I had an interesting conversation the other day with a forty-something-year-old friend of mine, who is also the mother of pre-teens, and she made a poignant observation about the technological generation gap. We were discussing her son’s inability not to take his teacher’s group criticism personally, especially if he was not one of the guilty students. He seems to lack the ability to read the secondary clues behind the teacher’s words, to understand that she is not speaking directly to him or to any one student, but rather to a particular group of unnamed but guilty students. My friend’s perception is that today’s children and teens are of the texting generation. They communicate via short messages in print, lacking tone or facial expression; they live in a virtual world where words mean everything.
In contrast, today’s parents did not grow up communicating that way. If not talking face-to-face, we had only the telephone, requiring tone and intonation to tell us so much more about the message’s meaning than just the words. We grew up hearing tone as an implicit part of communication and, therefore, add it to emails and texts without even realizing it. This is why many adults become quickly offended by texts that sound abrupt or rude. We don’t see the tone, but we “hear” it in the words, adding the missing piece of our language puzzle. Teens, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as offended as adults when reading emails or texts; the words speak for themselves.
What are we to do? If Generation X can’t survive the virtual world without tone and intonation, but Generation Y can’t survive the real world without it, where do we meet? How do we learn to communicate through the generations without inadvertently offending our children or parents and having our message lost in translation?
Your suggestions are welcome!
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