Millennials facing the future — anxiously
In an excerpt from his new book, Hal Niedzviecki interviews recent university grads, who reveal an unease about the choices they must make and a longing for the stability of an earlier era
Toronto writer Hal Niedzviecki’s book, Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the
Future, explores the consequences of our desire to “win the future” — an ideology that demands constant innovation and constant upheaval. Little in human history has prepared us for the technological and cultural shifts underway, he argues, which are changing our communities in ways we scarcely realize. One fall evening, I gather together a group of recent university graduates to talk to them about how they see the future. Their average age is 27, making them members of the so-called Genera- tion Y. Digital Natives, Gen Y, Millennials, the Me Generation — whatever you want to call them, they were born in the ’80s and ’90s, they grew up with iPods and YouTube and climate change, and their lives have been more intimately connected with technology than any generation before them.
They’re comfortable with a world of MOOCs and IRCs and LOLs in ways that many of us are not. These graduates in their mid-to-late 20s tweet and know what a torrent is. So what’s their take on it? How are they responding to the new age of future?
My informal focus group consists of nine recent university graduates. I deliberately exclude anybody working directly in IT or related high-tech fields like programming or computer science.
The gathering takes place in Toronto, the diverse city of 2.8 million where I’ve lived for the last 20 or so years.
Though Toronto, and Canada in general, was not hit as hard as the U.S. by the ongoing fallout of the 2008 economic crash, the situation here is similar to that of many cities in the eastern United States. Over the last 20 years, manufacturing jobs have disappeared; growth is to be found primarily in high tech and the service industries, and the rate of unemployment in the Toronto area hovered around 8 per cent at the time when the focus group met. The Toronto youth unemployment rate, however, was double that number at somewhere around 16 per cent. (Youth unemployment being defined as those between 15 and 24 years old and actively looking for work.)
I put out the call for participants through my online networks, asking for recent university graduates to talk to me about their “post-graduation experiences.” I am surprised, though I probably shouldn’t be, when over a hundred people volunteer for the task.
Eventually, I whittle the list down to nine people, chosen primarily based on how chatty they seem when I reach them on the phone, how willing I think they will be to talk openly about their lives. I tell them as little as possible about my ideas and the subject of my inquiries to avoid putting any preconceived notions in their heads.
I am nervous watching them file in. What will they say? Will I see in their lives the symptoms and realities of the future era? What if I’ve gotten it wrong? Maybe what I perceive as a fundamental, systemic shift is really just my Gen X nostalgia for Atari, rotary phones, and steady work at an MTV that actually played music videos?
I know beforehand that I have a very diverse group on my hands. Without particularly trying, I have assembled a cluster that has degrees in subjects ranging from biology to social work to public relations. My group is made up of different races, backgrounds, disciplines and sexualities. Some of them are first generation, born to parents who came to Canada determined to do whatever was necessary to give their children a better life. Others come from longestablished families set up in the city’s more affluent neighbourhoods. Some want kids, houses, families, careers. Others are seeking adventure, opportunities to follow their passions.
The conversation starts off with my moderator passing around pens and pads. “I just want you to jot down,” he says, “what you think of when you think of the future. Literally, just that broad, just your immediate thoughts, feelings, associations.”
The focus group participants take a moment to scrawl a few words about their free-associated vision of the future, and then we start going around the room.
Tameika Thomas, 25, and a graduate of York University with a bachelor of arts in drama and French plus a postgrad diploma in marketing and public relations: “I think about marriage, children, having a great job and loving what I’m doing. It’s the next step. I’ve been taught that my whole life, so it’s what I’m trying to do.”
Kevin Lemkay, 25, a politics junkie interning at a public relations firm: “I am someone who likes to have stability before I do anything else. So I’d really like that, at least, a stable career, something.”
Christine Barta, 29, a recent graduate with a master of social work now looking for work in her field, follows that up: “I just want a stable job so that I have the income. Travel is something that really is top of the list. It’s been something I’ve been putting off since I graduated high school because I couldn’t afford to do it. So, basically, my goal right now is get a job, make as much money as I can, take a sabbatical, and go travel for a year. And then kids.”
Jacob Daniel Babad, 26, with an arts background and an entry-level job in publishing: “I absolutely want a career at this point in my life. And that means, to me, benefits, job security, solid salary.”
“I don’t want a job, I don’t want a career,” shoots back Tommy Zheng, 27, who has a BA in psychology and alternates between working for a Chinese-Canadian community group as a researcher two days a week and working part-time as a massage therapist. “But I want financial freedom, which means for me, personally, right now, I’m working towards entrepreneurship, something that I can do for myself. I don’t want to be controlled by a corporation or employer. I want to be able to do what I want to do and make my own hours, make my money.”
How did an abstract question about the future immediately become about life goals and the obstacles to achieving them? We asked them to brainstorm about what they thought the future looked like, not where they hoped to be in two years. What happened to the billion-dollar ideas, to robots and wearable computers and bartender apps? Don’t these people want to disrupt anything? Maybe, I’m thinking to myself, I have it all wrong; maybe getting-to-thefuture-first isn’t nearly as pervasive an ideology as I’d thought.
Finally, Susheela Ramachandran, 25, with a BA in political science, speaks of embracing uncertainty and the positives of new possibilities. She gently chides the other participants on their conservatism and encourages them to think out of the box and even out of North America. “If you look worldwide, I see more opportunity. And there’s also an emergence of a very new kind of work, that’s never been before, new positions that you’ve never heard of.”
Susheela, living at home and, like most of the others, partially underemployed at a patchwork of jobs, nevertheless is convinced that she will eventually end up on the forefront of change. She cites a desire to establish herself as a consultant helping companies bring out the creativity of their employees. She ends by urging her fellow panellists to think big. “I think we are creative enough and we have enough resources compared to the rest of the world, that we can create the future that we want to.”
Reema Baber, 27, with a bachelor of science in biophysics and the only one in the group with a full-time job, at a financial services firm, says she also sees the future differently from the other eight. She speaks haltingly at first and then with growing conviction about the way we have “access to information like never ever before. And our world is interconnected like never before.” She characterizes the future “in terms of just limitless possibilities.”
So two votes for the future era. Two votes for “limitless possibilities” and creating “the future we want to.” And the rest? They aren’t saying yea or nay. In fact, they aren’t talking about the future at all. They answer the question by talking about their present-day yearning for jobs, stability, a clear path.
As Harry Au, 26, with a master’s degree in gender studies, living with his parents and employed temporarily as a part-time research assistant, puts it: “When I think of the future, it’s more about right now, how do I . . . What am I supposed to do? This is what I think about it.”
When I think of the future I think . . . What am I supposed to do? Reading over the transcript of the evening a few weeks later, I realize that the seven members of the group who see the future primarily in the context of their own economic security are neither immune to nor unaware of the rise of the ideology of a permanently disruptive future. There are plenty of clues throughout the conversation that show how they’ve absorbed the rhetoric of future and are feeling the abrupt shift.
Jacob: You’ve got to work non-stop, keep your skills sharp —
Tommy: Innovate.
Jacob: Yeah. You got to keep . . . be the cutting edge of your industry and you have to work harder than anybody else.
Tommy: Constantly . . . not just in terms of education but innovate yourself in terms of . . . like, for example, I take public speaking classes sometimes because I feel like I don’t have confidence speaking in front of a crowd, or I take theatre so that I know how to be adaptable to an environment —
Christine: It’s more social but, at the same time . . . I mean, I was never on Twitter before last summer because when I went back to college it was made explicitly clear to me that these social media outlets are things that are very much used in the workplace . . . not only being able to use them correctly but to be able to apply that in your workplace, I think, is something that’s becoming increasingly important and popular.
Kevin: And using it to not just promote your work — promote yourself and kind of showcase how you think . . . like, being in PR they can kind of beat into you that you are your own brand, and I think, speaking of social media, in particular, you kind of have to know how to sell yourself and know your story.
Innovate. Adapt. Brand yourself. Be the cutting edge. The language could not be clearer. These are people who got the memo. Sell yourself, adopt new technologies, prepare for change, be change. They understand what is expected of them in the age of future. They recognize the new role models, the new totemic companies and devices, the new pace. But they are, if not exactly resistant, then definitely uncertain. Where is this future? How do I get to it? What am I supposed to do in it?
Anxious, plaintive, almost existential questions echo not only through the evening’s dialogue but through the lives of these nine very different people. Nothing in their lives ever taught them to be part of a landscape of constant change. Nor are they sure that they can find happiness, satisfaction or even a measure of economic security chasing the future and desiring to be change. Their almost painful yearning for full-time employment, job security and the trappings of conventional domesticity they grew up with is a direct and logical response to the rise of the future doctrine: sure, we’ll be change, but first can we have some prospect of decent, meaningful work at a middle-class wage? Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future (Seven Stories Press, 2015) will be available in stores on Tuesday.
Innovate. Adapt. Brand yourself. Be the cutting edge. The language could not be clearer. These are people who got the memo. But they are, if not exactly resistant, then definitely uncertain