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> Gen X is pre Information Age, no where near as savvy and aware of how technological society works I'm Gen X, and went to public school in flyover country 30+

> Gen X is pre Information Age, no where near as savvy and aware of how technological society works I'm Gen X, and went to public school in flyover country 30+ years ago. I've never been in a classroom that didn't have a computer, or to a school that wasn't connected to the internet. I've still got a folder of old elementary school grade reports and standardized test outputs that are just dot matrix printouts from a server in the state capital. When my older siblings were teenagers (35-40 years ago), a lot of the popular teen movies included scenes in which the protagonists connected to the internet from their home computer, usually in their own bedroom. When my father was in college 50 years ago, he used networked computers to write statistics programs and submit them to a central server on campus for his psychology homework. 60+ years ago, my grandfather had a tech job in Silicon Valley. Houses were expensive back then, too. Us old folks are perfectly at home in the Information Age. It's the Disinformation Age we're having trouble with. But I have a feeling that your generation is having a worse time of it; you just don't realize it yet.

DragonStrength 4y ago
As an early 30's Millennial, my feelings about the "Disinformation Age," which may be a useful term, is my generation's internet has always been seeping with disinformation from my memories of unfettered broadband access starting in the late 90's/early 2000's, while our parents had no clue what we were up to. Many of us learned a lot of lessons over the past decades and have been horrified to see our parents fall for the tricks we did when we were 12. That does not mean we won't fail similarly to the next generation of charlatans, but I think our political moment in the US supports my view. I'll also note that what used to be "As Seen on TV" products are now marketed with Instagram-chic, so the shifting target of marketing is clear. I can't help but wonder if every generation hasn't seen the same since at least radio.

DragonStrength 4y ago

As an early 30's Millennial, my feelings about the "Disinformation Age," which may be a useful term, is my generation's internet has always been seeping with disinformation from my memories of unfettered broadband access starting in the late 90's/early 2000's, while our parents had no clue what we were up to. Many of us learned a lot of lessons over the past decades and have been horrified to see our parents fall for the tricks we did when we were 12. That does not mean we won't fail similarly to the next generation of charlatans, but I think our political moment in the US supports my view. I'll also note that what used to be "As Seen on TV" products are now marketed with Instagram-chic, so the shifting target of marketing is clear. I can't help but wonder if every generation hasn't seen the same since at least radio.