A new switched-on and cynical generation

We are looking at a new generation of young Australians. Born after 1985, they are a computer generation. They can’t imagine the lives we had. We used to communicate by letter or call people on a telephone. Our address book was a little black book that we kept on the desk. For us, games were something you played out on the playing field. Today’s children communicate first up by SMS. Then it’s the mobile. Their address books are on their laptops. Games they play are limitless. Life is about X box, iPods, Foxtel … it’s a switched-on generation.

They are far more technically competent than their school, TAFE and uni teachers. Sometimes they come to school bleary-eyed after sitting up half the night on chat lines. They want to say what they want on websites, but can bully or tease others - who become hugely upset. They get angry when the websites are shut down by authority figures at school or university.

This is a Simpsons Generation in a very real sense. Colleagues tell me that they say to children in primary school, “Let’s talk about an Australian family. What will we call them?” They answer almost invariably "the Simpsons". "The Simpsons" represent many things about today’s children. They are American. The show depicts a world of hypocrisy which children challenge through Bart’s cynicism and Lisa’s idealism. Humour is the weapon that exposes the bullshit. Children today know about global warming, pollution and corruption at City Hall. It’s all there on The Simpsons.

This bunch of chilfren has been Americanised. Some Maori or Samoan kids in Sydney and Melbourne want to identify with black culture and take on what they see as a cool identity. There is little real understanding of all the complex social and historical factors which are at work in black America. Once again, Australian children tend to know what they get from TV, websites and popular music.

What about gender differences? Young males have their own particular masculinity. We baby boomers all got married: it was what people did. Men went to work, got married, had children. Sex was something that happened somehow and it wasn’t much spoken of. Or priests hissed between clenched teeth, "There's too much emphasis on sex these days".

Today’s children are well aware that in one country after another, too many priests and teachers have pretended to be pious while abusing their trust. It’s part of the reason why they are so critical of bullshit.

Sex is more upfront these days and it seems to be on children's minds. Being able to satisfy a partner might be the core of it. Young males today grow up worrying about how to get a job, how to get a career and being acceptably male. There has been much media chattering about SNAGS (a few years back) and more recently metrosexuals. Most of this is just journalists talking about things they have heard from other journalists.

Young men may be more concerned about being well-groomed, but they still want respect, and this usually means being male in fairly traditional ways: going to work and playing sport. Probably today this includes soccer, beach volleyball and swimming. (Their female friends worry about how to stay slim and attractive AND manage a career while having relationships and a family.)

Feminism? Most blokes don't understand it and don't give a toss about it, though they probably say they want their girlfriend to be free to choose the life she wants.

Gay men? Most straight guys say, "Gays are OK, as long as they don't bother me". Young men want to be their own man; they want to wear an earring if they feel like it, or hug their mates. They are more able to be male in the way they choose, without the old terror about being called “poofy”. There is still a guardedness about out-and-out gay men and a fear of HIV and AIDS. And probably confusion between having sex that keeps you free of HIV-AIDS, and sex that stops a girl getting pregnant.

People of both sexes want to know how it is. They dislike bullshit, fake idealism and pious talk of the public interest. When you scratch it, it turns out to be someone’s self-interest. In Sydney the Cross City tunnel has been revealed as a cosy deal between private entrepreneurs and government, while the mug motorist gets slugged. Issues like this will develop children's cynicism. So will the continuing saga of bloodshed, deceit and chicanery in Iraq, masked by hollow rhetoric about “defending democracy”.

Schooling has been changing for some time. Baby boomers were subject to the cane, bullying, and 11 times tables. In the 1970s progressive educators loosened many restrictions. Today’s 20-year-olds have gone to schools in which there were many matters that teachers tiptoed around. Discussion of women, ethnic people and Aborigines has been treated very carefully because teachers have been warned not to offend anyone. I feel that 20-year-olds have a desire to sound all these issues out for themselves. They want to dig beneath the conventional ideas and find out for themselves.

A small proportion of us baby boomers were able to leave school for “uni”. This usually meant the old sandstone universities in the capital cities. After many changes, we are moving back towards an elite which goes to university (and then is saddled with a HECS debt). If our 20-year-olds sit at university lectures, they will sit close to many Asians. We found out in November that in NSW selective schools, fully one-third of the children are Asian. Other Asian or foreign students will be there at university too. Anglo-Aussie students might well feel anxious or resentful about the smart Asians they must compete with and who seem to work harder than the Aussies.

Muslim kids have their own issues. My Muslim students feel they want to explain themselves and justify their ordinariness. One of my students commented, “I’m married to a guy called Bruce and he’s from Wagga Wagga. We sit and argue about football and cricket. How integrated can you get?”

When I swam at a Sydney beach last week, I noticed a noisy group of Muslim boys whom I learned were from the Bankstown area. They disappeared about 1pm to say their prayers. Most observers would see these youngsters  as lacking authority. Yet in some ways they are highly disciplined. Talk to them at length and you will see they have ideals: they want girlfriends and wives they can respect. They desperately want to be respected themselves. The search for respect takes them to lengths their fathers rarely considered.

Gyms are full of young men who learn that society wants them to look good, have a strong chest and arms. Like their fathers, they feel the need to be masculine in acceptable ways. Men’s biology has apparently not altered very much. But what it means to be a man has been changed by all the societal developments that have hit us in the past 40 years: feminism, the arrival of waves of immigrants, technology. And society has changed the script for being a man somewhat as time has moved on.

The world of work is changing as you are reading this. Aussie children saw Hurricane Katrina expose a US in which millions are working poor and living in appalling housing: trailer parks and urban slums. Meanwhile, Aussie children's own clothes and many of the things they use are being manufactured in China.

People now under 20 will have to work in that changed global environment, in which “globalisation” will mean that Australians will have to accept the lower standards that operate elsewhere. Australian children won’t know the protected employment their parents knew in which working conditions were virtually guaranteed to most: holiday pay, ample sick leave, freedom from unfair dismissal. Many of them will have their Schoolies Week and come crashing down to earth when they are confronted by employers who will tell them when they will work, for how many hours, for what pay the employers decide is fair.

Like others, this generation has its contradictions. They are very aware of body image, but trends show that one-third of them will be obese by 2013. They are well-informed about diet and exercise but many are lazy, spending hours a week with the computer and the TV. And although they embrace new technology, they often seem complacent about political issues and have not transformed our political landscape. It would be great if they used their talents to create a dynamic Australia that really accepted our challenges and moved us forward in the next 30 years.