60 Minutes: OVER PROGRAMMED "echo boomers"

[Gloria]

very structured, traditional...
We're in trouble.

We boomers were "egocentric"...these are "team players"

Christ!!

[Fovea]

1. I can't make heads or tails out of that

can you explain?

[Gloria]

6. Raised in very structured activities, never a free moment...

so very structured. Guy said "overprogrammed"...

As a boomer, I recall growing up with a big social conscience, but we were very individualistic ...

Now this guy is saying they're the most overwatched group ever, if left alone outside, they don't know what to do. Go out an play--don't know how to.

Said during the 60-70's kids were looked down on, now they're "celebrated."

Another expert, Dr. Levine--says they're looked at as "fragile",he's afraid of group think, that don't know what they're good at or not, expect to be immediate heroes, expect a lot of praise, grade inflation...etc.

[Gloria]

8. Dr. Levine--CEO said "they can't think long-range" ....anything

without instant gratification is "boring"

[bribri16]

28. Stepfford children? I agree. No thinking involved. n/t

[antigone382]

34. gee, thanks.

:eyes:

Nope...no critical thinking here...I guess you're right then.

[skooooo]

29. It just means they will rebel...

..when they figure a few things out.

[Gloria]

2. 5 out of 10 trust the government....they're like their grandparents...

"want to build things up, rather than tear things down"---when they're not shopping, I guess....

"take cues from each other"--like lemmings??

[antigone382]

43. DUers KNOW that most "news" is crap, why is this treated like God's word?

I'm 21 and I hardly EVER shop--I'm too busy studying to maintain my 4.0 (which is for ME, not my mommy or my professor, thank-you-very-much), and I certainly don't take cues from ANYBODY but myself. As for building things up: yes, as a matter of fact I am committed to building things up--like my own country and the world. In fact it's what I plan to do with my life.

But I guess I'm just fooling myself. My friends and I are really just a bunch of mindless, self-absorbed consumers that do whatever the TV tells us (never mind that the report mentioned how much time we spend online finding things out for ourselves, and how we're suspicious of packaged messages, and how advertizing campaigns don't really reach us, and how we're overachievers and the other GOOD things it said about us), so maybe I just shouldn't even try to be socially conscious or civically active. And I guess it's just easier to use viscious stereotypes against people who aren't like us than it is to really try to understand them.

:banghead:

[jpgray]

3. Yeah, the boomers are doing a great job so far

Electing Bush, sending Republican majorities to Congress, using up the world's energy without planning for the future generations, etc.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. What happened to all the hippies??

------------------------------------------------------
Save New Orleans, then save the nation!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

[BuelahWitch]

9. They became investment bankers in the '80s

;) Sorry, j/k

[Blue_In_AK]

46. Stop it...

"Aging hippie" here and I am far from an investment banker or whatever, never even came close. All this stereotyping is killing me. My youngest daughter will be 20 in a month, and she's not anything like the kids on 60 Minutes. This was propaganda, nothing more, nothing less.

[Nay]

52. Another aging hippie here, and I agree. These stereotypes suck,

since most of us hippies certainly never got to any such status. We kept our ideals -- we're the ones who went out and worked and voted for Democrats. My kid is 22 and he is a frothing-at-the-mouth Democrat who is as mad as anybody about how this country is being trashed by these amoral thugs.

Having said that, I know plenty of people my age who always went right along with what their parents/church/repub leaders said, no matter how immoral, and in my mind that makes them brainless, craven criminals. I may not be perfect, but I'm no brainless, craven criminal.

[mike_c]

10. we're still out here....

Aging, but still without the least bit of faith in The Man.

[mcscajun]

18. Many of them are right here on DU

Many. Believe it.

[girl gone mad]

7. Exactly.

I'd never count on the boomers saving this country. The only real hope we have is generation X, and unfortunately, we are slackers.

Baby Boomers failed us.

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. Oh Goody, A Baby Boomer bashing post!

:bounce: :eyes: Us greedy self serving baby boomers, it's all our fault! :cry: Gotcha! :eyes:

[jpgray]

14. That's the generation currently in power (nt)

[mcscajun]

17. There are plenty of boomers right here. So don't go making generational

war out it.

[jpgray]

20. If we're going to generalize about generations

By any measure, the boomers aren't doing so hot.

[BooScout]

26. Really?

The generations that have come after the boomers are even worse. Got an explanation for that? :eyes:

[girl gone mad]

27. My generation voted for Kerry.

Boomers voted for Bush.

Therefore, I wouldn't say we're worse. I would say that we feel helpless to do much of anything, though, rightly or wrongly. The boomers run pretty much everything.

[Pepperbelly]

37. I certainly didn't vote for Bush ...

Watch out where you're pointing that thing, girl gone mad. Preaching like this at the people here is not just silly, but vain as well.

[antigone382]

44. Well then you see the pointlessness of generational stereotypes.

Here we are in a thread where a large proportion of posters are bashing my generation (most of whom are still in grade school, for christ's sake), and then the same people get all up-in-arms when boomers get bashed (not necessarily you, since I haven't noticed any youth-bashing on your part). The fact is, the generational quirks they are so fond of pointing out are mostly hype. You can't take every person--or even most of the people--born in some randomly ascribed 20-year-period and try to tell me that they're all the same, because they aren't. Youth is youth, age is age. There it is.

[Blue_In_AK]

48. Wrong again ....

Boomers didn't vote for Bush -- "I" certainly didn't nor did any other Boomer I know. Christ ... get a grip, kids.

[meganmonkey]

5. Yeah, that was disturbing

But it made sense - they are coddled, they are all taught that they are more special than everyone else, and they are used to having everything handed to them...They never got told to 'go out and play'...

(I am not stereotyping - I am paraphrasing what the show indicated, for the record.)

The most interesting was the guy talking about hiring this generation and they have no concept of how real jobs work, and that they aren't special, and that they have to work for it...

[tlsmith1963]

13. Are They Talking About...

..the young people just entering the work force, because I have noticed that many of them don't seem to understand their job description. They seem to think that they were hired just to stand around & talk to their friends. I am not saying that *all* of them are like this, but it's frustrating to work with people like them.

Tammy

[Dudley_DUright]

12. That report was overgeneralized psychobabble

You would think 60 Min would have a more important things to report right now (like more time on the current crisis). :eyes:

[antigone382]

35. Exactly...there was very little useful information in the article.

I'm 21, and it doesn't reflect me or my friends. I don't think I know anyone who even has an ipod--if it reflected anyone, it was the upper-middle class kids, and it still overgeneralized them.

[BuelahWitch]

15. I was scratching my head at that one

Not that I'm around that many young people...but the ones I've met from that age group don't strike me that way at all. Except for the cell phone part. That report made them sound like a bunch of little robots...

[NRaleighLiberal]

16. The message was a bit garbled and unclear, but we have two

20 somethings that sort of fit into the category that was discussed. We didn't bring our girls up to follow, we brought them up to think - and so far, so good (one of ours is in the Peace Corps in Madagascar teaching English - the other is finding her way, slowly!)....we've been sickened at what we have seen at various band, orchestra, and sport events - the kids in the bubble, spoiled rotten...the best point of the piece is that most of these kids have never been told they failed at anything (even if they have), so are going to get a big surprise when reality hits. If all of these young people are followers, where are true leaders going to come from - particularly those who can think and are progressive? alarming.

At this point, my wife and I are ready to take our three dogs and cat and try to find a deserted island to move to until the nightmare is over....or perhaps Canada!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. Yeah, another baby boomer bashing thread

Not everyone was a hippie or an anti-war protestor, and about half the anti-war protestors were just along for the party.

George W. Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress were country club frat boys all their lives, even in the late 1960s.

People like David Horowitz and other "ex-leftists" were black-and-white thinkers, extremist and angry and showboating on the left in the 1960s. extremist and angry and showboating on the right today.

The people who were sincere anti-war protestors are to be found today in the ranks of teachers, nurses, social workers, and other professions that don't give you a lot of either money or political power.

Look at today's anti-war protestors. Baby boomers are in the VAST majority, with Generation Y types coming in second. The Generation Xers are largely absent.

[G_j]

24. the real flower children

were a minority, yet as you say we are very visible still in the peace movement. We are also environmentalists, artists etc.
The fact is many of us did not seek power, but those boomers who did seek and accumulate power are pulling the strings now. We did not sell out, but traveled a very different path.

[DemBones DemBones]

36. Right on! nt

[notadmblnd]

21. I came in on the middle of it.. Sheep in a pen is what I saw

sheep in a pen. Most are never even told to go outside and play( and I thought my problem was getting mine to come in). Every moment of their protected little lives is following rules and doing whatever has scheduled for them to do. We're gonna be in real trouble in the future, if it's these kids we're going to have to depend on to take america forward.

[antigone382]

39. Maybe you should see age-stereotyping for what it is, and disregard it.

Quite frankly, I'm extremely offended by a lot of the mindless youth-bashing posts I'm seeing on this thread. Who are the real robots?

[question everything]

22. Even before he talked to the doctor

as I was watching it I was thinking about how they do not show any initiatives. Groupthink, they say. Followers, not leaders, they say.

And what can we expect. We all know, or knew, these kids and their parents where every single hour is filled.

When I was a kid, my favorite time was to read a book, for hours at a time, until mom would call me for supper. Or to just roam the streets, to discover new things and new places. Yes, I know that mothers now do not let their kids to just go out and play - but to fill every single hour? To constantly bus them from one lesson to another, to coordinate car pools, etc.

But then, we've all heard about school no longer choosing a valedicotrian... schools leaving the grading system, teachers not giving an F to anyone - it would be a traumatic experience. Teachers are not allowed to correct the English of an assigned paper - will hurt their feelings..

[antigone382]

38. Your childhood sounds a lot like mine, and I'm 21.

Well, I didn't spend much time roaming the streets, since I spent most of my life on a farm...call it following a creek, then. I read books and National Geographic, rode horses, climbed trees, and played G.I. Joe with my five brothers.

The report wasn't accurate; MOST kids did not have every second delegated to some planned activity, though perhaps a few did. And my school did indeed have a valedictorian (which you mispelled, btw), kids DID get F's, and grammar WAS graded. My friends are good people, and while they aren't all as politically active as I'd like them to be, they aren't just a bunch of mindless robots hooked up to cell-phones and ipods who can't stand criticism. It's wrong to stereotype race and gender, so why is age OK?

[mccoyn]

23. This just in.

There are few widly distinguished young leaders. Young people lack the knowledge of the world that older people have. Young people (gasp) respect the leadership of the older people around them. They are clearly an inferior generation.

Can we please not compare acorns to oak trees?

[BamaGirl]

25. It was interesting...any other Gen X parents here?

My oldest two were born right after the unofficial cut off years of these "echo boomers". I don't do structured, traditional, group think lol. The older parents I know (of my kids friends') do seem to schedule them half death, but the younger set...eh, we have slacking to do. ;) I can tell my kids to go play and they can entertain themselves just fine.

Those kids they were talking about are a complete mystery to me. Although we did have a hilarious conversation about living w/out dvd's, cable, ps2, and the internet today. They do like the gadgets. :eyes:

[alphafemale]

32. One just off to college. One Soph in H.S.

They were never coddled or given every whim.

They were encouraged to be creative. Getting the latest gadgets was never priority.

Thinking for one's own self was encouraged over going along to get along.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. I recently heard a Generation X mother make disparaging remarks about

some of her peers and the way they over-protect and over-schedule their children.

[justabob]

56. I can't remember the book now, but

it talked about how Gen Xers were the 'latch key kids' of the 80's and now many overcompensate so their kids have a different experience than they had. Its a bit of an over reaction, but it makes sense in a way. I am pleased that I am not one of those, but I can understand.

[BamaGirl]

60. Hey I was one of those kids lol!

And I am a sahm because of it, I will admit. And I am very different from my mom (who's a Boomer). I had no rules growing up. I mean, none, I was completely on my own. That seemed pretty typical of the society I grew up in. I make a very conscious effort not to go crazy in my reaction to that now though lol.

The book...Straus and Howe maybe? They have several on generations.

[BamaGirl]

61. The over scheduling drives me up the wall

Most of the parents I know who do it are much older than me. They're also financially in a much better position than us (more years working, and we are suddenly on the hoity toity side of town :eyes:), so that no doubt contributes to it.

Overprotecting...well I see that from everyone. Partly, you can blame the news for that. Also, with my friends who are my age it seems to be a reaction to the lack of rules we had as kids. My theory is that mostly you just do the opposite of what your parents did lol.

[BamaGirl]

62. How old was she

Lydia? If you mind my asking.

[justabob]

55. Me

My experience sounds like yours. Most of the parents in my son's class are older than me by about 5-10 years and they all have activities from the time school gets out. Just try and invite a child over after school.... it takes two weeks at least to coordinate. The few parents I know who are my age or younger, that is not so. Its interesting, I had never really thought about it til you mentioned it.

[Skip Intro]

30. (something) tells them what to think, say and do

and they go out and think, say and do it

No need to think if you're doing "God's" work.

[Cocoa]

31. be skeptical of this kind of stuff

this stuff is approved for entertainment purposes only, like horoscopes and David Brooks's demographic analyses.

[antigone382]

45. Thank you! Someone sees it for what it is.

I never saw the point in labels like "baby boomer" "gen-Xer," etc. anyway.

[antigone382]

33. Oh Jesus...I'm an "echo boomer"--it's a meaningless label!

Yes, I watched that story, and I found it for the most part generalized and insipid...and Dr. Levine was the worst! Please tell me that DUers at least can see through his shit; he said the exact same things they've said about every generation from the beginning today! "These kids today, they don't think things through all the way, they expect too much of their employers, they don't have an appreciation for hard work and patience, blah blah frickin' blah..." Point to any group of young people that hasn't entered the workforce with naively high expectations of how they'll be treated.

The "report" just took a bunch of vague stereotypes and applied them to a third of the population, myself included. I don't even know what "Gymboree" was, yet it was supposedly a defining moment of my childhood. I don't have an ipod, I don't have trophies lining my walls, and I'm certainly NOT a group-think kind of person, and never have been. They're trying to package a nice, shiny, commercial representation of us, and of course it reflects reality rather poorly...don't get too worried about it.

Edited because I DID learn how to spell in High School.

[nonconformist]

40. They stereotype every generation

I'm a Gen X'er, and if you listened to the stereotypes you believe I'm lazy, cynical, self-loathing and largely don't care or get involved in politics. Please.

Well, I *am* pretty cynical...

[antigone382]

47. I know, I just don't expect DUers to fall for this crap.

Maybe I should be more cynical, like you. ;)

[CountAllVotes]

41. yep

This "generation" they are showing has had it good. They have never known poverty nor need. The ones where I live had parents that bought them a house to live in while paying for them to attend college. They KNOW everything alright.

:argh:

Turning off this stupidic box! :argh:

[omega minimo]

42. "Visual Motor Ecstasy"

"Groupthink is stifling initiative"

"They can't think longrange"

............what's next?

2 Minutes Hate!

[antigone382]

50. Ugh, I give up.

Evidently TV has suddenly become an unimpeachable vehicle of truth, particularly when it concerns identifying the precise, defining characteristics shared by every single baby born within a twenty-year period.

[omega minimo]

53. Please read the next one

You were lucky antigone382. Having that connection with nature makes all the difference.

:hug:

[omega minimo]

49. Okay all right already-- the piece was about the extreme results of

the modern hyper-active, hyper-mediated, hyper-scheduled, hyper-acquisitive, hyper-competitive lifestyle. Cuz "fitting in" and being a good little conformist is just another form of competition-- these parents are competing for having the most "well-adjusted" clone of all. The most special of the team players. Rah!

The piece didn't mention all the fake food and heavy-duty medications these kids ingest.

This thread reflects that those who don't have all the hottest trendy gadgets and junk and who live near a creek to amble by are the lucky ones....

[Tsiyu]

54. I didn't see the program

I was at work, where there are a few dozen "echo boomers" who bust their asses, care about their country and other humans and know how to socialize and be polite.

60 Minutes is irresponsible and opportunistic to run this piece without showing the other side: all the kids out there making a difference.

Levine sounds like a right wing hack and the DUers who are buying this shit must not actually KNOW any young people.

[U4ikLefty]

57. Sorry, but I returned to college 2 years ago to complete my

long sought-after engineering degree. The last time I was in college was in 1991...when I dropped out to work.

Lemme tell ya...these kids today are MUCH more real & together than we were in the 80's. The problem is that us parents haven't secured a good future for America's youth, so we blame them for their lack of vision...pretty weak shit!!!

Just like in the NOLA flood, we blame the victim when the truth is too hard to take.

[Behind the Aegis]

58. Generalizations

I didn't see the program, but I have worked in higher education. These theories are helpful to us when we market our schools, programs, residence halls, etc. The theories are more of a guideline, then 'gospel.' I have yet to hear the term "echo boomers," but I am guess it is similar to what we call "Millenial" students. People are individuals, so there will always be anomolies when discussing groups of people. However, the generalizations can help us determine courses of actions. The real problem is when people cannot see that things like this are 'guidelines.'

[tomg]

59. That entire segment was absolutely

ludicrous. Coming after the segment with Mayor Nagin, the "Echo Boomer" thing with its emphasis on "echo boomers" (wtf) as essentially, mindless, group-think consumers versus "baby boomers" as, essentially, egocentric, individualistic (ie selfish) consumers was inane. It was the worst sort of generational stereotyping. And absurdly inaccurate. And idiotically simplistic.
In the 60s ( I'm 55), some people were politically active. Most simply were not.Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who wasn't there. And without a draft, even fewer would have been active. I wish people wouldn't confuse people doing a shit load of decent dope and everyone trying to get laid with political activism. I currently teach "Echo Boomers." Some are politically active. Most simply are not. Add a draft, and the numbers would easily be the same ( and,as was true in the 60s, most of it would be based on self-preservation).
Even the language used in the report was nonsense. Consider the issue of Echo Boomers as "team players." Well, seen from one perspective they become mindless drones, stepford kids. From another perspective, they are communitarian and believe in working for the common good. I've seen a fair chunk of both. Where I teach ,over half the majors are business. We also have a remarkably vibrant ( and large) Praxis program where students work in the local community for the community good. Oh and some of the most committed to the common good are those business majors. In short, I hate stuff like that program. Rant over.