10 Trends Our Generation Passed Down to Our Kids

Forty years ago, before the proliferation of e-commerce, webinars, and real-time telecommuting, the business world was a vastly different beast. As the world moved to accommodate this business model, product development and the business lifestyle helped shape our daily lives. Now those trends have become cemented in the minds of our children as they watch us manage our time and daily lives.

1. Single-Use Worldview – The widespread proliferation of space-age materials and outsourcing of labor have pushed prices on most products lower and lower, making it more cost-effective to replace an item than to repair it. An unfortunate side effect is that much of the maintenance know-how has been lost with the changing of the guard.
2. Workaholism – Computers and widespread cellular phone use have made it easier than ever to take one’s work home with them. This breakdown of the wall between the time card and time with the family have raised the likelihood of becoming a workaholic—especially if you work from home.
3. Convenience Shopping – With more and more time being spent on the go, consumers are always looking for more and more convenience. Macaroni now comes in self-serve bowls, energy comes in little plastic bottles, and everything costs more because you need it right now.
4. Anti-Social Networking – Our generation reduced a once personal aspect of business, networking, to exchanges of business cards. Today, these trends continue on social networking sites, where people feign interest through mouse-clicks instead of handshakes.
5. False Tolerance – While we were eager to teach our children that everyone is equal, we did so with such zeal that we may have neglected an important part of the message. Instead of expressing the importance of each individual, we’ve taught tolerance as a badge to be lorded over others.
6. Political Correctness – What began with good intentions has turned into a merit badge of misunderstood views of tolerance. We’ve taught our children to police their speech, but not to examine the ideas behind it, leaving them going through the motions instead of understanding why such language is wrong.
7. Device Dependence – In a society that moves as fast as information, it’s important to travel light. As technology shrinks in size, it becomes more and more multipurpose to accommodate the busy schedules of workers.
8. Microwave Attention Spans – The busier we become, the less time we have to focus on each task. This trend has affected everything from food preparation to television—hour-long dramas have given way to half-hour and even fifteen minute comedy programs.
9. The Value of an Education – We all want our children to have more than we had, so our entire generation chanted a mantra of college instead of “flipping burgers.” When our kids grew up, college educations became the norm, and now many grads are stuck in hourly food-service positions.
10. The Value of a Dollar – With the normality of convenience shopping, the necessity of keeping up technologically, and the blurring line between “need” and “want”, what was once common economic sense has gone the way of the dinosaur. If you’ve paid $5 for pre-mixed pancake batter your whole life, you’re not as likely to notice you’re overpaying for the $2 of ingredients the bottle contains.

The quickly-changing face of our culture forces us to modify the techniques our own parents used when we were children; already, so many of those parenting techniques are completely outdated. As we learn to navigate this shifting cultural landscape, we’re also changing the definition of modern parenthood in many ways.

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