A common misconception is that the millennials and teenagers hold the same views about everything. Even their interests may only include only cell phones and electronics. Well, there is a significant difference between these two generations of people. We are going to discuss them to cause a paradigm shift in comparison with the help of an article by Jean M. Twenge.

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Cell Phones

One vast difference between these two generations is the effects of cell phones on their lives. Millennials are a little bit older than the teenagers today, being born in the 1990s to the early 2000s. Cell phones were not apart of their lives until they were entering their teen years in 2007. That was when the first iPhone came out. Teenagers today are likely to have been with cell phones ever since they were in elementary school. The article calls the teenagers of today the “iGen.” This “iGen” likely does not remember a time when the internet was not readily available to everyone. Millennials could have been dealing with problems of the recession between 2007 and 2009 a lot more than Gen Z.

Psychological Effects

Source: UTSA

Being younger and having more availability to technology, the effects of “screen time” are more drastic on the mentally unstable adolescents. The article outlines that the suicide rates of teens have skyrocketed since 2011. Why is this? Could it be that the technology that is apart of their everyday lives, including networks like Snapchat, have tied themselves to their brains too tightly? Perhaps instead of conversating, the teens prefer to text people alternatively. Everyone older than these adolescents seemed to have gone out more in the past; for example, about eighty-five percent of Boomers and Gen X went out on dates. This number is only fifty-six percent for teenagers. The whole point of this paradigm shift is comparing the modernization of teenagers and millennials and clearly outlining the psychological causations.

Social Activity

How active are teenagers compared to millennials? For starters, today’s iGen is not connected with their parents as much as their predecessors. All they would do is sit in their rooms by themselves with no one around to worry about them. Millennials would go to parties and get together with their friends every single day. Teens are even shown not to be happy when they are on the web and gong on social media. If they spend more time on electronics, they are more likely the kids are to say that they are unhappy. Also, there is a question of whether the teens are feeling left out of things. The article says that teens often think that they “wish they had more good friends.” The homicide rates in teens have decreased, but suicide rates have increased. If they are not around anyone, then how can they ever be angry enough with anyone but themselves to harm?

Takeaway

These two groups of people have different histories and deserve some careful examinations. People who are Boomers or Gen X cannot merely group these people into one massive “youngster” group. It is hard to say what the generation after this one will look like and how they will act. Considering that toddlers are using iPads, it is safe to say that the digital age will continue.