Complications between the generations

I never notice generational differences more than when I visit my great aunt’s house over the holidays. At various points throughout the day, there are sometimes five “generations” sitting around the dining room table talking for hours at a time.

The youngest kids don’t last long before they’re off to the den to watch television or play their Nintendo DS. They’re post-Gen Y, born in the late 90s and early 2000s, and not yet old enough to own cell phones or laptops. But they have Youtube accounts that are supervised by their parents.

My cousins, my brother, my boyfriend and I are clearly millennials. My cousin listens to music on his iPod or stand-up comedy on Youtube while he works at his first office job post-graduation. His sister has a modified work day (she works 10-6) and she loves her job because everyone in her office is young and fun. We all have our cell phones ready in our pockets, and we occassionally send and receive texts.

My great aunt’s children, who are my mom’s cousins in their 30s and early 40s, a few of whom still live at home, come and go. They visit with family and friends, they watch hockey in the basement, they hang out with their nephews in the den. They fit in somewhere between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Except for the youngest of them, they use technology but don’t really trust it enough to, say, have a Facebook profile. I actually have to talk to them at length to know what they’re up to, and vice versa.

My dad, my aunt and uncle are clearly Baby Boomers. They have Blackberrys, but either only for work or because they like to send and receive a lot of personal e-mails. Although my aunt is a Facebook stalker, she’s the exception. I’m not even sure my dad knows what Facebook, blogs, social networks and instant messaging are.

Then there’s my great aunt and her friends. They’re considered seniors, but they’re still young enough to be very involved in family, have part-time jobs to keep themselves busy, and drink everyone else under the table. But they have no idea how technology works or what the point of using it is. Most annoying to me is that they’ve never really been exposed to alternative point of views, so they are stuck in their ways.

And to this last group, although they know I’m smart and educated, I’m a socialist who has been brainwashed by the ultra-liberal unionized public school teachers.

I have been called red, pink, socialist, communist. There is no greater sin to an old conservative Liberal-voting Catholic than a family member who votes NDP (communists, to them) and thinks taxes are okay, that the war on terror breeds more terrorists, and it’s okay for same-sex couples to not only get married, but live their lives “out” in the open.

They also think I’m much younger than I am. As I drank a glass of wine, one asked me if I was old enough to drink it. “How old are you now? 17?” he asked. I’m 22, I said. He laughed as if it were no different.

If this much misunderstanding can take place within the generations of a family, it’s no wonder the Baby Boomers have trouble understanding us. I love listening to my elders tell stories about their lives, I just wish they were as willing to listen to mine.

(Not) Home for the Holidays

I finally finished my Christmas shopping today.

It was a nightmare at the Eaton Centre, and everybody seemed extra grumpy. Especially when we got stuck on the subway for almost half an hour due to some unknown medical emergency. Happy holidays!

Anyway, as I was wrapping the last of my boyfriend’s gifts and put them under the tree, I realized that we’ll be away from home for more than three days around Christmas visiting family for at least four different gatherings.

It’s also the first year I’ll be spending Christmas Day without my dad and my brother. We were at my dad’s for Christmas Day last year, so we decided to spend it at the boyfriend’s mom’s house this year. That means we’ll be opening our gifts to each other at his mom’s as well.

It all makes me long for a simpler time when, although we still made the rounds to my mom’s family in Mississuaga and Brampton, we did it together as a family. We were one unit that moved around together.

Someone suggested that the boyfriend and I do Christmas Day separately, me at my dad’s and he at his mom’s. But he’s the closest thing I have to that family unit now, so I want us to stay together. It’s the thing that will keep me as close to normal as I can get during the holidays.

Not that I don’t love all my family. Not that I don’t look forward to seeing them. But it’s all very overwhelming.

What do you guys do to stay sane over the holidays?

Gen Y is leading the way

Earlier this week, Deloitte released some results from its State of the Media Democracy survey (last year’s results are available online), which shows how people of all ages are using media and technology, and what they want from it in the future. The survey is based on research conducted on American consumers, but the state of the media democracy is probably similar here in Canada.

Not surprisingly, Millennials (ages 14-24) are leading the way again. I’m not sure the survey tells us anything we don’t already know, but hopefully it will continue to be informative for non-Generation Yers who are trying to figure out exactly how Millennials go about their lives in relation to technology and media.

Here are the few highlights I could find from various news articles:

• Millennials spend the most time with media each week, but the least amount of time watching television – we only watch 10.5 hours per week compared our older counterparts, who watch between 15 to 21.5 hours of TV per week
• 70 per cent want to be able to connect their computer to their television to view content
• Millennials watch more user-generated content than professionally-produced content online because it’s more entertaining than traditional media
• more than half of us see our cell phones as mobile entertainment devices

Once the full survey is released I will try to find some more interesting facts. In the past, the survey has also included tidbits about where each generation wants media and technology to go – I think that’s the most important thing relating to Gen Y.

However, I wonder how many of the 70 per cent who want to connect their computer to their TV to view content already do? Although I can’t connect my PC to our television, my boyfriend has an adapter for his Macbook which allows us to view content on the television screen. The picture isn’t as clear as it is on the laptop, but it’s a lot bigger and it’s great for watching TV shows and movies online.

So although we’re spending more time with other media, mostly online, we’re spending less time in front of the TV. Sure, we all have our favourite shows, but chances are we’re watching them online at our convenience instead of making our schedules revolve around the time slot of a television show.

How many hours per week do you spend reading blogs and viewing other user-generated content? How many hours do you spend watching television?

Health care: treatment vs. cure

If there’s one area my journalism career has led me to that I never thought I would be that interested in, it’s health care. I’ve always been so interested in politics, women’s issues, new media and youth culture that health care never crossed my mind.

Sort of. I did a few health care-related stories in second year, but until recently I considered them to be about women’s issues.

Redefining birth is about finding alternative ways to enjoy the natural birthing process rather than relying so heavily on medication and C-sections. No access to alternatives came out of research I did for the birthing story concerning the cost of all these alternatives, and how low-income women have no hope in hell of affording them. For the same class, I also wrote a technical piece on plan B, “the morning after pill.”

However, this year for my investigative reporting class I became really involved in an article about mental health treatment, in particular the treatment of people who are so ill they have to be held in hospital against their will to be treated. The story follows the attempts to treat a young woman’s mother, who is a paranoid schizophrenic, while explaining the ins-and-outs of the Ontario mental health care system, barriers to treatment and how some people are held in hospital without being treated for years or even decades.

Everyone who I spoke with had a really personal story about how they or their family has been affected by mental illness, and if they didn’t, then they were an expert or a doctor who was still fairly empathetic.

And while interviewing for all these articles, my sources said, “I’m so glad you’re writing about this. It doesn’t get nearly enough coverage in the media.”

I was reminded of this when I read an article about angry breast cancer survivors in a recent issue of Maclean’s. Okay, it’s not really about angry survivors, but it is about a book called After the Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors, by Emily Abel and Saskia Subramanian.

After the Cure provides voice to breast cancer survivors thrust into a netherworld of chronic disability, afflicted with symptoms that include numbing fatigue, joint pain, mouth ulcers, mobility problems and severe cognitive impairment dubbed “chemobrain.” Their distress is compounded by doctors who dismiss their complaints as psychosomatic, and once-supportive family and friends who urge them to get on with their lives.

I had never heard the term “chemobrain” before, but I knew what it was. I saw it in my mom after she underwent chemotherapy treatment for her cancer in 2004.

Since then, I’ve resented chemotherapy for how it changed her in the last months of her life. I still wonder if we would have had more time with her had she just waited it out instead of pursuing aggressive, but ultimately unsuccessful, rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

It was her choice, of course. It was her way of fighting back against the cancer. But some days it made her physically and emotionally unrecognizable.

I hope that when I become a reporter I get the opportunity to cover health issues. I might have to stay a safe distance away from cancer for a while, but I want to come back to it one day because there are issues like “chemobrain” that just aren’t out there and you don’t know about it until someone you love has it.

It’s the same with the mental health system, or ways women can avoid a medicalized birth. It’s compelling and it teaches us so much more than we thought we knew.

On Facebook and your professional life

Even at TalentEgg, the connection between Facebook (and other social networking tools) and the professional life of a student or new grad has been touched on at the blog and discussed extensively in the Egg Carton (the small – but cozy – TalentEgg office).

It seems like everyone has their own rule of thumb. Lauren thinks we should avoid using Facebook as a virtual resume and point potential employers to our other profiles and websites, such as LinkedIn or a personal site. Jaclyn Greenberg over at withmyBA.com agrees with Lauren, adding that we should keep updates regarding our job hunt or career out of our Facebook newsfeed.

However, neither of these posts have addressed the fact that some people post really unprofessional pictures and information on their profiles. And not even just unprofessional, but downright immature, crude and embarrassing.

While considering how Facebook should or should not be used as a recruiting tool, Lauren and Jaclyn, and many other young professionals, look at themselves as good examples of what a Facebook profile looks like and what risks are involved in having pictures and information about yourself available online.

Like a good little social networker, I have them both on Facebook. They both promote their business or blog, interact with friends and family, and have hundreds of pictures tagged of themselves at parties, weddings, cottages and other events. Some pictures are silly or maybe unflattering, but they’re all fun and in good taste. I tend to think my profile is similar.

But I have some friends on Facebook who should probably edit their profiles for a number of reasons, and not just for job searching purposes. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to find pictures of them and information about them that would make anybody – not just recruiters – think less of them.

Here are a few things I’ve seen that I think should be left off of Facebook:

• Participation in illegal activities, such as underage drinking, doing illicit drugs, and the destruction of public and private property
• Conversation about or affiliation with cheating or stealing, such as in your status or by joining related groups
• Excessive profanity, or any use of discriminatory or derogatory language
• Photographs of parts of your body that would normally be covered by at least a swim suit

I could also make an argument for leaving out overly sexual content, but if you’re comfortable with everyone (including your friends, family, co-workers and bosses) seeing and knowing about that part of your life, then I don’t see anything wrong with posting it.

There’s also the option of blocking certain people from seeing specific content on your profile. Go to Settings – Privacy Settings at the top right of any page on Facebook, and you can play with the settings for your profile as a whole, for certain types of content, such as pictures and status updates, or for individual people.

Most of us don’t really have profiles that require censoring, but if you’re unsure and you don’t want to censor yourself, consider taking advantage of that extremely useful option.

What do you think should be left off Facebook? Am I being too conservative, or do you agree that some things just don’t belong on public websites?

Cross-posted on the TalentEgg blog.