Some Sort of Spanglish: The Internet and 20-Somethings

One common generational misunderstanding (and widely discussed topic) of 20-Somethings is the Internet. To state the obvious: The Internet changed everything. Technology is second nature to us. The older generation is trying to learn a new language that we are already fluent in. This causes a lot of inter-generational confusion and misunderstanding.

In the book “Born Digital,” John Palfrey and Urs Gasser take a close look at “Digital Natives,” or people born after 1980, natives to the digital world. They argue that post 1980 generation relates to the world in completely different ways. For example, often times our generation meets online before meeting in person. When I moved into college, initial meetings with future roommates and classmates occured online. We used instant message and examined each other's profiles on our college's directory of people. I even met my boyfriend online before I met him in real life—my cousin introduced us via a Facebook message one day to tell me her friend was moving from Pittsburgh to New York City and encouraged us to ‘friend’ each other on Facebook. The rest is history.

Our identities are completely tied up in the way we portray ourselves online. Most of us have social networking profiles. For many of us, these profiles are the image we wish to project to the world. We chose to show certain pictures and share information as we see fit. This is our ultimate way of expressing ourselves to the world. Our online presence is crucially related to how we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us.

I would like to take Palfrey and Gasser’s point on being ‘fluent’ in the digital world one step further by saying that 20-somethings have a particular advantage: We learned technology at a young enough age to be “fluent”, but we also had sometime to understand the ‘analog’ or offline world through our early experiences simply because we did not come out of the womb and onto computers. We were born on a cusp. This gives us a leg up--we are able to relate to both worlds --the one of our even more saavy younger brothers and sisters, and our parents’ world. It's a lot like speaking Spanglish--a hybrid language in which people fluent in both Spanish and English switch back and forth between the languages without realizing they are doing it. Our online and offline lives are interchangeable and hardly distinguishable--we'll often get invitations online for "real world" things (like a birthday party), and then take photos at the event, meet new people. The next day, we can solidify our new relationships by connecting with these people online, and we can post pictures of the event. I would suspect that these social interactions are a bit befuddling to most 50-somethings, yet not completely incomprehensible to the more astute.

This is especially advantageous for the more entrepreneurial 20-Somethings. Our ability to connect the online and offline world will be benefit us and others economically and socially. It certainly worked out well for Mark Zuckerberg. A social entrepreneur can do a lot online (such as fundraising , researching, planning), that can make a huge tangible difference in the offline world (like bringing fresh water to countries in need--Google “Charity Water”). As the world continues to develop and more people throughout the world are introduced to the global network of the Internet, we’ll be able to be mediators between old and new.

The Internet has also changed the lives of 20-somethings is the world of work. Jobs have been rendered obsolete because of the Internet-- people can now easily do their taxes online, communication is easier, research is easier. Jobs are being replaced by a few clicks of the mouse. The Internet saves an abundance of resources too (teleconferencing instead of face to face meetings, email instead of snail-mail, Google instead of researching in the Library). Unfortunately, one of these resources is man-power. Many 20-somethings need to keep ahead of the curve and must learn to adapt to the job market at a breakneck speed to keep up with the rapidly changing job market.  We are forced to be more transient than ever before as we move between jobs (that is if we're lucky enough to find one).  Unlike our parents, most of us won't be able to stay in one job for 35 years. In fact, for many of us, it wouldn't be wise to do so. We are required to wear many hats in order to remain employable. We must go wherever someone will pay us.  This makes it more difficult to have any stable commitments (a spouse, a mortgage, a child). Of course these things are not impossible to achieve, but we do face a lot more barriers to making commitments than people did 30 years ago.

Some of this change is good, some of it’s scary, some of it will make us nostalgic. It certainly has helped to change the standards of adulthood (which I'll address in another post). But regardless of all this--the World is moving forward at a rapid pace, and 20-somethings have the daunting task of mediating between the old and the new. Don't worry, we are taking care of it.

The Next Generation

"I'm Bao"

I was hoping to write another post shortly about the Internet and the 20-somethings generation, but in the mean time, my friend Alexa encouraged me to share a story with you about my trip to Wellesley, Massachusetts yesterday to move one of the students I work with into college.

I met Bao a couple of years ago when she joined the Model United Nations program at her high school. This program is one of my favorite parts about my job: they meet once a week at Cleary throughout the school year to prepare for conferences around the country. They are coached by our attorneys and paralegals, and by a fabulous teacher at the high school. Bao is one of those “naturally-smart” people. When she joined Model UN her intelligence became quickly apparent through her ability to form sophisticated opinions on world issues with incredible ease. She quickly became one of the leading members on the team. I got to know her during these two years at practice and when she traveled with the team to New Hampshire, Virginia, and California. In California, the other team members started to imitate her proud way of announcing herself to people by saying "I'm BAO!" For the remainder of the trip, both the coaches and the students announced "I'm Bao!" at random moments.


Bao moved to the United States from Vietnam with her mom, dad, and three brothers and two sisters when she was three years old. At age six, her mother passed away after a fight with cancer, leaving her father-- a garbage collector who does not speak English--to raise six children. Bao is a champion though--despite all of this, she graduated as the Validictorian of her class at Washington Irving High School and killed the SATs. She got into Wellesley College, arguably the most prestigious women's college in the country that boasts alums like Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright, with a full scholarship of $54,000 a year (tuition, room and board).

I am so elated with Bao's success--if anyone deserved it, it is her. After Bao graduated, she came to visit me and my coworker Ryan at work. When I asked her about when and how she was moving into college, she informed me that she hadn't really thought about it--she would most likely take the Chinatown Bus from New York City to Boston, and then figure out from there how to get to Wellesley. Realizing how difficult this would be for her (Wellesley is nearly in the middle of the woods) I offered to see if I could find a car to help her with the move-in. Unlike many students starting their college experiences, Bao only has a couple of friends that are moving away from home for college.


My college roommate, Jackie, came to the rescue and let me borrow her car. I woke up at 4:45 AM on Monday morning after sleeping over at Jackie's apartment in New Jersey. After fidgeting with Jackie's GPS and familiarizing myself with her car, I drove to Queens to pickup Bao and her father for the trip to Wellesley. Bao had spent the entire night awake—she had just gotten home from her first return trip to Vietnam at 11:45 PM. She and her sister stayed up through the night to pack her belongings. When I arrived, Bao's brothers, sisters and father helped her load the car with her belongings.

We were on the road by 6:30 AM and arrived to Wellesley by 9:45 AM. During the first half of the ride, I spoke with Bao about her experience in Vietnam. She said that since she moved to the United States little had changed in the village where she was born from what she and her sisters remembered. There were a few more cars, but that was it. Most people drive motorcycles around (one easy way to beat the heat). She also enjoyed getting to know her mother's sister and her cousins. One night soon before she left, she said she saw her mother's ghost after an argument with her sister. She said this had a profound effect on her. She saw it as a sign of the importance of always getting along with her family members. Her mother would not have appeared to her otherwise. We talked about the Vietnam War and her father's involvement in it as a General (and his six years in re-education camp). Her family was originally from North Vietnam but moved to the South at the beginning of the war. Years after the war, she was born in South Vietnam. Because her father helped out the American forces, her family was among the first granted visas to the United States after the war.

When we arrived at the school, we unloaded her belongings and parked the car. Her roommate had already arrived as well. Bao's roommate grew up two towns away from Wellesley, but had just spent the year between high school and college as an au pair in France. Both of her parents and younger brother were there to help her with the move in. Her parents looked slightly alarmed when Bao did a thorough inspection of the room for bedbugs and other pest-like life forms, and then brought up the topic of where to hide valuable belongings in the event of a break-in. The two girls decided on who would have which bed, desk, bookshelf, closet and bureaus. The view from their room is gorgeous--it looks out on Wellesley's famous lake. They decided to put their desks next to each other so they would both be able to look out of the window while studying. They also agreed they would attend the President's Welcome together later in the afternoon once her father and I left.

After unpacking her belongings, attending a luncheon and an information fair, it was time for me and Bao's father to head back to New York City. While she was walking us back to the car, Bao confessed her concern about making friends and fitting in. I assured her that all the new students were feeling similarly. I told her about my first time meeting my college roommates. Now eight years later, I am going to be the Maid of Honor of one of their (Jackie’s) weddings. I told her that she probably could never anticipate the people she would meet and the things that would happen to her in the upcoming year. I also reminded her of how many people loved her at home, and how her quirky personality would help people warm up to her as it always had in the past. Everyone likes happy people.

Her dad and I drove home from Wellesley in silence (there was a language barrier). I dropped him off at their apartment in Queens around 7:30, drove back to Jersey to drop off Jackie's car. After spending a few minutes in Jackie's apartment, she drove me to the train so I could go back to Manhattan. I arrived to Penn Station into a sea of people, got on the 1 train, and rode home.