Generational differences

This is a long article but I found the bits I have read so far by cherry picking really interesting 

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2026/mar/08/did-baby-boomers-eat-all-pies-john-lanchester-truth-generation-gap

especially this

'For one thing, generational divisions aren’t what they were. People my age and people my parents’ age wore different clothes, listened to different music, ate different food, lived differently and had totally different attitudes to questions of gender and sexuality. The defining experience of their youth was the second world war. The defining experience of ours was the fall of the Berlin Wall. They had different expectations about material comfort. Neither of my parents were brought up in houses with running water or electricity. The equivalent divides between generations we’re experiencing now are much smaller. We like the same clothes, music and food, and have a similar sense of what to expect from the basic material amenities of life. The one area where there is a particular division is around gender identity – and that, I think, is one reason that debate is particularly heated. It’s not that the two generations don’t agree about anything. It’s that we agree about pretty much everything else'

Parents
  • Thank you all for your replies which I have read with interest.

    As a member of the oldest generation present on this forum I have inevitably seen many major changes in society. 

    I wonder if any other generation present here has seen such drastic change. 

    I grew up without mobile phones, personal computers, Internet which have each transformed our daily lives.

    On a more mundane level supermarkets weren't very present when I was very young and my mother shopped in butchers, greengrocers and bakeries.

    Children played much more too outside in the street.

    We had a toilet at the end of the garden, coal fires and a bath in the kitchen with a geyser over.

    We didn't have a TV (or telephone) until the 1970s and black and white for a long time.

    I find the changes we have lived through quite astonishing especially how women's lives have thankfully been transformed.

  • I grew up without mobile phones, personal computers, Internet which have each transformed our daily lives.

    That’s the stand out change for me. I’m a late boomer, a child of the 60s. I find it hard to fully appreciate the scale of difference between life growing up and life as it is now with regard to the effect of technology. The internet alone has had a huge impact on human behaviour in an assortment of ways, particularly with regard to information gathering and communication. Then there are the other technologies that have contributed to medicine, space, energy, environment, archaeology, volcanology, productivity and so on.

    It concerns me that technology has enabled some countries to target others in wars without valid reason. The sheer waste of life and resources is mind boggling when technological innovation could be used in other ways. Technology could be used more widely to alleviate famine and poverty. 

Reply
  • I grew up without mobile phones, personal computers, Internet which have each transformed our daily lives.

    That’s the stand out change for me. I’m a late boomer, a child of the 60s. I find it hard to fully appreciate the scale of difference between life growing up and life as it is now with regard to the effect of technology. The internet alone has had a huge impact on human behaviour in an assortment of ways, particularly with regard to information gathering and communication. Then there are the other technologies that have contributed to medicine, space, energy, environment, archaeology, volcanology, productivity and so on.

    It concerns me that technology has enabled some countries to target others in wars without valid reason. The sheer waste of life and resources is mind boggling when technological innovation could be used in other ways. Technology could be used more widely to alleviate famine and poverty. 

Children
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