Reference no: EM132930663
Case Study. The Generation Next
Answer the following questions.
Recreation, leisure, and sports reflect culture, population, and shifting trends and mores in society. Since the 1960s, change has come more rapidly. They are beginning with the angry counterculture. In the 1960s, through the turbulent civil rights movement until the 1970s and today, one thing has remained constant: change. It affects people, culture, and organizations and causes the continual rethinking of how each new generation sees the world. Recreation, leisure, and sports organizations are often at the forefront of these changes, and at other times they are bystanders. However, knowing and responding to change are essential activities in any organization, especially those serving the public.
The following commencement speech presented at Long Island University in May 2009 was abstracted to illustrate how the social researcher portrays the current college generation. Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, the leading research on the internet in the world, delivered the address. These random ideas are highly reflective of youth culture and instructive for leisure and sports professionals as they adapt service, programs, and facilities.
1. Your generation is bigger and more racially and ethnically diverse than any generation in American history.
2. Most aggressive and eager social networks in history.
3. The generation is more achievement-oriented, grade-conscious, and rule- observing than the older generation.
4. Getting extra credit for having gotten into less trouble with the law than your predecessors and having experienced fewer social and emotional problems.
5. You are more likely than elders to say your parents, a teacher, or mentor is your role model.
6. You serve your "weak ties" by performing volunteer activities at staggering rates.
7. You are the most racially and socially tolerant cohort in history.
8. You were the first generation to have "community service" requirements imposed on you by most of your school districts.
9. Own gaming consoles play a video game, text message, have an iPod that downloads music, use instant messaging, an avatar that interacts with others in virtual worlds, blogs, and social networks.
10. Record-breaking multitasks.
11. Giving birth to a new kind of culture is more vibrant because it has led to; an explosion of new voices, fresh forms of music, novel kinds of language, varied pathways of community-building, and different kinds of ethics and etiquette.
Discussion questions:
1. How do these descriptions relate to you and your leisure time?
2. Identify the similarities and differences between the old generation to your generation on spending leisure time.
3. Describe how the influences mentioned in the case study affect you as a teenager and student.