older people are as addicted (if not more) to their smartphones than younger people. Older people are as more likely to leave their smartphones on the table while having dinner, as younger people. Older people are as more likely to text their friends while having dinner with their friends as younger people.
Last night, at dinner, my 50+-year-old male friend kept his smartphone on his lap under the table napkin, hoping no one would notice while he surreptitiously messaged his friends throughout dinner. Another, a woman, did it openly. Am I supposed to conclude that at least older women are more honest about their addiction?
No, I conclude that Mobile has flattened the world and that these behaviors Dorsey and Sinek spoke of are not exclusive to Millennials. Sorry young people, not only have we taken over Facebook, we also claim narcissism and lack of focus as our own.
At lunch yesterday (this is the time of year for catching up), a friend who works in a IT multinational said that at the end of each year, the company offers senior executives a choice of coaches to improve themselves. He chose Mindfulness. “I don’t think I need to learn any more about technology, but I need to learn to be more mindful. I feel my attention span is shot.”
So as we go into the new year, let the M word be about Mindfulness and give ourselves more innocuous small moments to observe so that little ideas can become big ones, otherwise we will just flip from one filtered bubble to another.
As travellers, support the little guys.
And oh yes, be mindful too that when you travel, support the little guys. We all have a role to play in closing that big economic divide between the haves and the have-nots that has led to outcomes like Brexit and Trump.
As travellers who reach out to little places around the world, we have more power than you think to change lives, so don’t be like politicians and always be thinking of the next photo opportunity to post on Instagram.
Happy 2017.
