modern technology and younger generation essay

The Importance of Technological Change in Shaping Generational Perspectives

If we name each generation based on the technological conditions it experienced, generations may soon encompass only a few years apiece.

“There are a number of labels to describe the young people currently studying at school, college and university,” Ellen John Helsper and Rebecca Evnon wrote in a 2010 article in the British Educational Research Journal . “They include the digital natives, the net generation, the Google generation or the millenials. All of these terms are being used to highlight the significance and importance of new technologies within the lives of young people.”

What seemed noteworthy a decade ago is now commonplace: Slicing the population into ever-narrower generations, each defined by its very specific relationship to technology, is fundamental to how we think about the relationship between age, culture, and technology.

But generation gaps did not begin with the invention of the microchip. What’s new is the fine-slicing of generational divides, the centrality of technology to defining each successive generation. Both of these developments rest on a remarkably intellectual innovation: the idea of generations as socially significant categories.

As Marius Hentea points out in his article “ The Problem of Literary Generations :” “[t]he sociological meaning of ‘generation’ is a post-Enlightenment development.” We’ve moved from a view of generations as biological “in the sense of the generation of a butterfly from a caterpillar,” as Hentea puts it, to a view of generations as sociological. Hentea argues that three nineteenth-century developments were responsible for this emergent concept of generational divides, the first of which was democratization :

By no longer limiting political power to a defined group but rather encouraging political participation across social strata, democracy eased youth into public life in a way other regimes had proven incapable of doing. At the same time, democratization paradoxically created generational categories. With aristocratic privileges abolished and republican duties diminished, the generation provided a fallback for social belonging: not everyone can belong to my generation, so the vestigial desire for distinction is satisfied, but at the same time, no one remains without a generation, so the democratic impulse toward equality is met.

Another important factor was centralization : “the spectacular rise of the bureaucratic state and its disciplinary instruments of control and categorization.” Last but not least, Hentea notes, was the role of technologization :

As technology advanced ever more quickly in the nineteenth century, differentiation based on age became even more important: the young had at their disposal tools their elders did not. The concentration of rapid technological change in urban centers led to youth gaining economic and social advantages at the same time that the transmission of accumulated knowledge and experience from elders lost its relevance for changing industries.

If the role of technology in shaping an emergent generational consciousness seems obvious to us now, however, it far from evident to earlier observers. “Why does contemporary western civilization manifest an extraordinary amount of parent-adolescent conflict?” Kinsley Davis asked in his article “ The Sociology of Parent-Youth Conflict .” In 1940, apparently, it was still possible to see inter-generational conflict as a novel and perplexing mystery.

To one of Davis’ contemporaries, the answer was clear: “the two generations in question have lived under such different economic conditions,” wrote Julien Brenda in a 1938 article, “ The Conflict of Generations in France .” “The old generation was a happy one—unusually happy, I venture to say; the young generation is unhappy, hard pressed by circumstances.”

Wallace Stegner picks up the theme of generational angst in his 1949 article, “ The Anxious Generation .” Writing of the twenty-somethings who came of age during or just after World War II, Stegner says:

They could no more have missed awareness of the tension and fear in their world than a bird could avoid awareness of wind. Far more has been taken from them than had been taken from preceding generations: politically, only uncertainty and fear and the Cold War is left them; the atom bomb is a threat such as the world has a never faced; if by a miracle we escape another war and the bomb, there is always the longer-term disaster of an incredibly multiplying world population and the shrinkage and wastage of world resources and the diminishing of world food supplies.

If that rather grim assessment implicitly rests on a set of assumptions about the impact of technological change—for what else is an atom bomb, if not a technological innovation?—then that assessment only seems apparent through our twenty-first century lens. In the middle of the last century, many still thought it preposterous to attribute generational differences to technological innovation. Writing in the middle of World War II, C. E. Ayres wrote that:

No serious student attributes the evils of the age to its machines. Popular essayists sometimes write as though tanks and airplanes were responsible for the bloodshed which is now going on, and novelists occasionally draw pictures of the horrors of a future in which life will have become wholly mechanized, with babies germinating in test tubes, “scientifically” maimed for the “more efficient” performance of industrial tasks. But this of course is literary nonsense…

Just a few years later, however, A. J. Jaffe would take a very different position in the pages of Scientific Monthly. “ Of the factors causing change in our society, one of the most important is technology—important new inventions as well as minor technical innovations,” Jaffe wrote in “ Technological Innovations and the Changing Socioeconomic Structure .” Making the case for the importance of studying technological change, Jaffe argued that:

Perhaps the single most important reason for studying technological change is to afford society a mechanism for predicting the social changes which are expected to occur… any thinking that will permit a society to better adapt itself to the inevitable changes which will occur—changes stemming in large measure from technological innovations—will be better able to meet such changes.

If that seems like a rather rapid turnaround on the importance of technological change in shaping generational perspectives, well, the pace of change was very much the point. In a 1945 article, “ Characteristics of an Age of Change ,” J. B. McKinney observed that “change, which was hitherto a gradual process, has become, for us, cataclysmic; it has become a tidal wave that threatens to overwhelm us. A decade to-day is the equivalent of a generation, and standards and values topple over like ninepins.”

From this rapid change, it was perceived, sprang generational discord. In his 1940 article, Davis argued that:

Extremely rapid change in modern civilization… tends to increase parent-youth conflict, for within a fast-changing social order the time-interval between generations, ordinarily but a mere moment in the life of a social system, become historically significant, thereby creating a hiatus between one generation and the next. Inevitably, under such a condition, youth is reared in a milieu different from that of the parents; hence the parents become old-fashioned, youth rebellious, and clashes occur which, in the closely confined circle of the immediate family, generate sharp emotion.

This 80-year-old assertion does an excellent job of anticipating our current tendency to label a new generation every decade, based on its unique relationship to emergent technology. Smartphones have only been in widespread use for a decade, but they’re now so fundamental to our daily lives that it’s hard to remember life without them. How could we possibly see those who can remember life before the smartphone as part of the same generation as those who’ve known nothing else? How could we see kids who’ve grown up on YouTube as part of the same generation that still watched actual TV? Doesn’t the leap from Facebook to SnapChat constitute its own profound generational divide?

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As the pace of technological innovation continues to accelerate, and as each successive round of innovation becomes more widely disseminated, it’s hard to imagine a return to the days when sociological generations spanned multiple decades. If you believe that technological conditions profoundly shape the life experience and perspectives of each successive generation, then those generations will only get narrower.

But that accuracy will come at a price. If we name each generation based on the specific technological conditions it experienced during childhood or adolescence, we may soon be dealing with generations that encompass only a few years apiece. At that point, the very idea of “generations” will cease to have much utility for social scientists, since it will be very hard to analyze attitudinal or behavioral differences between generations that are just a few years part. We’ll have come full circle, back to the early nineteenth century, when the only way to think of generations was in terms of biology, not sociology.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How Teens Today Are Different from Past Generations

Every generation of teens is shaped by the social, political, and economic events of the day. Today’s teenagers are no different—and they’re the first generation whose lives are saturated by mobile technology and social media.

In her new book, psychologist Jean Twenge uses large-scale surveys to draw a detailed portrait of ten qualities that make today’s teens unique and the cultural forces shaping them. Her findings are by turn alarming, informative, surprising, and insightful, making the book— iGen:Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us —an important read for anyone interested in teens’ lives.

Who are the iGens?

Twenge names the generation born between 1995 and 2012 “iGens” for their ubiquitous use of the iPhone, their valuing of individualism, their economic context of income inequality, their inclusiveness, and more.

She identifies their unique qualities by analyzing four nationally representative surveys of 11 million teens since the 1960s. Those surveys, which have asked the same questions (and some new ones) of teens year after year, allow comparisons among Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and iGens at exactly the same ages. In addition to identifying cross-generational trends in these surveys, Twenge tests her inferences against her own follow-up surveys, interviews with teens, and findings from smaller experimental studies. Here are just a few of her conclusions.

iGens have poorer emotional health thanks to new media. Twenge finds that new media is making teens more lonely, anxious, and depressed, and is undermining their social skills and even their sleep.

iGens “grew up with cell phones, had an Instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time before the Internet,” writes Twenge. They spend five to six hours a day texting, chatting, gaming, web surfing, streaming and sharing videos, and hanging out online. While other observers have equivocated about the impact, Twenge is clear: More than two hours a day raises the risk for serious mental health problems.

She draws these conclusions by showing how the national rise in teen mental health problems mirrors the market penetration of iPhones—both take an upswing around 2012. This is correlational data, but competing explanations like rising academic pressure or the Great Recession don’t seem to explain teens’ mental health issues. And experimental studies suggest that when teens give up Facebook for a period or spend time in nature without their phones, for example, they become happier.

The mental health consequences are especially acute for younger teens, she writes. This makes sense developmentally, since the onset of puberty triggers a cascade of changes in the brain that make teens more emotional and more sensitive to their social world.

Social media use, Twenge explains, means teens are spending less time with their friends in person. At the same time, online content creates unrealistic expectations (about happiness, body image, and more) and more opportunities for feeling left out—which scientists now know has similar effects as physical pain . Girls may be especially vulnerable, since they use social media more, report feeling left out more often than boys, and report twice the rate of cyberbullying as boys do.

Social media is creating an “epidemic of anguish,” Twenge says.

iGens grow up more slowly. iGens also appear more reluctant to grow up. They are more likely than previous generations to hang out with their parents, postpone sex, and decline driver’s licenses.

Twenge floats a fascinating hypothesis to explain this—one that is well-known in social science but seldom discussed outside academia. Life history theory argues that how fast teens grow up depends on their perceptions of their environment: When the environment is perceived as hostile and competitive, teens take a “fast life strategy,” growing up quickly, making larger families earlier, and focusing on survival. A “slow life strategy,” in contrast, occurs in safer environments and allows a greater investment in fewer children—more time for preschool soccer and kindergarten violin lessons.

“Youths of every racial group, region, and class are growing up more slowly,” says Twenge—a phenomenon she neither champions nor judges. However, employers and college administrators have complained about today’s teens’ lack of preparation for adulthood. In her popular book, How to Raise an Adult , Julie Lythcott-Haims writes that students entering college have been over-parented and as a result are timid about exploration, afraid to make mistakes, and unable to advocate for themselves.

Twenge suggests that the reality is more complicated. Today’s teens are legitimately closer to their parents than previous generations, but their life course has also been shaped by income inequality that demoralizes their hopes for the future. Compared to previous generations, iGens believe they have less control over how their lives turn out. Instead, they think that the system is already rigged against them—a dispiriting finding about a segment of the lifespan that is designed for creatively reimagining the future.

iGens exhibit more care for others. iGens, more than other generations, are respectful and inclusive of diversity of many kinds. Yet as a result, they reject offensive speech more than any earlier generation, and they are derided for their “fragility” and need for “ trigger warnings ” and “safe spaces.” (Trigger warnings are notifications that material to be covered may be distressing to some. A safe space is a zone that is absent of triggering rhetoric.)

Today’s colleges are tied in knots trying to reconcile their students’ increasing care for others with the importance of having open dialogue about difficult subjects. Dis-invitations to campus speakers are at an all-time high, more students believe the First Amendment is “outdated,” and some faculty have been fired for discussing race in their classrooms. Comedians are steering clear of college campuses, Twenge reports, afraid to offend.

The future of teen well-being

Social scientists will discuss Twenge’s data and conclusions for some time to come, and there is so much information—much of it correlational—there is bound to be a dropped stitch somewhere. For example, life history theory is a useful macro explanation for teens’ slow growth, but I wonder how income inequality or rising rates of insecure attachments among teens and their parents are contributing to this phenomenon. And Twenge claims that childhood has lengthened, but that runs counter to data showing earlier onset of puberty.

So what can we take away from Twenge’s thoughtful macro-analysis? The implicit lesson for parents is that we need more nuanced parenting. We can be close to our children and still foster self-reliance. We can allow some screen time for our teens and make sure the priority is still on in-person relationships. We can teach empathy and respect but also how to engage in hard discussions with people who disagree with us. We should not shirk from teaching skills for adulthood, or we risk raising unprepared children. And we can—and must—teach teens that marketing of new media is always to the benefit of the seller, not necessarily the buyer.

Yet it’s not all about parenting. The cross-generational analysis that Twenge offers is an important reminder that lives are shaped by historical shifts in culture, economy, and technology. Therefore, if we as a society truly care about human outcomes, we must carefully nurture the conditions in which the next generation can flourish.

We can’t market technologies that capture dopamine, hijack attention, and tether people to a screen, and then wonder why they are lonely and hurting. We can’t promote social movements that improve empathy, respect, and kindness toward others and then become frustrated that our kids are so sensitive. We can’t vote for politicians who stall upward mobility and then wonder why teens are not motivated. Society challenges teens and parents to improve; but can society take on the tough responsibility of making decisions with teens’ well-being in mind?

The good news is that iGens are less entitled, narcissistic, and over-confident than earlier generations, and they are ready to work hard. They are inclusive and concerned about social justice. And they are increasingly more diverse and less partisan, which means they may eventually insist on more cooperative, more just, and more egalitarian systems.

Social media will likely play a role in that revolution—if it doesn’t sink our kids with anxiety and depression first.

About the Author

Diana Divecha

Diana Divecha, Ph.D. , is a developmental psychologist, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and on the advisory board of the Greater Good Science Center. Her blog is developmentalscience.com .

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Youth have a love-hate relationship with tech in the digital age

Professor and Canada Research Chair, Young Lives, Education and Global Good, York University, Canada

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Young people are now fully ensconced in the digital age as it whirls around and within them .

This is the epoch of the Anthropocene — the age of humans, wherein a technological worldview and human tools hold the central place in re-shaping the earth and its people . It’s also a time when 1.8 billion youth make up the largest generation of 10 to 24 year olds in human history with 50 per cent of the world’s population under 30 years of age .

I have investigated the lives of young people for nearly three decades. I am interested in how young people are living today when our planet has been driven to fragility by consumption trends intimately related to the rise of mass production made possible through technologies.

Digital technologies have been too frequently adopted into schools with use and guideline policies that haven’t considered long-term environmental , health or ethical impacts: today, equity concerns have moved beyond worrying that poorer children don’t have devices to grappling with what it means if wealthy developers are raising children tech-free .

Researchers focused on the Global South have highlighted how access to technology has been driven by commercial interests and data about outcomes is generated by people who stand to profit . Those who care for youth must find new ways to determine if there are any potential benefits for youth when living immersed in digital technology — particularly because interventions to distribute more technology can compound rather than remove existing inequalities .

With my Young Lives Research Lab team based at York University, I conducted a five-year study of youth and the digital age by analyzing 185 narrative accounts we collected from young people (ages 16-24) in Canada, Australia and Scotland . From these accounts, it’s clear to me they don’t think technology is the panacea for well-being it was once argued to be .

Left to their own devices

Today, when digital surveillance is higher than ever, there is a hollowing out of learning, a shallowness that comes with abuses of privacy and surveillance and from a loss of cherished human contact .

Young people say that digital tools and ways of living are morphing beyond recognition. They live a deep modern techno-paradox and are left to their own devices (pardon the pun) to sort it out. They worry about what digital media is doing to the children they observe.

Naomi, one youth particiapant, highlighted a feeling of vulnerability:

“Most of their apps and social media apps are geared towards our age group because I feel like you can do the most … I don’t know why, it feels like they want to make us do damage. I don’t know who ‘they’ even is , but I feel like we’re just the most vulnerable crowd for them to zone in on, and for them to get as much as they possibly can out of us for their benefit.”

Earth stood still

As part of our youth study, my collaborator Ron Srigley designed and analyzed an inquiry whereby youth lived without their phones for a week. Ron’s chapter in Youth in the Digital Age: Paradox, Promise, Predicament reported the findings from this empirical inquiry.

Youth described a loss of human contact, finding more freedom and focus and having a chance to consider ethical and moral problems of living on mobile phones, apps and media. One comment was typical:

“My mom thought it was great that I did not have my phone because I paid more attention to her while she was talking.”

One youth noticed that simply walking “by strangers in the hallway or when I passed them on the street” caused almost everyone to take “out their phone right before I could gain eye contact with them.”

Several youth suggested that without the phone, they lacked the confidence to solve basic problems or feared for their safety:

“Believe it or not I had to walk up to a stranger and ask what time it was. It honestly took me a lot of guts and confidence to ask someone.” “Another thing I didn’t like about not having a cellphone that made me kind of scared at times was if someone were to attack me or kidnap me … I really wouldn’t be in any position to get help for myself …”

Youth reported a heightened awareness of a sense of acute conflict of missing instant online connection.

One person said living without their phone was “like the Earth stood still.”

Upgrades to people

In both the “no-phone experiment” and the other in-depth interviews, youth expressed both a deeply ingrained and taken-for-granted connection to their phones, while simultaneously feeling despair about a foreboding sense of technology taking over human lives .

As Easton stated:

“I think humans are going to become the new technology, and companies are going to be selling upgrades to people.”

Or, as Piper recounted:

“It’s good that technology is advancing fast because then maybe it will help some for a good cause. But also then there’s the downside of … how do you control it?”

Digital lives and wellness

Have we lost sight of the emotional, spiritual and physical well-being of youth?

Young people in our research asked that adults better attend to the myriad ways in which the digital age affects the well-being of youth. They showed how digital media affects all aspects of their lives in which well-being is measured such as health, education and social relationships .

More interesting is that they said new analyses about the depth and paradox of young digital lives is required if we are to fully understand youth wellness .

Read more: The mental health crisis among America's youth is real – and staggering

As one result of what I heard from the youth in our study, I am now involved in a global research network concerned with youth and the Anthropocene . This network is investigating what it’s like to be young now and how young people navigate wellness in this fragile time.

Researchers in this network have connected with the help of digital media — while raising concerns about the technological and capitalistic worldview from within which these tools are born.

It is time to ask whether and how societies will support youth wellness in the Anthropocene and digital age. To do this well, we must engage and listen to young people.

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The impact of digital technology use on adolescent well-being


El impacto del empleo de la tecnología digital en el bienestar de los adolescents, impact de l’usage des technologies numériques sur le bien-être de l’adolescent, tobias dienlin.

School of Communication, University of Hohenheim, Germany

Niklas Johannes

Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, UK

This review provides an overview of the literature regarding digital technology use and adolescent well-being. Overall, findings imply that the general effects are on the negative end of the spectrum but very small. Effects differ depending on the type of use: whereas procrastination and passive use are related to more negative effects, social and active use are related to more positive effects. Digital technology use has stronger effects on short-term markers of hedonic well-being (eg, negative affect) than long-term measures of eudaimonic well-being (eg, life satisfaction). Although adolescents are more vulnerable, effects are comparable for both adolescents and adults. It appears that both low and excessive use are related to decreased well-being, whereas moderate use is related to increased well-being. The current research still has many limitations: High-quality studies with large-scale samples, objective measures of digital technology use, and experience sampling of well-being are missing.


Esta revisión entrega una panorámica de la literatura acerca del empleo de la tecnología digital y el bienestar de los adolescentes. En general, los resultados traducen que los efectos globales son negativos, aunque muy insignificantes. Los efectos difieren según el tipo de empleo: la procastinación y el empleo pasivo están relacionados con efectos más negativos; en cambio, el empleo social y activo se asocia con efectos más positivos. El empleo de la tecnología digital tiene efectos más potentes en los indicadores de corto plazo del bienestar hedónico (como los afectos negativos) que las mediciones a largo plazo del bienestar eudaimónico (como la satisfacción con la vida). Aunque los adolescentes son más vulnerables, los efectos son comparables para adolescentes y adultos. Parece que tanto el empleo reducido como el excesivo están relacionados con una disminución del bienestar, mientras que el empleo moderado se vincula con un mayor bienestar. La investigación actual todavía tiene muchas limitaciones: faltan estudios de alta calidad con muestras numerosas, mediciones objetivas del empleo de tecnología digital y muestras de experiencia de bienestar.

Nous proposons ici une revue de la littérature sur la pratique des technologies numériques et le bien-être de l’adolescent. Les données générales sont en faveur d’un effet négatif mais qui reste négligeable. L’usage définit la nature de l’effet : la procrastination et la passivité sont associées à un effet plus négatif alors qu’une pratique active et tournée vers la socialisation s’associe à un effet plus positif. Les effets sont plus importants sur les marqueurs à court terme du bien-être hédonique (comme les affects négatifs) que sur ceux à long terme du bien-être eudémonique (épanouissement personnel) ; ils sont comparables chez les adultes et les adolescents, même si ces derniers sont plus fragiles. Une utilisation excessive ou à l’inverse insuffisante semble diminuer le bien-être, alors qu’une pratique modérée l’augmenterait. Cependant, la recherche actuelle manque encore d’études de qualité élevée à grande échelle, de mesures objectives de la pratique des technologies numériques et d’expérience d’échantillonnage du bien-être.

With each new technology come concerns about its potential impact on (young) people’s well-being. 1 In recent years, both scholars and the public have voiced concerns about the rise of digital technology, with a focus on smartphones and social media. 2 To ascertain whether or not these concerns are justified, this review provides an overview of the literature regarding digital technology use and adolescent well-being. 


Digital technology use and well-being are broad and complex concepts. To understand how technology use might affect well-being, we first define and describe both concepts. Furthermore, adolescence is a distinct stage of life. To obtain a better picture of the context in which potential effects unfold, we then examine the psychological development of adolescents. Afterward, we present current empirical findings about the relation between digital technology use and adolescent well-being. Because the empirical evidence is mixed, we then formulate six implications in order to provide some general guidelines, and end with a brief conclusion.


Digital technology use


Digital technology use is an umbrella term that encompasses various devices, services, and types of use. Most adolescent digital technology use nowadays takes place on mobile devices. 3 , 4 Offering the functions and affordances of several other media, smartphones play a pivotal role in adolescent media use and are thus considered a “metamedium.” 5 Smartphones and other digital devices can host a vast range of different services. A representative survey of teens in the US showed that the most commonly used digital services are YouTube (85%), closely followed by the social media Instagram (72%), and Snapchat (69%). Notably, there exist two different types of social media: social networking sites such as Instagram or TikTok and instant messengers such as WhatsApp or Signal.


All devices and services offer different functionalities and affordances, which result in different types of use . 6 When on social media, adolescents can chat with others, post, like, or share. Such uses are generally considered active . In contrast, adolescents can also engage in passive use, merely lurking and watching the content of others. The binary distinction between active and passive use does not yet address whether behavior is considered as procrastination or goal-directed. 7 , 8 For example, chatting with others can be considered procrastination if it means delaying work on a more important task. Observing, but not interacting with others’ content can be considered to be goal-directed if the goal is to stay up to date with the lives of friends. Finally, there is another important distinction between different types of use: whether use is social or nonsocial. 9 Social use captures all kinds of active interpersonal communication, such as chatting and texting, but also liking photos or sharing posts. Nonsocial use includes (specific types of) reading and playing, but also listening to music or watching videos.


When conceptualizing and measuring these different types of digital technology use, there are several challenges. Collapsing all digital behaviors into a single predictor of well-being will inevitably decrease precision, both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, subsuming all these activities and types of use under one umbrella term fails to acknowledge that they serve different functions and show different effects. 10 Understanding digital technology use as a general behavior neglects the many forms such behavior can take. Therefore, when asking about the impact of digital technology use on adolescent well-being, we need to be aware that digital technology use is not a monolithic concept.


Empirically, a lack of validated measures of technology use adds to this imprecision. 11 Most work relies on self-reports of technology use. Self-reports, however, have been shown to be imprecise and of low validity because they correlate poorly with objective measures of technology use. 12 In the case of smartphones, self-reported duration of use correlated moderately, at best, with objectively logged use. 13 These findings are mirrored when comparing self-reports of general internet use with objectively measured use. 14 Taken together, in addition to losing precision by subsuming all types of technology use under one behavioral category, the measurement of this category contributes to a lack of precision. To gain precision, it is necessary that we look at effects for different types of use, ideally objectively measured.


Well-being


Well-being is a subcategory of mental health. Mental health is generally considered to consist of two parts: negative and positive mental health. 15 Negative mental health includes subclinical negative mental health, such as stress or negative affect, and psychopathology, such as depression or schizophrenia. 16 Positive mental health is a synonym for well-being; it comprises hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. 17 Whereas hedonic well-being is affective, focusing on emotions, pleasure, or need satisfaction, eudaimonic well-being is cognitive, addressing meaning, self-esteem, or fulfillment.


Somewhat surprisingly, worldwide mental health problems have not increased in recent decades. 18 Similarly, levels of general life satisfaction remained stable during the last 20 years. 19 , 20 Worth noting, the increase in mental health problems that has been reported 21 could merely reflect increased awareness of psychosocial problems. 22 , 23 In other words, an increase in diagnoses might not mean an increase in psychopathology.


Which part of mental health is the most likely to be affected by digital technology use? Empirically, eudaimonic well-being, such as life satisfaction, is stable. Although some researchers maintain that 40% of happiness is volatile and therefore malleable, 24 more recent investigations argued that the influences of potentially stabilizing factors such as genes and life circumstances are substantially larger. 25 These results are aligned with the so-called set-point hypothesis, which posits that life satisfaction varies around a fixed level, showing much interpersonal but little intrapersonal variance. 26 The hypothesis has repeatedly found support in empirical studies, which demonstrate the stability of life satisfaction measures. 27 , 28 Consequently, digital technology use is not likely to be a strong predictor of eudaimonic well-being. In contrast, hedonic well-being such as positive and negative affect is volatile and subject to substantial fluctuations. 17 Therefore, digital technology use might well be a driver of hedonic well-being: Watching entertaining content can make us laugh and raise our spirits, while reading hostile comments makes us angry and causes bad mood. In sum, life satisfaction is stable, and technology use is more likely to affect temporary measures of hedonic well-being instead of more robust eudaimonic well-being. If this is the case, we should expect small to medium-sized effects on short-term affect, but small to negligible effects on both long-term affect and life satisfaction.


Adolescents


Adolescence is defined as “the time between puberty and adult independence,” 29 during which adolescents actively develop their personalities. Compared with adults, adolescents are more open-minded, more social-oriented, less agreeable, and less conscientious 30 ; more impulsive and less capable of inhibiting behavior 31 ; more risk-taking and sensation seeking 29 ; and derive larger parts of their well-being and life satisfaction from other peers. 32 During adolescence, general levels of life satisfaction and self-esteem drop and are often at their all-time lowest. 33 , 34 At the same time, media use increases and reaches a first peak in late adolescence. 3 Analyzing the development of several well-being-related variables across the last two decades, the answers of 46 817 European adolescents and young adults show that, whereas overall internet use has risen strongly, both life satisfaction and health problems remained stable. 19 Hence, although adolescence is a critical life stage with substantial intrapersonal fluctuations related to well-being, the current generation does not seem to do better or worse than those before.


Does adolescent development make them particularly susceptible to the influence of digital technology? Several scholars argue that combining the naturally occurring trends of low self-esteem, a spike in technology use, and higher suggestibility into a causal narrative can take the form of a foregone conclusion. 35 For one, although adolescents are in a phase of development, there might be more similarities between adolescents and adults than differences. 30 Concerns about the effects of a new technology on an allegedly vulnerable group has historically often taken the form of paternalization. 36 For example, and maybe in contrast to popular opinion, adolescents already possess much media literacy or privacy literacy. 3 


This has two implications. First, asking what technology does to adolescents ascribes an unduly passive role to adolescents, putting them in the place of simply responding to technology stimuli. Recent theoretical developments challenge such a one-directional perspective and advise to rather ask what adolescents do with digital technology , including their type of use. 37 Second, in order to understand the effects of digital technology use on well-being, it might not be necessary to focus on adolescents. It is likely that similar effects can be found for both adolescents and adults. True, in light of the generally decreased life satisfaction and the generally increased suggestibility, results might be more pronounced for adolescents; however, it seems implausible that they are fundamentally different. When assessing how technology might affect adolescents compared with adults, we can think of adolescents as “canaries in the coalmine.” 38 If digital technology is indeed harmful, it will affect people from all ages, but adolescents are potentially more vulnerable.


Effects


What is the effect of digital technology use on well-being? If we ask US adolescents directly, 31% are of the opinion that the effects are mostly positive, 45% estimate the effects to be neither positive nor negative, and 24% believe that effects are mostly negative. 4 Teens who considered the effects to be positive stated that social media help (i) connect with friend; (ii) obtain information; and (c) find like-minded people. 4 Those who considered the effects to be negative explained that social media increase the risks of (i) bullying; (ii) neglecting face-to-face contacts; (iii) obtaining unrealistic impressions of other people’s lives. 4 


Myriad studies lend empirical support to adolescents’ mixed feelings, reporting a wide range of positive, 39 neutral, 40 or negative 41 relations between specific measures of digital technology use and well-being. Aligned with these mixed results of individual studies, several meta-analyses support the lack of a clear effect. 42 In an analysis of 43 studies on the effects of online technology use on adolescent mental well-being, Best et al 43 found that “[t]he majority of studies reported either mixed or no effect(s) of online social technologies on adolescent wellbeing.” Analyzing eleven studies on the relation between social media use and depressive symptoms, McCrae et al 44 report a small positive relationship. Similarly, Lissak 45 reports positive relations between excessive screen time and insufficient sleep, physiological stress, mind wandering, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-related behavior, nonadaptive/negative thinking styles, decreased life satisfaction, and potential health risks in adulthood. On the basis of 12 articles, Wu et al 46 find that “the use of [i]nternet technology leads to an increased sense of connectedness to friend[s] and school, while at the same time increasing levels of anxiety and loneliness among adolescents.” Relatedly, meta-analyses on the relation between social media use and adolescent academic performance find no or negligible effects. 47 


It is important to note that the overall quality of the literature these meta-analyses rely upon has been criticized. 48 This is problematic because low quality of individual studies biases meta-analyses. 49 To achieve higher quality, scholars have called for more large-scale studies using longitudinal designs, objective measures of digital technology use that differentiate types of use, experience sampling measures of well-being (ie, in-the-moment measures of well-being; also known as ambulant assessment or in situ assessment), and a statistical separation of between-person variance and within-person variance. 50 In addition, much research cannot be reproduced because the data and the analysis scripts are not shared. 51 In what follows, we look at studies that implemented some of these suggestions.


Longitudinal studies generally find a complex pattern of effects. In an 8 year study of 500 adolescents in the US, time spent on social media was positively related to anxiety and depression on the between-person level. 52 At the within-person level, these relationships disappeared. The study concludes that those who use social media more often might also be those with lower mental health; however, there does not seem to be a causal link between the two. A study on 1157 Croatians in late adolescence supports these findings. Over a period of 3 years, changes in social media use and life satisfaction were unrelated, speaking to the stability of life satisfaction. 40 In a sample of 1749 Australian adolescents, Houghton et al 53 distinguished between screen activities (eg, web browsing or gaming) and found overall low within-person relations between total screen time and depressive symptoms. Out of all activities, only web surfing was a significant within-person predictor of depressive symptoms. However, the authors argue that this effect might not survive corrections for multiple testing. Combining a longitudinal design with experience sampling in a sample of 388 US adolescents, Jensen et al 54 did not find a between-person association between baseline technology use and mental health. Interestingly, they only observed few and small within-person effects. Heffer et al 55 found no relation between screen use and depressive symptoms in 594 Canadian adolescents over 2 years. These results emphasize the growing need for more robust and transparent methods and analysis. In large adolescent samples from the UK and the US, a specification curve analysis, which provides an overview of many different plausible analyses, found small, negligible relations between screen use and well-being, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. 56 Employing a similar analytical approach, Orben, Dienlin, and Przybylski 57 found small negative between-person relations between social media use and life satisfaction in a large UK sample of adolescents over 7 years. However, there was no robust within-person effect. Similarly, negligible effect sizes between adolescent screen use and well-being are found in cross-sectional data sets representative of the population in the UK and US. 58 In analyzing the potential effects of social media abstinence on well-being, two large-scale studies using adult samples found small positive effects of abstinence on well-being. 59 , 60 Two studies with smaller and mostly student samples instead found mixed 61 or no effects of abstinence on well-being. 62 


The aforementioned studies often relied on composite measures of screen use, possibly explaining the overall small effects. In contrast, work distinguishing between different types of use shows that active use likely has different effects than passive use. Specifically, active use may contribute to making meaningful social connections, whereas passive use does not. 9 For example, meaningful social interactions have been shown to increase social gratification in adults, 63 , 64 whereas passive media use or media use as procrastination has been negatively related to well-being. 6 , 8 This distinction should also apply to adolescents. 6 The first evidence for this proposition already exists. In a large sample of Icelandic adolescents, passive social media use was positively related to anxiety and depressive symptoms; the opposite was the case for active use. 65 


Furthermore, longitudinal work so far relies on self-reports of media use. Self-reported media use has been shown to be inaccurate compared with objectively measured use. 14 Unfortunately, there is little work employing objective measures to test whether the results of longitudinal studies using self-reports hold up when objective use is examined. The limited existing evidence suggests that effects remain small. In a convenience sample of adults, only phone use at night negatively predicted well-being. 66 Another study that combined objective measures of social smartphone applications with experience sampling in young adults found a weak negative relation between objective use and well-being. 67 


Effects might also not be linear. Whereas both low and high levels of internet use have been shown to be associated with slightly decreased life satisfaction, moderate use has been shown to be related to slightly increased life satisfaction. 10 , 35 , 68 However, evidence for this position is mixed; other empirical studies did not find this pattern of effects. 53 , 54 


Taken together, do the positive or the negative effects prevail? The literature implies that the relationship between technology use and adolescent well-being is more complicated than an overall negative linear effect. In line with meta-analyses on adults, effects of digital technology use in general are mostly neutral to small. In their meta-review of 34 meta-analyses and systematic reviews, Meier and Reinecke 42 summarize that “[f]indings suggest an overall (very) small negative association between using SNS [social networking sites], the most researched CMC [computer mediated communication] application, and mental health.” In conclusion, the current literature is mostly ambivalent, although slightly emphasizing the negative effects of digital tech use.


Implications


Although there are several conflicting positions and research findings, some general implications emerge:


1. The general effects of digital technology use on well-being are likely in the negative spectrum, but very small—potentially too small to matter.


2. No screen time is created equal; different uses will lead to different effects.


3. Digital technology use is more likely to affect short-term positive or negative affect than long-term life satisfaction.


4. The dose makes the poison; it appears that both low and excessive use are related to decreased well-being, whereas moderate use is related to increased well-being.


5. Adolescents are likely more vulnerable to effects of digital technology use on well-being, but it is important not to patronize adolescents—effects are comparable and adolescents not powerless.


6. The current empirical research has several limitations: high-quality studies with large-scale samples, objective measures of digital technology use, and experience sampling of well-being are still missing.


Conclusion


Despite almost 30 years of research on digital technology, there is still no coherent empirical evidence as to whether digital technology hampers or fosters well-being. Most likely, general effects are small at best and probably in the negative spectrum. As soon as we take other factors into account, this conclusion does not hold up. Active use that aims to establish meaningful social connections can have positive effects. Passive use likely has negative effects. Both might follow a nonlinear trend. However, research showing causal effects of general digital technology use on well-being is scarce. In light of these limitations, several scholars argue that technology use has a mediating role69: already existing problems increase maladapted technology use, which then decreases life satisfaction. Extreme digital technology use is more likely to be a symptom of an underlying sociopsychological problem than vice versa. In sum, when assessing the effects of technology use on adolescent well-being, one of the best answers is that it’s complicated.


This lack of evidence is not surprising, because there is no consensus on central definitions, measures, and methods. 42 Specifically, digital technology use is an umbrella term that encompasses many different behaviors. Furthermore, it is theoretically unclear as to why adolescents in particular should be susceptible to the effects of technology and what forms of well-being are candidates for effects. At the same time, little research adopts longitudinal designs, differentiates different types of technology use, or measures technology use objectively. Much work in the field has also been criticized for a lack of transparency and rigor. 51 Last, research (including this review) is strongly biased toward a Western perspective. In other cultures, adolescents use markedly different services (such as WeChat or Renren, etc). Although we assume most effects to be comparable, problems seem to differ somewhat. For example, online gaming addiction is more prevalent in Asian than Western cultures. 70 


Adults have always criticized the younger generation, and media (novels, rock music, comic books, or computer games) have often been one of the culprits. 1 Media panics are cyclical, and we should refrain from simply blaming the unknown and the novel. 1 In view of the public debate, we should rather emphasize that digital technology is not good or bad per se. Digital technology does not “happen” to individuals. Individuals, instead, actively use technology, often with much competence. 3 The current evidence suggests that typical digital technology use will not harm a typical adolescent. That is not to say there are no individual cases and scenarios in which effects might be negative and large. Let’s be wary, but not alarmist.


Acknowledgments

Both authors declare no conflicts of interest. Both authors contributed equally to this manuscript. Tobias Dienlin receives funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. We would like to thank Amy Orben for valuable feedback and comments

Gen Z and tech dependency: How the youngest generation interacts differently with the digital world

The term “tech-savvy” conjures images of young digital savants effortlessly manipulating technology in ways that people from older generations often struggle to emulate. This perception can exacerbate generational divides. With so much of our personal and professional worlds now inextricably tied to digital technology, Gen X and especially Baby Boomers can feel frustrated and intimidated by the idea of younger generations mastering complex modern technology with such ease — and usually while walking (or, unfortunately, driving!).

Are Gen Z really a generation of digital wizards, able to intuitively navigate code, design motion graphics, and maintain server infrastructure? Not quite.

CGK research on Gen Z points to a different phenomenon: Tech dependency. Gen Z lives and breathes the digital world. Social media, information saturation, and rapid advances in physical technology have assimilated into the Gen Z psyche in a fundamentally unique way. Leaders in the workplace and marketplace can use this knowledge to help Gen Z as employees, unlock their potential as customers, and increase trust across generations. 

Digital natives and internet attachment

Gen Z are true digital natives. Our State of Gen Z research studies show that 95% own a smartphone, 83% own a laptop, 78% own an advanced gaming console, and 57% have a desktop computer. 29% use their smartphone past midnight on a nightly basis. 

They thrive in this environment, but they also show signs of dependency. 69% become uncomfortable after being away from internet access for more than eight hours — and 27% can only last one hour! Engaging with online communities and absorbing digital information has become second nature to Gen Z, and severing that connection can cause distress.

The internet is Gen Z’s evergreen wellspring for entertainment, too. As our previous research shows, 73% of Boomers, 69% of Gen Z, and 59% of Millennials report using the internet primarily to access information, 72% of Gen Z access the internet mainly for entertainment: videos, apps, message boards, etc.

The attachment also extends to communication and interpersonal fulfillment. 51% of Gen Z report daily dependence on the internet for access to other people and connections. They consider themselves members in an amalgam of distinct digital communities, with friendships and even reputations to maintain—60% of Gen Z believe online reputations will be the primary determinant of their dating options in the near future.

Tech dependency is complex

This doesn’t mean Gen Z can’t be parted from their smartphones for any reason. Just 22% of Gen Z report feeling stress if they aren’t allowed to use or look at their phones while at work. This could be interpreted as Gen Z continuing to develop their preferred communication channels and expectations. 

In addition to tech expectations, Gen Z’s tech dependency also cultivates an instinct for digital authenticity that should be a benefit as they become adults and trendsetters. 48% say they want a standardized form of authentication from every person they meet online so they can trust that a person isn’t misrepresenting themselves. They are also 25% more likely than Boomers and Gen X to self-select into digital worlds where websites and apps track user data and run interference on bad actors.

Leaders have a unique opportunity to understand, adapt, and leverage Gen Z’s tech dependency in ways that benefit both Gen Z and the companies that employ and sell to them. Recognizing this new mode of interacting with technology as a paradigm shift—and not merely the latest fad or PokemonGo—will help leaders better connect generations in the workplace and beyond.

At CGK, we help leaders understand how to leverage technology across generations to drive trust, innovation, and teamwork. Reach out to us today to see how we can be a resource through speaking, research, or consulting. We look forward to hearing from you–in whatever tech way you prefer to use!

Posted: November 14th, 2019

Categories: Gen Z | Research | Technology

Written by Jason Dorsey

Jason Dorsey is an acclaimed generations and behavioral researcher and speaker. He's received over 1,000 standing ovations for his unique keynote presentations. Jason has led over 120 research studies. Adweek calls him a "research guru." His mission is to deliver new insights and practical strategies that solve business challenges for leaders.

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The Technology Influence on Youth Essay

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Today, the importance of technology makes many people prefer to scroll through the timeline rather than get a few hours of sleep. Teenagers who are deprived of controlling their free time or filtering information coming from social networks are especially susceptible to this. Absorbing all the information that the Internet introduces, teenagers tend to stop evaluating the acquired knowledge sensibly. This leads to a deterioration of mental state physical health and increases the risk of falling into the hands of fraudsters. Since the spread of the Internet provides easier access to extensive knowledge and carries hidden harm, research has been conducted to analyze the impact of the Internet on adolescents. These studies were aimed at identifying the dangers that teenagers face on the Internet, finding their causes and measures that can help overcome them. This paper examines some of the main effects of new technologies on adolescents and young people, including deterioration of the physical and mental condition, increased risk of becoming a victim of a fraudster, and the gradual loss of moral values in an entire generation.

The interest of young people in social networks has specific consequences in the form of mental and physical health problems. For example, sitting in a constantly uncomfortable posture while checking social networks leads to the deterioration of the neck and back, provoking chronic pain in these areas. Moreover, bright light contributes to the damage of vision and sleep disorders, such as lack of sleep or even insomnia. Online interactions affect a teen’s emotional state, which can never be restored when it comes to mental health. Adolescents have learned to interact with people while staying behind the curve, which disrupts communication abilities (Bibi et al. 480). This proves that when technology is used incorrectly, it harms comprehensively.

The use of social networks by young people also weakens the institution of moral education and disregard for moral values. Uncontrolled publications on the social network Instagram with a demonstration of tobacco or the smoking process lead to the popularization of smoking among teenagers. Another problem is the distribution of images with alcohol consumption in the same social network, which erases the boundaries of what is permissible for minors. In addition, the lack of filtering of images of aggression and cruelty also leads to an increase in the risks of immoral behavior among adolescents whose personality has not yet been fully formed (Krylova 498). Having a negative impact on teenagers’ vision of tobacco and alcohol, technologies, where not all information is filtered and suitable for children and adolescents, also harm moral values.

The growing popularity of technology among young people has also led to an increase in their involvement in the sex industry, leading to a rise in crime and the experience of traumatic experiences by adolescents. Viewing prohibited materials causes the appearance of curiosity, which means the risk of harmful sexual contact even with the right person is becoming possible. New technologies and poor awareness of teenagers have also led to an increased risk of sharing an intimate photo on the Internet with an unfamiliar person. The possibility of involving children in the porn industry is also greatly simplified, which sometimes happens by the voluntary consent of a teenager due to the influence of the availability of sexual content (Senadjki et al. 63). As a result, the number of sexual crimes, where the victims are teenagers, is increasing because of the lack of filtering information in social networks.

From all of the above, it follows that the Internet has a huge negative impact of unverified information on the still unformed personalities of teenagers. All this leads to the understanding that the quantity and quality of resources viewed by teenagers must be controlled. Moreover, it is worth raising awareness among young people about the dangers and risks that await them with excessive use of technology.

Works Cited

Bibi, Arifa, et al. “Effect of Latest Technology and Social Media on Interpersonal Communication on Youth of Balochistan.” Journal of Managerial Sciences , vol. 11, n. 3, 2018, pp. 475-490.

Krylova, Palageya. “The Impact of the Social Networks Having Name Instagram on Values of Youth.” Culture and Education: Social Transformations and Multicultural Communication, 2019, pp. 494-501

Senadjki, Abdelhak, et al. “The Influence of Technology on Youth Sexual Prevalence: Evidences from Malaysia.” Malaysian Journal of Youth Studies, 2017, pp. 38-68.

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• Research Article
• Open access
• Published: 03 April 2022

Young people’s technological images of the future: implications for science and technology education

• Tapio Rasa   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1315-5207 1 &
• Antti Laherto   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5062-7571 2  

European Journal of Futures Research volume  10 , Article number:  4 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Modern technology has had and continues to have various impacts on societies and human life in general. While technology in some ways defines the ‘digital age’ of today, discourses of ‘technological progress’ may dominate discussions of tomorrow. Conceptions of technology and futures seem to be intertwined, as technology has been predicted by experts to lead us anywhere between utopia and extinction within as little as a century. Understandably, hopes and fears regarding technology may also dominate images of the future for our current generation of young people. Meanwhile, global trends in science and technology education have increasingly emphasised goals such as agency, anticipation and active citizenship. As one’s agency is connected to one’s future perceptions, young people’s views of technological change are highly relevant to these educational goals. However, students’ images of technological futures have not yet been used to inform the development of science and technology education. We set out to address this issue by investigating 58 secondary school students’ essays describing a typical day in 2035 or 2040, focusing on technological surroundings. Qualitative content analysis showed that students’ images of the future feature technological changes ranging from improved everyday devices to large-scale technologisation. A variety of effects was attributed to technology, relating to convenience, environment, employment, privacy, general societal progress and more. Technology was discussed both in positive and negative terms, as imagined technological futures were problematised to differing extents. We conclude by discussing the potential implications of the results for the development of future-oriented science and technology education.

Introduction

Modern technology has had and continues to have an impact on human life and civilisation that is hard to overstate. While technology in some ways defines the ‘digital age’ of today, discourses of ‘technological progress’ may dominate discussions of tomorrow. Meanwhile, predicting the ‘real future’ and figuring out how to do it well is a field in itself, and experts within and outside specific technological fields project a wide range of predictions for the coming decades: technology has been predicted to lead us anywhere between human extinction [ 10 ] and planet-sized self-aware computers [ 32 ] within the timescale of a century, with more cautious predictions forecasting a ‘third industrial revolution’ by 2030 ([ 16 ], p. 33). Understandably, hopes and fears regarding technology may also dominate the images of the future for our current generation of young people (see, e.g. [ 3 , 36 ]).

Obviously, the fact that developments in science and technology can have great desirable and undesirable societal implications is reflected in science education. This element is central to research currents such as STSE (science, technology, society, environment—see, e.g. [ 6 ]), SSI (socioscientific issues—e.g. [ 49 ]) and the various visions of scientific literacy (e.g. [ 45 ]). Interestingly, however, these socioscientific leanings rarely address explicitly the temporal aspects of socioscientific thinking. Thus, even if local and global SSIs ‘are all related to important aspects of our future’ ([ 44 ], pp. 2–3) and environmental education should address ‘Where do we want to go?—knowledge about alternatives and visions’ ([ 28 ], p. 331), the connection to futures thinking is often unaddressed when contextualising science as societally relevant. For example, the focus of STSE has been applying science and technology in social (more or less real-world) contexts, understanding the sociocultural embeddedness of such activity and exploring holistic, value-centred approaches to evaluating technoscientific issues [ 39 ]. These aspects of scientific literacy certainly have a ‘time component’, but seem to lack a more nuanced relationship with futures. This oversight seems to reflect a general pattern in education (see, e.g. [ 24 ]).

Understandably this ‘blind spot’ has been criticised in the futures field: according to Gidley & Hampson [ 22 ],

[s]chool education seems to be mostly stuck in an outdated industrial era worldview, unable to sufficiently address the significance and increasing rapidity of changes to humanity that are upon us. An integrated forward-looking view should, now more than ever, be of central importance in how we educate. Yet there is little sign that – unlike corporations – school systems are recognising the true value of futures studies.

While the field of science education has seen some recent initiatives for developing students’ futures thinking [ 29 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 38 , 41 ], much work remains to be done in communicating between the two fields. One approach to strengthening the foothold of futures thinking in schools may be identifying practical contexts for future-oriented education and joining with natural ‘allies’ within the range of educational fields [ 23 ], or formalising the concept of ‘futures literacy’ in education, eliciting students’ images of the future, and supporting their agency [ 24 ]. A further goal may be formalising relevant capacities to also enable evaluation of learning processes and outcomes, where constructions such as ‘futures consciousness’ [ 1 ] may prove useful.

Meanwhile, young people’s future thinking has been analysed in several studies (e.g. [ 3 , 15 , 43 ]), revealing both pessimistic and optimistic future outlooks. Such studies also support the notion that technology is strongly associated with imagined future worlds—a connection embodied in science fiction, which arguably could also be called ‘technology fiction’ or ‘future fiction’, demonstrating a strong association between the concepts. Within futures studies, this link may seem obvious (see, e.g. the role of technology in the ‘future archetypes’ of [ 27 ]), but it is underrepresented in science education literature; students’ hopes, fears and expectations regarding the future are rarely addressed.

There may also exist a discontinuity between the approaches taken when addressing socioscientific thinking within education, and those taken when studying young people’s perceptions of the future. Namely, societally oriented science education research and practice may tend to be based on individual issues [ 6 ] and case studies, while research on young people’s perceptions of technology may look at technology more generally [ 7 ].

Thus our goal in this paper is to explore the following question:

What kinds of technology and what desirable and undesirable impacts of technology are present in upper-secondary school students’ images of the future?

Specifically, we examine a set of Finnish upper secondary school students’ essays that describe imagined future worlds, set in years 2035 and 2040. We analyse what technologies are present in these essays, what aspects of the world and human life are affected by technology and whether these effects are framed as positive, negative or in neutral or conflicted terms.

Our goal is to diversify the meaning of the term ‘technology’ in (young) people’s futures thinking by providing an exploratory study on expectations, hopes and fears associated with specific envisioned technological developments or the processes of technologisation in general. Finally, we conclude by discussing potential implications of the results for the development of science and technology education, and the potential of using socioscientific and sociotechnical issues as a context for futures thinking in education.

Definitions and rationale

In this paper, we examine the role of technology in upper-secondary school students’ images of the future. By images of the future we mean ‘snapshots of the major features of interest at various points in time’ ([ 42 ], p. 14). Images of the future do not necessarily contain ‘an account of the flow of events leading to such future conditions’ (Ibid., p. 14); this temporal perspective would turn an image into a scenario (which are more commonly explored in futures studies and also in future-oriented science education—see, e.g. [ 35 ]).

Images of the future are widely addressed in futures studies. However, as they exist in people’s imaginations and are by nature complex, they are difficult to fully pin down. Perceptions about the future are an integral part of one’s worldview [ 36 ], and at least in the case of nonexpert futures thinking, they can be expected to lack some systematicity. Imagined futures are often inconsistent [ 30 ] and can perhaps be better understood as reflecting the present [ 9 ]. An example of inconsistency is the common finding of a disconnection between optimistic personal and gloomy global futures [ 15 , 43 , 47 ].

In the case of images of technological futures, one’s understanding of technology is naturally a component, but only one of many. To quote Zeidler et al. [ 49 ], p. 360, ‘knowledge and understanding of the interconnections among science, technology, society, and the environment (...) do not exist independently of students’ personal beliefs’. For our purposes, no attempt to separate these components is necessary: our goal is to give voice to the image that emerges from these influences.

Defining technology is something of an arduous task, partly because the meaning of the word seems to vary greatly between contexts—it is a ‘slippery term’ ([ 5 ], p. 7). Thus for example the ‘T’ of STS (Science and technology studies) may be different from the ‘T’ of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The students who wrote the essays that form the dataset for our study were asked to address the role of technology in their image of the future, and no theoretical definition was provided with this prompt. We expect students to have relied on some commonsense meaning of the word, and for the purposes of our study, we consider technology to be related to artefacts, tools, methods and systems that are based on the application of knowledge specific to STEM subjects. We expect this meaning to correspond to some extent with students’ thinking.

This study uses a unified view of science and technology education, or scientific and technological literacy (see, e.g. [ 33 ]) that is typical in current trends of interdisciplinary and societally oriented science education, or STEM education (see, e.g. [ 12 ]). As a clarification, we do not wish to convey the idea that the relationship between science and technology is obvious and uncomplicated (see, e.g. [ 4 ]). However, this is a context-dependent issue: firstly, technology experts and technologically literate citizens are expected to gain much of their education within science education, and secondly, the boundary between science and technology tends to disappear (or lose some of its meaning) in societal and future-oriented contexts [ 26 ]. Thus, studies of students’ images of technological futures can be expected to provide insight into the expectations, opportunities and sociotechnical thinking that will eventually be reflected in both the practice of technology experts and the actions of nonexpert citizens [ 31 ].

Perceptions of (technological) futures

Research on young people’s futures thinking has shown that science and technology are typical ingredients in young people’s dystopian views [ 13 ] but also central to their hopes of sustainable or otherwise progressive futures [ 15 , 36 ]. According to Cook ([ 15 ], p. 528), young people may generally feel ‘a loss of faith in the notion that humanity is progressing towards a positive future’—and thus society is ‘due for another break through’ with the help of technology.

Similarly, according to a study by Heikkilä et al. [ 25 ], Finnish people aged 16-20 seem to feel positively about technology amid a general trajectory of societal decline—while being reserved towards many areas of technology or new technologies in general, and feeling mostly optimistic about their own futures. In their study, young people’s images of the future involved robots, entertainment technology, home automation and new ways to travel, but also considerations against using robots as workforce, and in favour of ecological energy production and general ‘high technology’. It is notable that while such attitudes towards technology may be vague and inconsistent, they are nearly universal: in a nationwide survey, the increasing significance of technology was the most common future belief for Finnish 15- to 29-year-olds [ 37 ].

In Angheloiu et al.’s [ 3 ] paper, young people (ages 16-17) were found to mostly see an optimistic future where technology is strongly embedded in people’s daily lives, improving their quality of life and creating sustainability. However, optimism was not universal: some youth were found to e.g. fear environmental or health crises that would give rise to totalitarian regimes. In fact, the authors (p. 5) recognised the motif of “trade-offs between tech that makes our lives convenient at the price of ‘ethics and morals’”. This corresponds with the common discourses of technology as a ‘double-edged sword’ or ‘Faustian bargain’ (see, e.g. [ 14 ]). Across many outlooks, young people in Angheloiu et al.’s [ 3 ] study shared worries of accelerating inequality and increasing social isolation, also caused largely by technology, with similar findings reported by e.g. Kaboli & Tapio [ 30 ].

At a population-wide scale, van der Duin et al. [ 48 ] analysed Dutch adults’ views of the year 2040 (similarly to the present paper). They focused especially on societal, economical, environmental and technological issues. In the last category, questions of robotisation, digitisation and biotechnology were specifically addressed in both likelihood and desirability. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dutch people (88%) believe science and technology to greatly advance in the next few decades, while their attitude towards technology was almost evenly split between positive, neutral and negative. Expectations of ‘making life easier’ and ‘having a positive impact’ were reported: examples include electric transport and automatised household tasks, but to a lesser extent also advances such as teleportation and colonisation of other planets. The respondents’ technological worries related to cybersecurity, privacy, behaviour prediction systems, robotisation, diminishing human contact and ‘unnatural’ outcomes, among others.

At an even wider scope, Special Eurobarometer 419 [ 18 ] found that Finnish people and Europeans in general (aged 15 and over) expect technology (or ‘science and innovation’) to contribute to many important issues in the near future. These included health, jobs, education, skills, environment, energy supply, security and inequality. Interestingly, with the exception of inequality, in all of these issues, Europeans expect ‘science and innovation’ to contribute more to progress than ‘people’s actions’. In a similar manner, general opinion on futures was more divided than the role of technology in futures, which was seen in mostly positive light (opinions were most divided on cybersecurity). This connects well with Cook’s [ 15 ] notion of technology as a ‘refuge of hope’.

More recently, in Standard Eurobarometer 94 [ 19 ] it was found that Europeans’ general future perspectives are somewhat gloomy, even if inconsistent: future generations are expected to face more difficulties, and nations are seen as going downhill, even if these feelings coexist with ‘confidence in the future’ (p. T118 in Data Annex).

Most people indeed believe that ‘science has a positive impact on society’, and especially young people feel informed with technological developments ([ 17 ], p.5). Technology is expected to make life easier, more comfortable and healthier, even if the rapid pace of development is perceived somewhat negatively by the majority. However, as Kerschner & Ehlers [ 31 ] have pointed out, these attitudes seem to be diversifying, and Eurobarometer surveys may address this issue too superficially. To quote Kerschner & Ehlers (p. 139):

In the past any diversion from unquestioned optimism was interpreted as a bad sign and attributed to the public's ignorance. Today it is often welcomed as a sign of an increasingly emancipated public.

Accordingly, we emphasise the point that critical attitudes are not simply ‘luddite pessimism’, nor are hopeful attitudes always ‘sci-fi romanticism’—and attempt in this paper to give adequate voice to both critical and enthusiastic views.

Some scholars have also argued that attitudes towards technology may be different from attitudes towards any specific area of technology [ 7 ], or that there is no single direction in which sociotechnical transitions can take us, or metric by which to judge them [ 46 ]. In this paper, we address both general and specific views of future technology with the explicit intention of diversifying discourses of sociotechnical conceptions.

Thus there is considerable even if in some ways limited literature on how people perceive technology and technological futures. Similar questions have been a matter of some discourse in educational research as well, even if not as exhaustively. For instance, Clough [ 14 ] has noted that the pedagogies around the nature of technology should address how technology may impact behaviour, thinking, privacy and values among other facets of life, Hodson [ 26 ] has discussed connections between technological and scientific literacy and sociopolitical action, and Aikenhead & Ryan [ 2 ] have long before suggested researching students’ conceptions on the many impacts technology has. Equipping students with tools to understand how socioscientific and sociotechnical issues shape their lives is certainly one of the goals of modern science education. However, as Facer ([ 20 ], p. 99) has argued,

[r]hetoric about young people’s ‘ownership’ of future socio-technical change is a familiar part of much educational and political discourse. This does not, however, translate in practice into a meaningful dialogue with young people about the sorts of futures they might wish to see emerge.

We wish to argue that while emphasising the societal relevance of science and allowing students to practice socioscientific argumentation in the classroom is worthwhile, these questions should be adequately linked to students’ perceptions of the future, and specifically their own future.

Data collection

The data for this paper consists of 58 student essays. These were collected from 57 Finnish upper-secondary students from schools in the Helsinki region. 20 essays were collected in 2018 with the title ‘A typical summer day in 2035’ and 38 in 2019 with the title ‘A typical summer day in 2040’. One student wrote two different essays in two consecutive years.

In addition to the topic, students were given the instruction to describe what kind of general and technological environment they would like to live in (i.e. a preferable future—see, e.g. [ 8 ]). They were prompted to approach this task by addressing the topics of what one’s life is like, the problems one and one’s communities face, the opportunities one perceives, what items and objects are present, what kind of the city or country lives in and the social life one leads. Finally, they were asked to fill in sentences beginning with ‘my dream is’, ‘my dream place is/has’, ‘my ideal world is/has’, and ‘my biggest fears and concerns are’.

The data collection took part within the European Erasmus+ project ‘I SEE’ (2016-2019) [ 35 ]. The essays were collected as prerequisites for volunteers attending experimental courses, i.e. before any teaching intervention took place. All essays were translated into English before analysis, with student names replaced with pseudonyms. All these students (or with underage students, also their guardian) gave written consent to participate in the research.

In order to analyse what technologies and effects of technology are present in students’ images of the future, we employed thematic analysis [ 11 ] with inductive coding. We began by cataloguing passages in the essays based on the subject matter. A total of 385 passages relating to technology were identified, forming the set of our analysis units. Typically, an analysis unit would be one to five sentences long, and describe one (although sometimes more) technology, and one (or more) effects of the technology in one continuous argument. Many passages were also found to discuss technology generally without further specification.

The effects of technology were identified strictly by what was addressed in the essays. For example, a unit that mentioned ‘greener air travel’ was seen as discussing ‘transportation technology’ with effects relating to ‘the environment’ while another passage that described casual commuting between Finland and Italy was seen linking transportation technology to increased mobility. As these examples also demonstrate, by ‘effect of technology’ we mean aspects of life, society and the world that are influenced in some way by technology or technological change. The focus on ‘technology’ and ‘effect’ is employed here for analytic simplicity: for some students, technology seemed to drive change, but for some, expectations of sociotechnical transformation were also drivers of technology. Thus ‘effect’ covers a range of causal systems. By definition, every unit of analysis discusses either one or more specific technologies or technology in general. However, in some cases, no clear effects were addressed within the text. An example is the short unit ‘I own an electric car’.

These categories were formed inductively based on multiple rounds of coding, which included some redefinition, combination and subdivision of initial coding categories. The specificity of each technology or effect (e.g. coding both greener aeroplanes and electric cars under the technology code ‘transportation’) was done by the authors with the intention of creating codes with meaningfully different contents.

Finally, we separated the analysis units into three categories, based on whether the effects of the technology were phrased in terms that convey these effects as desirable, undesirable or whether they are discussed in neutral terms. To be precise, we checked each unit against the following criteria:

Positive: Changes described or framed as mostly positive—improvement, desirable effects, solved problems

Neutral: indifference; neutral descriptions; positive and negative aspects balance out

Negative: Changes described or framed as mostly negative—problems, reluctance, disequilibration

The authors negotiated codes for unclear units until consensus was found. In addition, every unit was checked against coding criteria to eliminate mistakes and inconsistencies. The codes with less than eight occurrences were also merged with other, similar codes. Finally, to structure the presentation of our results, the final set of technologies, as well as the set of effects of technology, were grouped into 5 and 6 sections respectively (see Tables 1 and 2 ).

General observations

A somewhat wide range of images of the future presents itself in our data. Ranging from highly imaginative to conservative, and simplistic to highly detailed, the essays cover many societal transformations and systemic interactions within society, but focus mainly on technology and the routines of adult life. Derek (all student names given here are pseudonyms) imagined a post-scarcity world, Andre thought that ‘most problems are solved’ in 2035, and Damian imagined himself in the future, missing the ‘old days’ before overtechnologisation. Some students described worlds where climate change is ‘solved’, while in others’ images increasing climate issues serve as a looming backdrop. Quite interestingly, a ‘typical summer day’ in a preferable future also included a wealth of worries related to technology.

Almost all students described in some detail the technological advances apparent on a day in 2035 or 2040. For some students, these were creative, fantastic or narratively distant (ranging from a hub of sky-high glass tubes that serves as public transport to living on a Mars colony ruled by AI). For others, advances were more modest, such as longer-lasting smartphone batteries. Interestingly, a few students stated or implied that technology will likely not impact their lives: Thomas likened new innovations to useless things like ‘electric nailclippers’, while Robyn focused solely on changes in social issues such as human rights and (non-technologically) sustainable lifestyles. We also noted that some students addressed, even in length, aspects of the social construction of technology, such as risk-benefit analysis or democratisation of technological development. Such meanings students gave to technology in their essays will be presented elsewhere [ 40 ]—here we focus on the types of technology and the fields of influence, as described above.

Future technology and its effects

Overview of the analysis.

Various types of technology were identified from the data, ranging from general discussion of technology to smartwatches and from fusion reactors to neural implants. All the technology types in our coding are shown in Table 1 .

In essence, discussions of technology typically focused on everyday devices (e.g. phones, cars, household machines), technological systems and broad categories of technology (e.g. vague or general use of the word ‘technology’, energy production systems, large-scale automation of service jobs). Elements resembling typical science fiction scenarios were found to be relatively rare: these included advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and a few mentions of spacefaring or brain-computer interfaces. The full range of technologies present in students’ images was thus found to be somewhat conservative, perhaps reflecting the given time span of two decades, or perhaps due to the context of imagining one’s own future.

Despite students’ restraints in describing more imaginative or fantastical technological changes, the effects of technology show notable variation. Technology was usually seen as affecting everyday convenience (often specifically household activities), the structure of job markets and environmental issues. Technology was also associated with social life, equality, health and privacy, or connected with larger issues such as overtechnologisation or general progress (for a full list of our effect codes, see Table 2 ).

As the examples selected for Table 2 demonstrate, technology was depicted influencing the world in both positive and negative ways, again showing considerable range: at one extreme are nuclear wars and ‘loss of humanity’, at the other are happiness and ‘a better future’. In total, 244 units were coded as positive, 55 as negative and 86 as neutral. However, it is notable that students were instructed to focus on a preferable future. Thus, while valence counts are reported in Tables 1 and 2 , the goal of our exploratory study is to analyse qualitatively various themes identified in the dataset.

Let us now look at how the technology and effect codes interconnect. Our analysis revealed a somewhat complex web of connections between technology, impacts of technology, and the desirability of such developments. This is illustrated by Fig. 1 , a Sankey diagram of the entire coded dataset. As one notices by looking at the diagram, due to constraints of space we cannot in this paper give examples of every type of connection in the data. Instead, we will present some key findings in the following sections, moving from more obvious roles of technology (practical uses) to more complex ones (societal challenges and the systemic effects of technology).

The connections between technologies and their effects. The width of the lines indicates the frequency of the connection. Green colour indicates positively, yellow neutrally and red negatively depicted change

Everyday life and relationships

Some of the connections are rather unsurprising, such as the idea that smart home technology has a positive effect on everyday convenience. In fact, the ‘easier everyday life’ of the future is one of the most salient features in our data. These imagined technological advances were related to handing tasks such as household chores over to robots, paying purchases with one’s phone more often, faster commuting and self-driving cars, wireless phone chargers or a more general expectation of adult life that is not limited or burdened by mundane tasks.

Laptops would also be paper-thin and easy to carry with you. (Willow)

Unless I wanted to, I would not have to do anything to maintain my house. In the modern world, everything revolves very closely around technology. Life is easy, because everything that is ‘unpleasant’ is handled by artificial intelligence. (Andre)

While in students’ visions technology often makes life easier and frees up time for more fulfilling activities, self-actualisation was rarely seen as stemming directly from technology. Similarly, technology was depicted providing an easy way of managing one’s social life, but it could not replace social activity not mediated by technology. In fact, some students saw technology as a force driving people apart: either by creating a culture of superficial acquaintances or by allowing people to retreat into lonely virtual worlds. However, the technologies students proposed as future ways of communication were typically not radically different from technologies that exist today.

I would like to live in a technologically advanced environment where a single lightweight, easy-to-carry device could be used to accomplish a lot of things. (...) one downside to this may be that our social life is likely to become more distant. (Oliver)

Environment

Alongside hopes of easier everyday life, other technological impacts that were seen positively were those relating to the environment. As Fig. 1 clearly shows, the connection between technology and environment was overwhelmingly positive. This was sometimes discussed as ‘solving’ climate change, and sometimes simply as a more incremental move towards greener technologies:

Climate change and other environmental problems have already been solved successfully, and all energy production is renewable or utilizes, for example, fusion power. (Manuel)

Electric cars are used for long-distance travel, since they are ecological. (Claire)

Technologies relevant in overcoming environmental unsustainability included energy production, recycling, production and transportation, but also geoengineering. While some students regarded fighting climate change as a hopeless battle against indifference, in most students’ essays climate and sustainability issues were discussed as either ‘solved’ problems or tackled by ongoing action:

However, new technologies have solved many climate-related problems, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur emissions. These can now be removed from the atmosphere to the surrounding space in a controlled way. (Natalie)

Despite technological development efforts, climate change is still a very relevant problem, and we will probably have had to create global technological solutions to slow it down. (Lily)

Not all efforts to mitigate climate change were based on new technologies—other kinds of sociotechnical change, such as banning cars and increased demand for green energy production were also mentioned. However, while students often discussed climate change mitigation in their essays, almost none of them imagined any technologies related to adapting to a changed climate, with the following exception:

While the worst of the predicted climate catastrophe is yet to come, these new automated fans that follow along with you are just not enough. (Isabella)

Employment, equality and privacy

While students saw potential in technology impacting environmental issues positively, in many other societal issues technology was linked to worries and fears. These included questions of privacy, the risks and vulnerabilities of digital systems, people becoming passive consumers of entertainment or losing the ability to concentrate, increasing social inequality (often caused by the automation of entire professions) and sometimes an AI catastrophe, technological weapons or misuse of mind-reading technology. For example, in Nina’s vision, society was still recovering from ‘the big data leak of 2037’, a nationwide data security catastrophe, and in Derek’s future, people ‘spend their time brainlessly staring at the screen’.

A large portion of the essays depicted a society dealing with impending or ongoing mass unemployment of people in automated service or manual work sectors:

There are not so many jobs these days, so many people are working in research and technology, just like me. Many of the professions that required human contact in the past have been replaced by robots that do the work as well as humans, except they are cheaper and more efficient. (Zelda)

Typically more intellectual jobs were expected to remain viable, including those in science, design, cybersecurity, innovation, programming or undefined ‘new professions’. In these visions, working life was often portrayed as competitive and hectic, with a constant need to keep up with changing demands:

Through social media, you are in contact with every organization in the world, and every organization is in contact with you. If you know what is expected of you (…) you can be very successful in this world. (Aurora)

Many students foresaw technology causing inequality in the future. This effect took place mostly through the unemployment in large work sectors discussed above. Students also expressed fears that technology could marginalise less educated people or ‘widen the gap between the rich and the poor and enable the latter to be oppressed on a global scale’. In fact, even in more positive visions, the connection between technology and equality was sometimes phrased in ways that seem to imply concern:

I want to live in a place where technology benefits everyone, not just those who are more fortunate than others. (Mel)

Divisions, overtechnologisation and progress

Technology (and the increasing embeddedness of technology in human life) was also connected with what appear to be technomoral questions. In other words, technology was not only seen benefiting various stakeholders or communities differently, but also as an issue where values and beliefs surface, creating societal and cultural tensions and polarisation:

By 2040 (...) technology used to study the brain and the functional systems of digital devices will be tightly integrated, and information technology can often be used just by thinking a few thoughts. (...) Our society is divided into groups: those who see nothing bad or unpredictably dangerous in this technology, and those who oppose it completely. (Aurora)

Curiously, similar mind-reading technology was described in solely positive terms by other students, but in these cases it was contextualised as easy-to-use interfaces for smart devices. This illustrates how some students seemed to concentrate on new possibilities, while others (even in a ‘desirable future’ framing) seemed to be more trade-off oriented, especially in larger, society-wide contexts. A similar pattern is seen in the way individual innovations were often discussed as positive developments, while forecasts of larger technological trends were more often paired with some worry. This is most clearly reflected in discourses of ‘overtechnologisation’:

The biggest fear is that with the advancement of technology and electronics, we might lose our humanity (…). (Brian)

(...) I do not want to live on technology’s terms in a world that is chock-full of technology. (Emilia)

Similar developments are possibly implied by students who emphasised that they wanted to live in cities where greenery has ‘not been replaced’, or surrounded by nontechnological objects. In fact, many students had written about a balance between technology and nature (or humans), whether in conjunction with overtechnologisation or not. Relatedly, students pictured futures in which one needs to consciously ‘unplug’ from time to time to retain connection with other facets of life:

It is important to me to not spend my entire life surrounded by machines, even though they make my life easier. (Mel)

Thus, technology was associated with a dangerous allure that individuals or humankind as a whole should guard against. However, the general fear related to the direction of humanity’s technological progress is in stark contrast to ideas centred on possibilities and progress. Several students expressed general trust or hope in technology being a part of a better future, or even a sign of humanity’s success:

I am sure we will live in the era of amazing technology. We can expect huge breakthroughs in physics and information technology that can benefit everyone. The place where I want to live is a place where you can clearly see the development of technology and humanity as a whole (...). (Malcolm)

I would wake up in the morning and, instead of waking up to the news of how humanity is failing, I would wake up to news of new technology being invented. (Lianna)

Lianna’s comparison between humanity’s failings and new technology—as well as Malcolm’s pairing of development of technology and development of humanity—seems far removed from fears of overtechnologisation or loss of humanity. Furthermore, Lianna described only exponential positive progress, while in Malcolm’s image of the future technology also creates unemployment. This exemplifies how students’ images of technological futures seem to reflect views of technology in general, hopes and fears of the overall future of humanity, and mediation between such elements.

Systems perspectives and complexity of sociotechnical change

The causal links between technology and effects also showed diversity. A contrast can be seen, for example, in two quotations provided earlier: Aurora’s complicated narrative of computer-brain interfaces stirring cultural polarisation and Manuel’s straightforward recounting of solving climate change. Technological change was not always seen influencing the world in immediate and instrumentalist ways, but also through systemic, higher order effects. This is a key observation and is well worth another example. Caden saw the future becoming even more globalised via technology-driven location independence and explained this process in some depth:

As communication and traffic systems evolve, I believe that travelling and exchanging thoughts and information across the world will be very common in the future. As a result of globalization, cultures and states will become more and more alike in the future, citizens will continue to move from place to place, and states will no longer exist in their traditional form. (Caden)

These somewhat ‘historical’ narratives were constructed around both positive and negative developments. On the clearly positive side, Lex imagined technology creating prosperity which allows universal basic income, ushering in a new age of people working for passion rather than money. However, for some students the intended use of technology and its direct effects were overshadowed by collateral damage to society, as in this rather dystopic vision:

(...) our society is unstable and environmental problems are a major problem, but people are not interested, because they are locked into their own bubbles. In their own virtual worlds. Sometimes I miss the old days. (Damian)

This quotation was extracted from a relatively rich context: the rather unrecognisable sci-fi cityscape in Damian’s vision and his portrayal of himself as a protagonist who is ‘ready to change the world’ (through his scientific career, in a time where most jobs are automated) is a powerful representation of the range of meanings science and technology may take in young people’s futures views. For some students, these meanings seemed to cause some dissonance that was sometimes addressed or resolved in the essays, for example by weighing the excitement of robot waiters against the perspective of the unemployed service staff. In the case of conflicted feelings towards technology, some students reflected on their positions either by identifying as their future self or explaining their hopes and fears from the present perspective:

I am grateful for all the inventions and technologies that I get to use today. But at the same time I am a little worried – for example life is no longer as private as it used to be. In the past, I might have been somewhat shocked if I had seen the present-day society. I talk a lot about this with my friends and family, and they, too, completely agree on both the opportunities and concerns. (Claire)

I believe there are both good and bad aspects to technology, and I cannot imagine a future where only one or the other would occur. (Natalie)

Conclusions

Discussion of results.

In our study, we examined Finnish upper-secondary school students’ images of desirable technological futures. As Tables 1 and 2 and diagram 1 summarise, students’ futures thinking shows a somewhat wide range of technological futures thinking. While students’ images involve an arguably limited perspective of areas of technology that may be relevant for their futures, these technologies, and technology in general, were associated with a fairly wide range of effects. Of these effects, most salient were hopes of easy day-to-day life, advances in environmental issues, and the automation of jobs.

Students’ views correspond to a large extent to the results of earlier studies on images of the future. Technological points of interest that students examine in their essays included robots and automation, smart homes, transportation and energy (cf. [ 25 , 48 ]), technology for sustainability (cf. [ 3 , 15 ]), the role of technology in everyday life (cf. [ 3 , 17 , 48 ]), inequality and isolation (cf. [ 30 , 48 ]), privacy and cybersecurity (cf. [ 18 ,  48 ]), and technology as progress as opposed to fall or stagnation (cf. [ 15 , 25 ]). Our study builds on these results firstly by not predetermining what technologies should be addressed in imagined futures, thus allowing respondents to construct a vision based on their own ideas, and secondly by explicitly addressing the difference and the associations between technological change and its societal or individual effects. Furthermore, by utilising a written assignment as the basis of the study, we were able to elicit students’ own sense-making of these connections both in the context of specific technologies that they associated with their own future, and the wider trend of technologisation.

Our results demonstrate how some students quite readily problematise sociotechnical change, identifying moral questions, considering trade-offs, stakeholder perspectives and systemic long-term effects. Technology was given both instrumentalist and unproblematic meanings (such as increased convenience) and much wider and more abstract meanings such as general progress or a dangerous trajectory leading to overtechnologisation of life. Interestingly, positive effects were commonly attributed to incremental improvements of existing technologies or specific new innovations, while the larger trends of automation, digitalisation and technologisation were seen in more conflicted terms.

These elements in students’ essays form a somewhat multifaceted picture of the roles technology may take in young people’s futures thinking; no single element captures the multitude of these roles and meanings. For example, it is not straightforward to determine whether students’ images of technological futures are overall ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Given that students were asked to describe the kind of technological future they would like to see, it is worthwhile to note the frequency of both negative expectations and the ‘Faustian bargain’ discourse. On some level, many students seem to share the belief that positive and negative aspects go hand in hand. However, it is equally worthwhile to note that 24 student essays did not contain any negative effect codes, and of these eight discussed only positive effects. For example, Violet’s technological future featured smooth everyday life, the tools ‘to cure deadly diseases’, an atmospheric cleaner, fusion power and superhuman AI with endless uses.

The difference between purely positive and mixed images of technological futures could be attributed to variation in students’ views, but it is equally arguable that the difference may stem from students focusing to different degrees on ‘preferable’ (as opposed to ‘probable’ or ‘plausible’) futures—i.e. whether students focused on possibilities or critical perspectives. It is partly because of this interpretative ambiguity that we have here focused on analysing the ‘micro-level’ roles of technology in images of the future rather than the overall sociotechnical futures (i.e. each essay as a whole), with the intention of capturing the diversity of students’ ideas, hopes and fears about technology.

Limitations of this study and opportunities of further research

As the writing prompt given to students asked for a description of a desirable future, the strong leaning on positive effects of technology does not necessarily signify technological optimism. Similarly, asking students to think of a typical day may have primed students to think primarily of familiar (i.e. conservative) future worlds. However, perceptions of the future are complex, and any singular image is only a component of a larger whole. Further research is needed on the way individuals navigate various or even contradicting ideas about the future that they may simultaneously hold. As a related challenge, the essays analysed here can be seen exhibiting varying degrees of perceived ‘realness’ to the students. For example, one very short essay described the author living on a Mars colony ruled by an AI system. For us, this entry seemed unserious, possibly indicating some challenge in imagining (or writing about) one’s actual future. Thus, further research may need to gauge how likely students believe their imagined futures are to actually manifest.

Our study tentatively indicates that there are multiple layers of the entanglement of technology and futures that may exist in young people’s thinking: the everyday devices and general technological landscape of one’s life, various positive and negative societal transformations related to technological change, and general trends of technologisation that indicate whether humanity is ‘headed in the right direction’. Further research is needed to identify and operationalise how images of the future are constructed with relation to specific and general beliefs, hopes and fears about technology. An additional key issue unexplored by the present study is the sources from where young people draw elements of their images of the future.

Accordingly, there is much room for similar work to be carried out with various focus points. Here we have operated on the level of individual connections between technology, its effects and their desirability in order to reveal some of the complexity of students’ images of the future. Further studies could investigate students’ beliefs regarding the agents that drive sociotechnical change, the values they associate with these changes (see, e.g. [ 21 ]), and how they connect larger trends to their own lives and their own agency. For this end, this paper lays groundwork for further work carried out in the FEDORA project to discuss the desirable effects of technology in the light of students' values [ 40 ].

In addition, it may be worthwhile to examine what kinds of (science) pedagogies could meaningfully address students’ future views. Such initiatives have been carried out, for example the I SEE project (2016-2019) (see e.g. [ 35 , 41 ]) and the FEDORA project (fedora-project.eu). The implications of the present study for science education are discussed in the following section.

Finally, we note that the sampling is very likely not representative of Finnish youth, as the participants of the study were volunteers enrolling for an additional science course on futures thinking. Thus, they were likely to be interested in science subjects and think positively about scientific ideas. Our study may underrepresent views of the future that are common to other cohorts. The frequency of various perceptions among different age groups, genders and cultural backgrounds also demands broader samples and is left for further investigations.

Implications for science education

As our results demonstrate, images of the future provide a rich perspective into the interaction of students’ futures thinking and sociotechnical thinking. However, as we have shown, images of technological futures differ in many ways from each other. Therefore, science education oriented towards socio-scientific issues (SSIs) [ 49 ] should not address the future as a separate SSI but integrate it in a variety of scientific, social, cultural, ethical, environmental and economic aspects. Our results on the breadth and connectedness of students’ sociotechnical future visions give support and contribute to the holistic type of SSI teaching suggested by Rundgren and Rundgren [ 44 ] and invite science education researchers and practitioners to develop tools to help students connect their technological and socioscientific reasoning with their future outlooks and their futures thinking skills.

Such tools have already been developed for science classrooms in a few initiatives during the past two decades [ 29 , 36 , 38 ]. In Europe, future-oriented science education has been advanced in the I SEE project. The research presented here lays the groundwork and contributes to initiatives of this type by building a more nuanced understanding of students’ images of the future with relation to science and technology.

For science educators, a particularly interesting phenomenon seen in the data reported here concerns the depth of students’ spontaneous socioscientific thinking. In vastly different ideas such as Caden’s technologically united globe, Aurora’s polarising neurotechnology and Damian’s world of VR-induced indifference, a seemingly limited area of technology has effects that range well beyond the immediately obvious. This illustrates how complex and multilayered one’s future perception can be: even a singular and tightly expressed image of the future may contain a wealth of interacting beliefs and ideas. When constructing an image of the world students went beyond addressing simplistic cause-effect socioscientific discourse and engaged in thinking of systemic, higher order effects of sociotechnical change.

Thus, our results imply that constructing images of the future can be a pedagogically rich and meaningful task that taps into the transversal learning objectives in science curricula. While such future-oriented pedagogies face the challenge of addressing the inherently unknowable, in the context of science education they can also harness students’ curiosity about the future, their existing futures thinking skills, and the prevalent idea that scientific and technological ideas may come to determine the future to a great extent. As Facer (2012) [ 20 ] has argued, framing the future as ‘lived’ and ‘local’ seems to encourage students to think meaningfully and critically of sociotechnical change. This approach could also address the need to help students contextualise the ‘core knowledge’ of science, which is a focus of STSE and SSI education (see, e.g. [ 6 ]), to promote scientific literacy (see, e.g. [ 45 ]), and to give students a more nuanced representation of the nature of technology (see, e.g. Clough et al., 2013).

Our results also brought out a variety of technology-related hopes and fears that students may typically hold. In order to foster students’ agency, science and technology education should find ways to address and elaborate such feelings and escape simplistic visions that may be either dystopian, utopian or static. Teachers should help students perceive both opportunities and pitfalls in technology and, for example, problematise the naïve expectations of ‘technological fix’ for sustainability challenges. Relatedly, the diversifying attitudes towards technology should be linked to a belief in the malleability of (sociotechnical) futures through informed agency.

Our study offers evidence that upper-secondary students can be quite capable of engaging in futures thinking in a manner that combines creativity, value-based evaluation, a systems perspective and scientific literacy. However, for the purposes of science education, and the goal of understanding young people’s futures perceptions, it may prove useful for educators and researchers to distinguish between different types of sociotechnical transformations, such as complex systemic transformations (relevant from the SSI perspective) and more incremental and limited technological change (e.g. from a problem-solving, instrumentalist perspective).

Finally, it seems reasonable that practicing formulating images of desirable futures is necessary to acquire the skills needed for technology experts’ reflective practice (see, e.g. [ 4 ]), or steering technology towards sustainability. After all, ‘[w]hen students’ images of possible futures are elicited, valued and acted upon students are empowered to work towards a future they would prefer’ [ 36 ]. This goal requires further exploration of young people’s conceptions and pedagogies inspired by futures studies to evoke and evolve these conceptions—a task that we hope to have demonstrated to be feasible, fruitful and necessary. However, for this purpose there needs to be much more dialogue between the fields of futures studies and educational research.

Availability of data and materials

The dataset analysed during the current study is available in the Zenodo.org repository, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5517595 .

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Elina Palmgren for organising the data collection, Paula Pekkala for assisting in the coding process and Pia Erkko for translating the essays. We also thank Prof. Jari Lavonen for some helpful comments on the manuscript and the partners of the FEDORA project, coordinated by Prof. Olivia Levrini in University of Bologna, for their helpful comments on the design of the study. We also thank Steve Bogart for the free SankeyMATIC tool that was used for Fig. 1 . Finally, our warmest thanks to the upper secondary school students who participated in the research.

The collection of the data analysed in this study was supported by the European Commission Erasmus+ programme under Grant Agreement no. 2016-1-IT02-KA201-024373 (project "I SEE").

The analysis of the data and writing of the manuscript was supported by the European Commission Horizon2020 programme under Grant Agreement no. 872841 (project "FEDORA"). Open access funded by Helsinki University Library.

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TR carried out the data analysis and was the main contributor in all parts of the manuscript. AL planned and lead the data collection in the I SEE project and framing the research in the FEDORA project and helped with writing the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tapio Rasa .

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Rasa, T., Laherto, A. Young people’s technological images of the future: implications for science and technology education. Eur J Futures Res 10 , 4 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-022-00190-x

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• Images of the future
• Science education
• Technology education
• Student perceptions
• Future-oriented science education

From Boomers To Gen Z: How Different Generations Adapt And React To New Trends And Technologies

By: joseph taylor | march 16, 2018, demographics shine a light into how to reach different generations and when to invest in new emerging trends.

Earlier this year, we conducted a study of 420 respondents to understand the interest, acceptance and impact of new technology trends amongst Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Boomers. We asked each generation for their positive, neutral or negative views on recent emerging trends, from impact of ambient experiences to the democratisation of AI.

It comes as no surprise that different generations exhibited varying levels of interest and acceptance. The study showed that whilst younger generations were very interested and accepting of all new technological trends, older generations were very specific about their interest in forms of technological interactions and consumption. The insights presented below should provide a useful guide when it comes to assessing the appropriate marketing mix to target markets that marketers are interested in serving. Furthermore, these insights will support the assessment of prioritisation of investment into new trends versus further optimisation into existing well-established communication channels and experiences.

"Consumers have needs, human motivations and intents which compliment their gender and age profile. It would be foolish to assume that Gen Z is the only generation that benefits or makes daily use of the latest technological innovations. Far from it, generations like Gen X are utilising new and emerging technologies to enhance their daily lives. Trends like visual discovery and personal assistants reflect utilitarian motivations, seeking product or service information, as well as community-driven opinions and personal advice," says Joseph Taylor, SVP of Technology and Operations, International at Epsilon .

Here, we've isolated the demographic insights to give you a top-level view at how these different generations responded to the trends listed below. Download the whitepaper for further details about these trends.

• Camera as a platform
• VR gets social
• Evolution of social messaging
• Immersive eSports
• Contextual commerce
• Democratisation of AI
• Visual discovery
• Voice and visual
• Personalised audio
• Augmented art
• Mixing reality
• Connected intelligence
• Brain-computer interface

Gen Z were born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000. This generation is highly influenced by the connected digital environment, and are heavy users of mobile devices and social media. Overall, this cohort displayed three very interesting observations.

Firstly, their increasing appetite for media consumption reflects their regular need for inspiration, motivation and entertainment. They are the only generation to express positive sentiment towards social VR and immersive eSports.

Secondly, new technologies such as social messaging and social VR depicts the importance of social interaction and personal identity. This highly social group seeks belonging, looks for role models and uses digital technologies as an extension of their own personal identity.

Thirdly, Gen Zers were positive about 12 of the 13 trends surveyed and only neutral to contextual commerce – the integration of purchasing opportunities into their everyday interactions. Just like the Baby Boomers, they didn’t exhibit any interest in transactional enablers.

Millennials

Born between 1982 and the mid-1990s, millennial consumers grew up during an era of rapid technological development. This cohort was positive to 11 out of the 13 trends and neutral to social VR and immersive eSports. This generation prefers to enjoy sport and social entertainment as a live experience over an augmented or virtual experience.

The survey found that millennials expressed a positive sentiment towards contextual commerce, having grown up in an era of broad-target traditional advertising. They are more inclined to appreciate the benefits of more refined messaging due to the irrelevance it filters out.

Gen X were born between the period of 1961 and 1981 and their survey results showed a significant difference from Millennials and Gen Z.

Gen X reacted positively to 5 of the 13 trends, with specific interest and preferences towards technologies that truly enhanced their daily lives. Visual product discovery and the use of personal digital assistants reflect Gen X’s utilitarian needs to discover better product and services information, community-driven opinions and personal advice.

Gen X provided a negative feedback to the democratisation of AI theme. These respondents disliked the notion of experiences driven by algorithms.

Baby boomers provided a mixed set of responses, with 4 negative responses, 2 positive responses and the remaining 7 as neutral. Just like Gen X, these respondents did not show an interest in experiences influenced by AI and ML-based algorithms. Similarly, they provided a negative response to ambient experiences driven by augmented reality and virtual reality.

Nevertheless, Baby boomers are very selective in the use of new and emerging technologies. This generation is very interested in assistive technology such as personal assistants and connected intelligence that are aware of their needs and improves their daily lives. They are unsurprisingly more cautious in adopt new technologies, particularly those which have a profound impact upon traditional approaches to interaction.

In summary, this study highlighted the importance of understanding your target market before selecting the appropriate channels for communicating your value propositions. New digital trends do provide us with new contextual opportunities to drive brand engagement. “Understanding the level and type of response from generational cohorts to new and emerging technology trends, will improve a marketer’s chances of driving more effective consumer engagement and a more efficient marketing investments," says Joseph Taylor, SVP of Technology and Operations, International at Epsilon .

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The Negative Effects of Technology on Younger Generations

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The topic for my paper is the negative effects that technology has on younger generations. My topic is important because technology has become one of the fastest growing mediums of our generation and an over reliance on it can lead to undesirable outcomes. My research question is to what extent does technology have a negative impact on a younger generation’s ability to learn, work and communicate? With the advancements of the devices and software that adolescents use, it is easier for them to lose focus in class and stay on task while at work. The disciplines that I am using for this paper are; information technology(IT), science and technology, and sociology. IT is the study of using technology such as computers, cell phones and other forms of telecommunications to store and retrieve data. This discipline was chosen because it will help explain why modern technology has become a great phenomenon. Science and technology is the study of the interactions between humans and technology. This discipline was chosen because it will explain why young people have grown so attached to their devices. Sociology is the study of society’s development and social interactions. This will help explain why people communicate more with the use of technology, rather than face-to-face conversations. The negative effects of technology are technological dependency, social ineptitude and lack of communication and concentration skills, is my thesis. These negative effects are amongst some of the most common ramifications that extended use of technology can have on a person.

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Impact of Technology on Kids Today and Tomorrow.

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Hand a smartphone or tablet to a toddler, chances are they’ll figure out how to open it and make some in-app purchases in a matter of seconds. The technological boom means that children are becoming computer experts at a very young age. Elementary school kids have classes on computers, and many of them have been using their computers and tablets at home well before they started school. As kids are learning from a very young age about technology, they’re making huge strides as they grow in being prepared for schooling, future careers, innovation, and more. Your kids may even be able to help you with your online coursework at WGU!

However, with all this constant immersion in technology, there are some very real concerns about how this tech impacts childhood development. We are wandering into unknown territory as generations past have never had this same kind of constant technological immersion. But experts are starting to see what technology at this level can do to children and their future. Many of our WGU students are parents, and we want to help you

Children and technology: benefits and drawbacks.

Kids have access to screens all around them. Many homes have multiple television sets, computers, tablets, and phones for children to find and play with. And some children even have access to their own tablet and phone, starting at a young age. Research shows that the average 8- to 10-year-old spends almost 8 hours a day with a variety of media, and older children and teenagers spend around 11 hours per day with media. That time adds up, and young people are spending more time with technology than they do in school. 

Children and teenagers around the country aren’t cutting down their media consumption either. Some teenagers say they send thousands of text messages each month, stay up until 2 AM scrolling social media, and spend hours each day playing video games. And this has continued to get more intense over time, as more apps and options arise to distract kids.

While many people see the negative impact of such technology usage, there also pros. The real question is what can parents and teachers do to harness technology in useful ways, without letting kids become slaves to it and the negative effects it can have on their lives.

Negative effects.

Learn about the negative effects of technology on young children and teenagers.

Lower attention span. Teachers, parents, and students themselves find that technology can have a direct impact on attention spans. The immediacy of technological interactions make waiting harder for children. With technology, they aren’t forced to wait. They can have their TV show immediately, they don’t get bored because they always have something to entertain them. Technology moves fast, instant responses and instant gratification are impacting attention spans for young children and teenagers alike.

Increased risk and lack of privacy. Teenagers and children have grown up in a technological world, and the idea of privacy is somewhat foreign to them. Cybersecurity is a huge element of tech today, but it isn’t always perfect. Hackers and criminals can utilize technology to steal identities and harass children. Technology has created an increase of theft, privacy issues, harassment, and more. The IT industry is in need of cybersecurity professionals who can help make technology more safe for children, so consider getting started on your degree today.

Risk of depression. Teenagers and children who report more time using media are more likely to also report mental health issues . Depression is a key issue that is correlated with more media use. This has increased suicide rates and has lead to more youth needing mental health interventions like medicine and counseling. Experts believe time spent on social media or using technology can directly be tied to increased depression.

Obesity. Children who spend more time inside on their phones or tablets don’t spend as much time running and playing outside. They establish habits of technology use that doesn’t involve exercise. This can lead to increased obesity rates in children and young adults.

Falling grades. Many students today can see their grades take a hit when they spend more time with technology. Increasing technology usage means less time spent on homework, and the kind of developmental changes technology can bring can make students struggle with homework like reading and writing. 

Bullying. As technology flourishes, so does bullying. Children and teens are using technology and social media to bully other kids, without having to face them. Often called cyberbullying, this trend is increasing and getting more popular with even younger students. 

Social interaction issues. With more time spent on technology, younger children are having issues with face-to-face social interactions. Many seem to prefer to text or talk on social media as opposed to talking to each other in-person. Even when children spend time together, they may spend more time texting or on their phones than actually being together. 

Positive impacts.

While there are many negative impacts that can be connected to technology use, there are many positive impacts as well. 

Helping them learn . There are many educational elements of technology that can help children learn. From TV programming to apps on a smartphone or tablet, there are many things that children can be exposed to that can help develop their mind and teach them new things.

Classroom tool. Many teachers have started using technology in classrooms to help students learn. Technology helps teachers reach different kinds of learners, reinforce and expand on concepts, and motivate students in new ways. As more teachers embrace technology, new kinds of learning can take place in classrooms, and more students can be reached in ways that they relate with. 

Preparing for future tech careers. As technology continues to grow and flourish, there will be more demand for professionals ready to take on technology careers. When children start getting excited about technology and the potential it offers them from a young age, they’re more prepared for their future and the possibilities it offers. Children can start getting technological skills early that they’ll need in the future. If you’re a young student who has the technological background you need for an IT career, consider an IT degree to build your credentials and get you started on the path. 

Improved multitasking. Studies show that using technology helps young children learn how to multitask more effectively. While multitasking never allows you to fully focus on one area, students can learn how to listen and type to take notes, or other multitasking activities that can help them succeed in their future. 

Improved visual-spatial development. Spatial development can be greatly improved when technology like video games is used to help train young students and children. Practicing visual-spatial skills with video games can be a great way to improve abilities. Visual spatial skills are needed in a variety of things, like map reading, puzzles, and more.

Improved problem solving and decision making. Technology often presents children with problems , and helps them learn how to make decisions and solve those problems. Games and apps on tablets or smartphones can help give children the practice they need to find success down the road. When students wisely use technology they can reap huge rewards.

How adults can help.

Parents and adults can help children get the benefits of technology with less of the negative effects. Parents can start by ensuring children under two don’t use screens. They can also play along with children to include face-to-face interactions with technology, and make sure that tech doesn’t interfere for opportunities to play. Parents should also work to set appropriate boundaries including time limits, and model good smartphone use. Cybersecurity software and systems can help ensure that kids stay safe while using technology.

Parents and teachers can watch for quality apps that promote vocabulary, math, literacy, and science. Adults can help make sure kids learn about computer science and IT as part of technology use to give them opportunities for a bright tech future. 

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Millennial life: How young adulthood today compares with prior generations

Over the past 50 years – from the Silent Generation’s young adulthood to that of Millennials today – the United States has undergone large cultural and societal shifts. Now that the youngest Millennials are adults, how do they compare with those who were their age in the generations that came before them?

In general, they’re better educated – a factor tied to employment and financial well-being – but there is a sharp divide between the economic fortunes of those who have a college education and those who don’t.

Millennials have brought more racial and ethnic diversity to American society. And Millennial women, like Generation X women, are more likely to participate in the nation’s workforce than prior generations.

Compared with previous generations, Millennials – those ages 22 to 37 in 2018 – are delaying or foregoing marriage and have been somewhat slower in forming their own households. They are also more likely to be living at home with their parents, and for longer stretches.

And Millennials are now the second-largest generation in the U.S. electorate (after Baby Boomers), a fact that continues to shape the country’s politics given their Democratic leanings when compared with older generations.

Those are some of the broad strokes that have emerged from Pew Research Center’s work on Millennials over the past few years. Now that the youngest Millennials are in their 20s, we have done a comprehensive update of our prior demographic work on generations. Here are the details.

Today’s young adults are much better educated than their grandparents, as the share of young adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher has steadily climbed since 1968. Among Millennials, around four-in-ten (39%) of those ages 25 to 37 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with just 15% of the Silent Generation, roughly a quarter of Baby Boomers and about three-in-ten Gen Xers (29%) when they were the same age.

Gains in educational attainment have been especially steep for young women. Among women of the Silent Generation, only 11% had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree when they were young (ages 25 to 37 in 1968). Millennial women are about four times (43%) as likely as their Silent predecessors to have completed as much education at the same age. Millennial men are also better educated than their predecessors. About one-third of Millennial men (36%) have at least a bachelor’s degree, nearly double the share of Silent Generation men (19%) when they were ages 25 to 37.

While educational attainment has steadily increased for men and women over the past five decades, the share of Millennial women with a bachelor’s degree is now higher than that of men – a reversal from the Silent Generation and Boomers. Gen X women were the first to outpace men in terms of education, with a 3-percentage-point advantage over Gen X men in 2001. Before that, late Boomer men in 1989 had a 2-point advantage over Boomer women.

Boomer women surged into the workforce as young adults, setting the stage for more Gen X and Millennial women to follow suit. In 1966, when Silent Generation women were ages 22 through 37, a majority (58%) were not participating in the labor force while 40% were employed. For Millennial women today, 72% are employed while just a quarter are not in the labor force. Boomer women were the turning point. As early as 1985, more young Boomer women were employed (66%) than were not in the labor force (28%).

And despite a reputation for job hopping, Millennial workers are just as likely to stick with their employers as Gen X workers were when they were the same age. Roughly seven-in-ten each of Millennials ages 22 to 37 in 2018 (70%) and Gen Xers the same age in 2002 (69%) reported working for their current employer at least 13 months. About three-in-ten of both groups said they’d been with their employer for at least five years.

Of course, the economy varied for each generation. While the Great Recession affected Americans broadly, it created a particularly challenging job market for Millennials entering the workforce. The unemployment rate was especially high for America’s youngest adults in the years just after the recession, a reality that would impact Millennials’ future earnings and wealth.

Income and wealth

The financial well-being of Millennials is complicated. The individual earnings for young workers have remained mostly flat over the past 50 years. But this belies a notably large gap in earnings between Millennials who have a college education and those who don’t. Similarly, the household income trends for young adults markedly diverge by education. As far as household wealth, Millennials appear to have accumulated slightly less than older generations had at the same age.

Millennials with a bachelor’s degree or more and a full-time job had median annual earnings valued at $56,000 in 2018, roughly equal to those of college-educated Generation X workers in 2001. But for Millennials with some college or less, annual earnings were lower than their counterparts in prior generations. For example, Millennial workers with some college education reported making $36,000, lower than the $38,900 early Baby Boomer workers made at the same age in 1982. The pattern is similar for those young adults who never attended college.

Millennials in 2018 had a median household income of roughly $71,400, similar to that of Gen X young adults ($70,700) in 2001. (This analysis is in 2017 dollars and is adjusted for household size. Additionally, household income includes the earnings of the young adult, as well as the income of anyone else living in the household.)

The growing gap by education is even more apparent when looking at annual household income. For households headed by Millennials ages 25 to 37 in 2018, the median adjusted household income was about $105,300 for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, roughly $56,000 greater than that of households headed by high school graduates. The median household income difference by education for prior generations ranged from $41,200 for late Boomers to $19,700 for the Silent Generation when they were young.

While young adults in general do not have much accumulated wealth, Millennials have slightly less wealth than Boomers did at the same age. The median net worth of households headed by Millennials (ages 20 to 35 in 2016) was about $12,500 in 2016, compared with $20,700 for households headed by Boomers the same age in 1983. Median net worth of Gen X households at the same age was about $15,100.

This modest difference in wealth can be partly attributed to differences in debt by generation. Compared with earlier generations, more Millennials have outstanding student debt, and the amount of it they owe tends to be greater. The share of young adult households with any student debt doubled from 1998 (when Gen Xers were ages 20 to 35) to 2016 (when Millennials were that age). In addition, the median amount of debt was nearly 50% greater for Millennials with outstanding student debt ($19,000) than for Gen X debt holders when they were young ($12,800).

Millennials, hit hard by the Great Recession, have been somewhat slower in forming their own households than previous generations. They’re more likely to live in their parents’ home and also more likely to be at home for longer stretches . In 2018, 15% of Millennials (ages 25 to 37) were living in their parents’ home. This is nearly double the share of early Boomers and Silents (8% each) and 6 percentage points higher than Gen Xers who did so when they were the same age.

The rise in young adults living at home is especially prominent among those with lower education. Millennials who never attended college were twice as likely as those with a bachelor’s degree or more to live with their parents (20% vs. 10%). This gap was narrower or nonexistent in previous generations. Roughly equal shares of Silents (about 7% each) lived in their parents’ home when they were ages 25 to 37, regardless of educational attainment.

Millennials are also moving significantly less than earlier generations of young adults. About one-in-six Millennials ages 25 to 37 (16%) have moved in the past year. For previous generations at the same age, roughly a quarter had.

On the whole, Millennials are starting families later than their counterparts in prior generations. Just under half (46%) of Millennials ages 25 to 37 are married, a steep drop from the 83% of Silents who were married in 1968. The share of 25- to 37-year-olds who were married steadily dropped for each succeeding generation, from 67% of early Boomers to 57% of Gen Xers. This in part reflects broader societal shifts toward marrying later in life. In 1968, the typical American woman first married at age 21 and the typical American man first wed at 23. Today, those figures have climbed to 28 for women and 30 for men.

But it’s not all about delayed marriage. The share of adults who have never married is increasing with each successive generation. If current patterns continue, an estimated one-in-four of today’s young adults will have never married by the time they reach their mid-40s to early 50s – a record high share.

In prior generations, those ages 25 to 37 whose highest level of education was a high school diploma were more likely than those with a bachelor’s degree or higher to be married. Gen Xers reversed this trend, and the divide widened among Millennials. Four-in-ten Millennials with just a high school diploma (40%) are currently married, compared with 53% of Millennials with at least a bachelor’s degree. In comparison, 86% of Silent Generation high school graduates were married in 1968 versus 81% of Silents with a bachelor’s degree or more.

Millennial women are also waiting longer to become parents than prior generations did. In 2016, 48% of Millennial women (ages 20 to 35 at the time) were moms. When Generation X women were the same age in 2000, 57% were already mothers, similar to the share of Boomer women (58%) in 1984. Still, Millennial women now account for the vast majority of annual U.S. births, and more than 17 million Millennial women have become mothers.

Younger generations (Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z) now make up a clear majority of America’s voting-eligible population . As of November 2018, nearly six-in-ten adults eligible to vote (59%) were from one of these three generations, with Boomers and older generations making up the other 41%.

However, young adults have historically been less likely to vote than their older counterparts, and these younger generations have followed that same pattern, turning out to vote at lower rates than older generations in recent elections.

In the 2016 election, Millennials and Gen Xers cast more votes than Boomers and older generations, giving the younger generations a slight majority of total votes cast. However, higher shares of Silent/Greatest generation eligible voters (70%) and Boomers (69%) reported voting in the 2016 election compared with Gen X (63%) and Millennial (51%) eligible voters. Going forward, Millennial turnout may increase as this generation grows older.

Generational differences in political attitudes and partisan affiliation are as wide as they have been in decades. Among registered voters, 59% of Millennials affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with about half of Boomers and Gen Xers (48% each) and 43% of the Silent Generation. With this divide comes generational differences on specific issue areas , from views of racial discrimination and immigration to foreign policy and the scope of government.

Population change and the future

By 2019, Millennials are projected to number 73 million, overtaking Baby Boomers as the largest living adult generation . Although a greater number of births underlie the Baby Boom generation, Millennials will outnumber Boomers in part because immigration has been boosting their numbers.

Millennials are also bringing more racial and ethnic diversity. When the Silent Generation was young (ages 22 to 37), 84% were non-Hispanic white. For Millennials, the share is just 55%. This change is driven partly by the growing number of Hispanic and Asian immigrants , whose ranks have increased since the Boomer generation. The increased prevalence of interracial marriage and differences in fertility patterns have also contributed to the country’s shifting racial and ethnic makeup.

Looking ahead at the next generation, early benchmarks show Generation Z (those ages 6 to 21 in 2018) is on track to be the nation’s most diverse and best-educated generation yet. Nearly half (48%) are racial or ethnic minorities. And while most are still in K-12 schools, the oldest Gen Zers are enrolling in college at a higher rate than even Millennials were at their age. Early indications are that their opinions on issues are similar to those of Millennials .

Of course, Gen Z is still very young and may be shaped by future unknown events. But Pew Research Center looks forward to spending the next few years studying life for this new generation as it enters adulthood.

All photos via Getty Images

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It does not take policy positions. The Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research and other data-driven research. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts , its primary funder.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Generation — The Differences Between Older Generation Vs Younger Generation

The Differences Between Older Generation Vs Younger Generation

• Categories: Generation Modern Society

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Words: 655 |

Updated: 11 December, 2023

Words: 655 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., Saez, E., & Turner, N. (2014). Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility. The American Economic Review, 104(5), 141-147.
• Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 167-195.
• Levinson, D. J., & Levinson, J. L. (1996). The Seasons of a Woman's Life. Knopf.
• Mokyr, J. (2002). The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton University Press.
• Pew Research Center. (2018). Mobile Fact Sheet. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
• Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.
• Roberts, S. G. B., Dunbar, R. I. M., Pollet, T. V., & Kuppens, T. (2009). Exploring Variation in Active Network Size: Constraints and Consequences. Social Networks, 31(2), 138-146.
• Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books.
• Valenzuela, S., Park, N., & Kee, K. F. (2009). Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(4), 875-901.
• Wellman, B. (2001). Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Networked Individualism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(2), 227-252.

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Home Essay Samples Sociology

Essay Samples on Generation

Modern technology and the younger generation.

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The Values Of The Older Generation Versus New One

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Analysis of the Causes and Possible Impacts of Generation Gap in the Workplace

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The Main Characteristics of Generation X and Y in Workforce

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The Marketing Presence of Generation X and Baby Boomers

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Gap Year: An Opportunity for Youngsters

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Best topics on Generation

1. Modern Technology and the Younger Generation

2. America’s Gift To My And My Grandparents’ Generations

3. The Feeling Of Social Isolation Across Old Generation

4. The Values Of The Older Generation Versus New One

5. Analysis of the Causes and Possible Impacts of Generation Gap in the Workplace

6. The Main Characteristics of Generation X and Y in Workforce

7. The Marketing Presence of Generation X and Baby Boomers

8. Generation X and Y: Comparison of Values and Behavior

9. Generation Y Employees Compared to Other Generations

10. How to Keep Your Generation Y Employees Engaged 

11. The 1950s: The Decade of Conflict of Generations

12. The Depiction of Post War Generation The Sun Also Rises and Ernest Hemingway’s Life

13. Gap Year: An Opportunity for Youngsters

14. Leadership and Generational Gap in the Leading Job Positions

15. Research on Increasing Generation Gap in Education and Other Fields

• Cultural Identity
• Gender Roles
• Gender Stereotypes
• National Honor Society
• Social Media
• Citizenship
• Nonverbal Communication

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What Can Older Generations Learn From Gen Z?

What is unique about your generation? What attitudes about fashion, work-life balance or political activism might benefit older generations?

By Nicole Daniels

What is unique about Gen Z ? What are some of the qualities — good and bad — that define your generation? Have you found older generations accepting of those qualities?

In “ The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them ,” Emma Goldberg writes about generational differences related to work and beyond:

As a millennial with a habit of lurking on TikTok, Jessica Fain understood that skinny jeans and side parts were on the steady march toward extinction. But when Ms. Fain, who works as a product manager at a large tech company, heard that some of her favorite emojis might also be confronting retirement — namely that laughing-sobbing face — she decided to seek the counsel of her junior colleagues. “I heard that using this emoji isn’t cool anymore,” Ms. Fain, 34, said she wrote in a water-cooler-type Slack channel. “Yeah I only use that emoji at work for professionalism,” she recalled a younger employee replying. “H8 2 break it to 2 u Jess.” Ms. Fain is old enough to remember when millennials determined what was in vogue: rompers, rose pink, craft beer, Netflix and chill. Now, she gets the foreboding sense from colleagues that her AARP card awaits. Subtly yet undeniably, as generational shifts tend to go, there’s a new crop of employees determining the norms and styles of the workplace. And they have no qualms about questioning not just emoji use but all the antiquated ways of their slightly older managers, from their views on politics in the office to their very obsession with work.

The article continues:

It’s a fault line that crisscrosses industries and issues. At a retail business based in New York, managers were distressed to encounter young employees who wanted paid time off when coping with anxiety or period cramps. At a supplement company, a Gen Z worker questioned why she would be expected to clock in for a standard eight-hour day when she might get through her to-do list by the afternoon. At a biotech venture, entry-level staff members delegated tasks to the founder. And spanning sectors and start-ups, the youngest members of the work force have demanded what they see as a long overdue shift away from corporate neutrality toward a more open expression of values, whether through executives displaying their pronouns on Slack or putting out statements in support of the protests for Black Lives Matter. “These younger generations are cracking the code and they’re like, ‘Hey guys turns out we don’t have to do it like these old people tell us we have to do it,’” said Colin Guinn, 41, co-founder of the robotics company Hangar Technology. “‘We can actually do whatever we want and be just as successful.’ And us old people are like, ‘What is going on?’” Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a trend as old as Xerox, Kodak and classic rock, but many employers said there’s a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste. And some members of Gen Z, defined as the 72 million people born between 1997 and 2012, or simply as anyone too young to remember Sept. 11, are quick to affirm this characterization.

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