Now that new technology is coming at us all the time at such a fast pace we are learning to adjust quicker. Younger generations have grown up with the boom of technologies all around. So they adjust and adapt to new technologies quicker and easier.
Many children get cell phones when they are in grade school and if not then, they do in middle school. Our minds our still developing so it is easier to learn how to operate technologies because we have grown up around them.
Schools now now introduce technologies to young children in their classrooms. They teach you how to work new software programs or different types of computers. Even now in college there are classes that teach you how to use new softwares that are difficult to figure out. An example of this is excel. It is difficult for many people to figure out but many students are taught how to operate it in school.
In Jenkins article, "Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape, he states that in the past cultural traditions were passed from one generation to the next: the transfers constituted a primary focus of educational primary practices. This is not the case anymore because our parents don't guide us and direct us on how to use a new cell phone or computer. It is not something they have experienced and are able to pass along to us. I'm not saying this is the case for all relationships but for I believe it is for many.
Many members of the younger generations don't feel that emailing is applicable anymore because they feel that it is for "older people," they would rather communicate by instant messaging, posting on social networking sites or texting.
It is difficult to communicate with our parents and older generaitons because they do not communicate in the way that each generations prefer. Facebook brings many younger generations together but it leaves many people behind.
Technology has become so everday that they have almost become invisible to us, Jenkins suggests. This is ecspecially true with younger generations. We don't know what it would be like to only communicate the "old fashioned" ways.
Jenkins also found that research suggests that young people and adults live in a fundamentally different media enviornments, using communication technology in different ways and forming contradictary interpretations of their experiences.
Also the technology divide between younger and older generations has an effect on the workplace. Their relationship with their employees, co-workers or customers may be impacted.
Work places have noticed the digital divide and often times are frustrated and looking for solutions.
Tamera Keith wrote, "Young bosses Push Elders to Embrace Technology," which gives an example of a young boss pushing new technology on employees.
When it comes to older employees and their younger bosses, it's more than just age and technology — it can be a cultural divide, says Lisa Orrell, a generation relations expert and the author of Millennials Incorporated. Millennials are people born in 1980 or later, also known as Generation Y.
"What's happening is all of a sudden you're 53 years old and you've got a 28-year-old manager, and the millennials are very, very, very different," says Orrell.
This happens quite often now and the younger boss is more geared to the larger amount of technology use. I have noticed at my own job, how hard it is for some of the other people to attatch documents to emails or other things like that.
Orrell gives her advice to both generations in the work field. Her advice to older employees: "They have got to be a heck of a lot more flexible than they've been."
Many older people become quit stuborn in their choice to learn about new technologies. Either they are scared, under educated or don't understand. I know that there are some people out there that do want to learn and have not received the chance though.
Orrell has suggestions for younger workers, too. She thinks they should respect the experience of their elders and be willing to teach them about things like text messaging, Facebook and Twitter.
And this is a great example of this advice. At Serena Software, a company where most of the employees are older than the chief executive. Jeremy Burton, 41, decided everyone at the Redwood City, Calif., company should be on Facebook.
"I want folks to learn about the software as well as learn a bit more about the folks they work with, which I think is great for team building," Burton says.
In the article Burton explains that it took coaxing and coaching, but it did work and he even got his more senior employees along.
"There's about 95 percent of the employees up there," Burton says. "And I can see the status of probably 50, 60, 70 people right from my desk."
That includes senior manager Tom Clement's status. Clement is 55, and until his boss nudged him toward the social-networking site, he had no use for it. He did not understand it.
Now Clement has come around to Facebook, but he says there are just so many other things to learn about. "I think it just makes me wish that I could magically understand all these things," he says, referring to Twitter and other online applications. "The way you might magically understand things if you were growing up as a teenager and everyone around you were using all of them."
I just think that was a great idea that the boss came up with. It brought his employees closer and closed the digital divide a small amount.
I know that there is not always a digital divide between "our generation" and "older generations but I think most of the time there is. And it is because of the quick growth rate of technology that has been around us almost our entire lives.
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