Gen X vs. Gen Y

As I was walking to my first class in International Village this morning, I couldn’t help but notice a glaring difference between the college students and adults coming out of Ruggles station. I would say that probably 95% of the college students had headphones in while only about 5% of the adults did. This made me think about the possible difference in networking opportunities between generations X and Y.

Whenever I talk to my dad, who is clearly a Gen X, I feel like he always has a new story about someone he met on his lunch break that happened to know someone in his line of work that is looking for a job, or something to that extent. He always starts up conversations with people in line getting coffee, at the train station, anywhere, in order to meet people and build his network. While my dad may be an extreme case, I feel like it is much more common for people of his generation to start up conversations with strangers and build their networks that way, where as people of Gen Y tend to isolate themselves by listening to music everywhere they go. People of Gen Y, and myself included, are potentially missing out on lots of networking opportunities due to our constant need to be in a world of our own, avoiding conversation with strangers. And who knows, you could be sitting next the president of a company you’ve always wanted to work for, but because you had your headphones in, you miss out on the opportunity to start up a conversation and build an edge between the two of you.  

This made me wonder what it’s going to be like in 30 years when we’re our parents’ age. Am I making myself an isolate in my social and professional networks by not interacting with strangers and not trying to connect with people? Is that form of seemingly random networking connections slowly dying? How is the next generation going to build their networks if technology continues to isolate individuals?