Where are our social media elders?
October 27th, 2009 by Justin Kistner
Village elder from Rajasthan, by Michael Foley
Over the past few years I’ve learned a few things about the reverse mentoring process.
- Young people have an edge on how the technology works from having used it during developmental years. There is a good opportunity for reverse mentoring on the use of the tools.
- Older generations have more clout to leverage social media and more important contacts in their networks. I found that posts generated more exposure, traffic, and engagement when they came from VPs and C-level execs, especially thought leadership material.
- The way Gen Y used social media as teens will change as they mature. In high school and college, we’re in the midst of developing our identity; and that impacts what we share, how we receive feedback, and how we align ourselves with the group’s reactions. As we mature, the rules of social engagement evolve too.
- Social wisdom from generations past applies more than ever today, yet the etiquette is disappearing. This is a good opportunity for our elders to make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- Using social media for business value is not the same thing as connecting with friends. They share similarities, but they are not synonymous activities.
I share my lessons because I’ve read several articles about Gen Y and their (maybe our) social media capabilities. I’ve seen a number of interactions in the work place where senior managers give younger counterparts more credit than their capabilities deserve.
I think it makes sense to acknowledge the reverse mentoring trend, but we have to be careful not to put twentysomethings on a pedestal. We are at a unique inflection point in history—we’re becoming a connected culture faster than our ability to mature with it. As a result, there are no elders to provide a model for how to behave in social media. So, mentoring is happening in both directions of the age timeline. A primary reason for this is that young people have been the strongest adopters. But, while they may have technical experience, they don’t have enough life experience to temper it. Older generations understand social etiquette and politics better, but few have dealt with the unique challenges of navigating a connected social ecosystem.
In this messy, entangled time of social development, all generations hold pieces to the puzzle. I’d like to see more leadership from our elders on applications of social media. The technology hurdle is a tiresome excuse for not seeing more in the way of Netizenship, social media etiquette, etc. from the ones with the life experience to provide the direction.
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October 27th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Have you read much of Mizz D’s writings at http://Mizzinformation.com? The age thing is one of her favorite subjects. I subscribe to her blog. As she writes in her latest post, Carol Brady (Florence Henderson), recently started a company teaching people how to use computers & the Internet, including social media.
Our elders are out there. They’re just not very prevalent.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I had not heard of Mizz D’s blog. I checked out that link, and it’s full of great content. Nice share, Cory!
October 27th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Hustin,
I agree you with you a 100% especially when you state “we have to be careful not to put twentysomethings on a pedestal. We are at a unique inflection point in history—we’re becoming a connected culture faster than our ability to mature with it. As a result, there are no elders to provide a model for how to behave in social media. So, mentoring is happening in both directions of the age timeline. A primary reason for this is that young people have been the strongest adopters. But, while they may have technical experience, they don’t have enough life experience to temper it. Older generations understand social etiquette and politics better, but few have dealt with the unique challenges of navigating a connected social ecosystem.” Very well stated and the truth to boot!
November 5th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Justin likely had to look no further than WebTrends itself, where apparently no elders were around to temper the past summer’s disingenuous “Should cyclists pay road tax” stunt, in which WebTrends heaped additional danger on the most vulnerable road users here in its home city, for its own gain.
Nor were elders apparently present to enforce the necessary discipline in preparing the allegedly redemptive white paper on the topic, which WebTrends promised repeatedly for October but seems never to have delivered.
At least I no longer have to deal with WebTrends at work. For my modest needs, StatCounter does just fine–and their folks seem to be so busy improving the product that they have no time to paint bullseyes on my back and on the backs of people I care about.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
At http://www.beerandblog.com the other evening, I had a delightful convo w/ a bright, young creative, who had given some #serious thought to the generational factors of social media and the resulting etiquette issues. (I could be classified as the 60% of current adopters of social media – women over 45 years old.) She aptly noted that many elders coming into social media are tone deaf to the sensitivity demanded of the new transparency and authenticity.
She is toats right. Even to the point where those execs and silver backs who chose not to embrace social media are prey to their own social etiquette ineptness as the echo of their attitude of disdain. They don’t get that the dismissive tones about social media – tones they would never think of using within their work or personal environment to discuss those who surround them – are not out of range of others, just because they don’t use social media themselves. Voices carry.
Perhaps she will have a different opinion, but it seemed to me that an outcome of the discussion is that there is one real difference that social media has brought to the eons of generational differences in points of view on life: With the entanglement of relationships in the authentic and transparent across generations, for the first time in history we are forced as a whole to engage others generational POV on life to opt into the conversation, whether it’s your mom reading your Facebook, a Director of Public Relations answering outraged youth on Twitter about violations of green space, or the CTO of the United States appealing to technologists to submit answers to decrease the costs of health care.