The digital natives of redefining childhood.
If there were any doubts about how difficult and smart Gen X is, one should see the confident, permanently connected Gen Alpha. Born entirely in the 21st century, they seem to have no connection with any of the previous generations. They are smart, confident, and have been born with electronics in their heads, eyes, fingers — in fact, their entire beings.
Also called the i Generation or Gen Tech, these young ones are now around ten to twenty years of age. But do they sound like children? No, not at all. They are so smart and confident that they put even the senior most electronics experts to shame. They seem to have had no childhood at all. From babyhood to adulthood, their metamorphosis has been consistent.
They are natural leaders and self-appointed monitors; they take charge of situations and make decisions on their own. The advent of COVID during their formative years changed the course of their lives. They were segregated, alone at times, with no friends and no socializing, glued to their iPads like lifelines, as all schooling revolved around them.
With no access to gardens or travel, holed up in one, two or three-bedroom homes, with busy working parents as company, these Gen Alpha children have become different — alien. With online friends and virtual studies, they know typing better than writing. Their handwriting is more difficult to decipher than a doctor’s, and they are self-centered and cold-blooded. Added to this is soft parenting, where parents act like friends and talk to them as adults. There is no discipline, as we seniors describe it, as parents bow, cajole, and request — only to be told, “I am what I am.”
Requests to talk nicely are met with “freedom of speech” and “we are in a free country” arguments. “We are a democracy” is taken more seriously than by politicians. This generation is firm, decisive, and unstoppable.
Schools too cannot do much. Their diktats are to go slow on Gen Alpha, to speak sweetly, use sugar-coated words to tell parents the truth, and never enforce any physical punishments.
It has been four years since COVID disappeared, and though the world seems to have recovered, these ten-to twenty-year olds are cocooned and still have to break away if they are to become full-fledged butterflies. Meanwhile, Gen Beta is knocking at the doors, and we are in trepidation about what to expect from them.
However, all is not lost. There is still a ray of hope this generation will exceed expectations and conform to the norms.
