“Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household.”
That sure sounds like today. It must have been said on some discussion panel on a news program. Or maybe it was said in an adult Sunday school class. And you may have not said it the same way, but, if you are in an older generation, you have probably echoed the same thought.
Then, who actually said it? Well, it was the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, in around 400 B.C., which I saw on a recent “Smerconish” news program. So, it looks like older folks were complaining about the younger generation even way back then.
I was a kid back in the 1960s. I can remember the look on my granddaddy’s face when my cousin, with his long hair, was visiting. (Actually, I thought Cliff was pretty cool. Different to this country boy, but pretty cool.) I’m sure my granddaddy wondered if Cliff and the rest of us young kids were going to amount to anything. In the end, Cliff and the rest of our generation have done pretty much okay.
But every generation thinks that about those who are coming behind them. Will the next generation be able to carry on, or will they squander away everything that we’ve worked hard to leave to them? (That’s an arrogant statement, but to be honest, we sometimes think it.) Every older generation thinks it, even Socrates, and we do today.
But, somehow it feels different today. The “Smerconish” program was dealing with the problems employers are having in hiring and the work habits of new and younger employees. Suzi Welsh, a professor at NYU, and Michael Smerconish discussed a survey of values of Gen Z adults, those born between around 1995 and 2010, based on an article she wrote for “The Wall Street Journal.” She compared those values with the values surveyed of over 2500 employers. The results from each survey were quite different.
Welsh, in her article, wrote, “The analysis produced a number that startled my co-researchers and me. A mere 2 percent of Generation Z members hold the values that companies want most in new hires, namely achievement, learning and an unbridled desire to work.” She described values as “choices about how we want to live and work.”
So what does Gen Z value? Leading the list, according to the survey, they value “self-care, recreation, and other forms of personal pleasure.” A close second on the list was “creative self-expression and authenticity.” At the bottom of the list in the survey was learning and achievement, two of the qualities that employers value most, and, according to their survey, see very little in today’s job market.
If you’ve been around awhile, you know that the top values on the Gen Z list, while nice, probably won’t do much in helping to pay the bills that come along with the lifestyle that they desire. (Even though wealth and financial security did rank high in the survey.) So probably the need to pay those bills will rearrange some of those values down the road.
The question is, how did Gen Z come to have those values? They had to learn them from somewhere. Yep, from the generations above them, the same generations that like to complain so much about the younger folks.
But, as it is with most cases, the problem presents an opportunity. Apparently many in Gen Z don’t have the work values that are desired by employers. But there are those that do, and they have the opportunity to advance and stand out in the job and career market. And I see young people around who are doing just that. They are working hard, hustling, learning new skills, and are getting ahead, often even having their own businesses.
Because of young people like that, I think Gen Z will, like my generation, turn out okay. And years down the road, they, like Socrates and every other older generation, will wonder what will become of the younger generation.