'Brazen boomers, lazy millennials': how generational profiling heightens Covid-19 othering
I am from that batch of '90s kids who for much of our adult lives have endured being labelled a "strawberry generation" - apparently we bruise easily, are narcissistic, bristle at the slightest hurdle in life and are exceedingly entitled.
As we younger millennials enter our mid-30s stuck in a Covid-19 rut, and with Gen Z coming up right behind us, that unfortunate tag continues to stick.
Many of those guilty of this particular form of generational profiling, I am told - and can attest to personally - are baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
I am pretty sure contemporaries have abundant anecdotes of sitting through "you, young people" sneers from older family members, friends and colleagues.
I personally recall a recent conversation (outside the newsroom, so boomer colleagues, please don't fret) in which the person lamented the ill effects of the yawning generational divide.
Then, they immediately segued into how millennials and Gen Z were too keen to "run before they walk" in their careers. Of course, the young'uns are far from fault-free.
Over the past 20 months of the Covid-19 pandemic, in portals frequented by young people, there has been a proliferation of news articles lampooning "brazen boomers" who were refusing, supposedly en masse, to take the health crisis seriously.
That idea has been quashed by data. A poll by the market research firm Morning Consult in April and May, for example, showed that in fact 78 per cent of boomers in the United States were "very concerned" about the outbreak, a higher proportion than any other generation.
When research is published in the coming months and years on the reasons for higher levels of vaccine hesitancy among older people, it is highly probable that the findings will show the likes of educational levels and socioeconomic class were contributing factors - rather than generational differences.
Given how the pandemic seems to have heightened intergenerational antipathy, no doubt fuelled by media narratives, it is a good time to revisit what scholars have been saying about this topic for decades.
David Costanza, a George Washington University psychology professor who studies the generational divide, has for instance noted that "solid evidence supporting generations, their characteristics, or even their existence, is lacking".
According to Costanza, proving generational effects is also difficult; one would need to study individuals throughout their lifetimes, taking into account attitudinal changes due to their age or circumstances around them.
With the pandemic already exacerbating discrimination and violence against people from marginalised groups, all of us, across cohorts, would do well not to engage in generational profiling - which, for all intents and purposes, is a form of prejudice.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
