Co-authored by Vinod Rajasekaran

Is there anything distinctive or different about young people today as a generation?

In an earlier exchange with Maclean’s columnist Andrew Potter, we suggested there is. Potter is skeptical. He replies “that ‘generations’ are highly over-rated as sociological categories, or, at least, extremely difficult entities to pin down with any rigour.”

Potter agrees that every generation has different experiences and cultural reference points. But he argues that differences in the values, goals, and ways of interacting and participating that arise from them are really part of a “stage in life.” Eventually, young people will move into other stages and, as they do, they will assume new ones – ones that are more appropriate to that stage. Eventually, he concludes, they will be a lot like “us."

We propose a different vantage point to help situate and tackle the generational difference question. Before we start asking different generations about their values, first we should ask about the impact that large-scale societal changes now underway are having on identity overall. We think societies like our own are at a tipping point, and Gen Y may be at the centre of a seismic shift.

We’ve seen major identity changes before. A good example is the rise of national identities in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before the nation-state was created, they didn’t exist. Collective identities were largely ethnic or tribal. With the birth of the nation-state, however, traditional identities were transformed and took on new characteristics: serfs became citizens; from loyalty came patriotism; and tribes grew into nations.

Many of these changes are rightly described in terms of goals and values that we can “pin down rigorously.” Indeed, the rise of national identities changed how people felt and thought about their families, communities, institutions, and leaders. They were the foundation for whole new movements in art, culture, education, and politics. They altered what people were prepared to live and die for.

Of course, these changes did not happen everywhere in the world; they affected people unevenly within various nation-states; and they usually took decades to settle in. Nevertheless, that they happened – and relatively quickly – is a hard, sociological fact.

What makes us think that change on a similar scale is underway today? The answer is that we can already say a lot about it. For the moment, let us focus on four key points.

First, the forces of social change are now moving at lightning speed, conceivably fast enough to concentrate a huge impact on a single generation – Gen Y.

Second, we know what forces are causing this change: globalization, new technologies, education, population mobility, and so on.

Third, we know a lot about the overall impact of these forces. At bottom, they are transforming our society. We are moving from one based on borders and boundaries to one based on interdependence and complexity.

The old world was far more stable and clearly defined, as were the roles and responsibilities of the people and institutions within it. In it, a well-ordered organization – whether a home, a business, civil society, government, or a nation-state – was one where everything and everyone has its proper place and its defined role.

In the new world, this kind of thinking and planning is increasingly ineffective. Borders and boundaries of all kinds are constantly shifting and changing, as are roles and responsibilities. They must be managed, negotiated, and maintained, often on a day-to-day basis. As a result, today we think of families, organizations, and societies as shifting networks of relationships or even as “complex, adaptive systems.”

This brings us to the fourth and final point: the impact of these changes on identity. As we’ve argued elsewhere, on the one hand, youth today are like other generations in that their identities are shaped by unique formative experiences and key choices about their education, careers, homes, and lifestyles. However, they are unlike earlier generations in that the conditions around making and implementing these choices have changed dramatically.

They must plan their lives in a far less cohesive world. Implementing these plans requires their constant attention and adjustment just to keep their goals, relationships, projects, and commitments aligned and moving forward. This is no small task. Nor is it a minor difference from generations who lived in a more stable and cohesive world.

In our view, identifying the skills and supports young people need to cope with this kind of change should be one of our highest priorities as a society. We cannot simply assume that a whole generation will have the internal resources to figure it out for themselves. This new world has caused an identity shift; with it comes a new challenge that demands that we rethink many of the structures, attitudes, and relationships of the old world. There is no turning back the clock.

There is real reason to believe that young people today are different. But this is not a generational issue in Potter’s sense. It is about the impact of profound societal change on the task of negotiating and managing one’s identity. Young people today didn’t choose to be different. They have simply found themselves in the midst of a major turning point in history.