It’s a painful time to be a baby boomer. And, I imagine, a disorienting time to be a baby boomer business person. I know because I am from that generation, and on the younger side, at 53. This was the generation that grew up during the golden age of television, invented rock n’ roll and then rebelled against Vietnam and their parents, who were bred in the Depression, listened to Big Band music, fought in World War II and sincerely believed in the government. I mean, the generation gap couldn’t get any bigger, right? And when the baby boomers put the bell bottoms in their bottom drawers they set about making money and raising kids with the same passion they used to protest – thinking the revolution stopped with them. Sure, over the years, they slowly got out of touch with what was going on. After all who can keep up with all those new bands? And whatever happened to MTV? But you’d still see some kids wearing a Zeppelin t-shirt and that Lynyrd Skynyrd riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” never went away. And while the classic rock gods weren’t getting hundreds of millions of hits on YouTube, people were listening. It was comforting, the music lived on. Plus, it was the best music right? None of this electronic stuff composed by a grown man in a mouse head. Even the advent of computers and the Internet was no big thing. I mean, if you grew up on a Selectric it wasn’t a big deal to type a web address into a browser. Or send Yahoo mail, or Gmail. Or click a mouse. But somewhere along the way, these changes wrought by the online world didn’t slow down like they were supposed to. Just when we were getting comfortable, they sped up. Along came MySpace and then Facebook and then Twitter and then Snapchat and Vine and then you name it. And who could keep up? Well the kids, of course. Last week, our sister paper, the Los Angeles Business Journal, featured a story about 23-year-old Kris Sanchez whose UberFacts account on Twitter has turned into a multi-million dollar business based on 80 tweets a day. “Snakes kill 100,000 people every year” was one of the tweets cited. Or there’s the teenage duo, Jack and Jack, who’ve built up a following of 4 million on Vine, the social media app based on six-second videos. The teens are so popular that they are on an 18-city tour with other Vine stars. OK. So exactly who are Jack and Jack? And how about the opening acts? Name one. And while everyone who doesn’t live in a cave has a smart phone, it’s one thing to call, snap a picture, email or text on one. It’s another to download the hottest apps and actually use them with your friends. So you get it, of course. The revolution didn’t stop with us baby boomers. It just paused and now it’s taking off again, at light speed, zipping around the world like Superman – in one of those awful remakes. Let’s face it. If you don’t feel like you are being left behind, you already are. It means your antennae are down. Think back to “My Favorite Martian.” Time to lift those babies. But if only that were all. The 1960s, for all the horror over the Vietnam War, was actually a joyous time. Remember Woodstock? The Summer of Love? Cheap college tuition? And plenty of jobs for those who wanted to start working and quit protesting. Today, U.S. manufacturing is a shadow of itself as China and other emerging markets challenge us economically. And unless you are highly educated and skilled, most young people entering the labor market can barely pay the outrageous loans they took out for their hyper-inflated tuition, much less buy a house. So how much do you know about this connected new generation, with high ambition but low compensation? Those angry minority kids in the street in Ferguson? The young kids pouring over the border from Central America to a country that demographically already bears little resemblance to a half century ago? What are you going to do? Hit up your kid for a pointer or two? Take some social media course? Hire a young kid to be your marketer. Maybe. Do you even talk their language? Like I said, the generation gap. It couldn’t get any bigger. Right? Laurence Darmiento is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
