I now employ both a Millennial and a Gen Z. I’m flabbergasted I’ve never, ever heard this phrase come out of either of their mouths: “I don’t know how to do that.”
I’m 42. When I was a kid and wanted to learn something, I had two options:
1.) Find someone who knew what I wanted to know and ask him/her for help in-person.
2.) Find a book with that information.
Typically, that was at the library, and if that book was checked out, I was out of luck. I spent a great deal of my childhood and early adulthood wishing I could learn a bunch of stuff. Because I lacked that information, though, I couldn’t.
Then, in 1994, when I was a freshman in college, a guy I knew uttered the word, “Netscape.” “What that?” I said. And everything changed.
Millennials and GenZ have never known a world where they have an inability to learn something new. How awesome is that? If they don’t know how to do it, they simply go to the web and figure it out. I know a lot of people are concerned about the generation(s) after us. Don’t be. Thank you Erin Cowan and Mike Schmitz for teaching me this lesson. I feel so lucky to have you both on our team at AmpliPhi.