Punk v. Professional: Gen Y’s Culture Clash Over Corporate Dress
Nov 24th
Journalism major Eddie Ebbert, 21, recently sported a mohawk to his interview for an internship at Esquire. His mother had suggested that he get a new, more conventional haircut, but he refused. “If you’re not going to hire me because of my hair, I’m not going to work there,” he said.
Three interviews later, no one mentioned his hair, and he got the position. The first day of the internship, Ebbert, with his Mohawk still intact, showed up in a button-down shirt and pressed pants, following the example of his 35-year-old boss.
Generation “Be Yourself”
Since Gen Y entered the workforce, conflict over casual or self-expressive dress has been a major issue for older management, for whom the depoliticized mohawk might still appear countercultural. Millennials may bring creativity and enthusiasm to the office, according to experts, but they also show up in flip flops, jeans and “extreme” hair.
Millennials value self-expression at work more than any generation before them, according to psychologist Nicole Lipkin, who co-authored “Y in the Workplace”. “This generation has been taught to express themselves no matter what,” she said.
However, Lipkin said that self-expression through clothes or hair shouldn’t overshadow the dress code at work. “The people who are going to be successful are those who respect the culture at the corporation,” she said. “In the creative industries, it’s a different story, but in more formal industries, there are presentation standards that need to remain in place. It’s hard to trust someone who looks like a punk.”
To Friend or to Follow?
Nov 24th
Danielle Simon, a college student at Colombia University, is obsessed with Twitter. The 23-year-old has over 6,000 tweets posted since she started her account two years ago. Simon tweets multiple times per hour about her day, posting pictures and boasting of her run-ins with celebrities. But just because she does all this, doesn’t mean any of her friends read it. “I know that my friends are on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean they’re looking at my tweets,” she said. “We mostly follow celebrities and use Twitter as more of a scrapbook to commemorate that.”
While Twitter captured some eccentric users like Simon, experts say that Twitter isn’t intended for Generation Y. “I think Twitter is targeting people over 25 years old,” said Daniel Brusilovsky, CEO of Teens in Tech Networks and a writer at TechCrunch.
Twitter functions as a site more effective for marketing a product and conducting business according to Brusilovsky. With some of the Top 100 Twitter users being Whole Foods, JetBlue and Dell Outlet (who garnered over 2 million in sales last year on Twitter alone), Twitter is more effective for industry news and professional purposes rather than a social network.
In June 2009, the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN) polled 200 Gen Y-ers about their social media habits. The study showed that while 99 percent of 18-24-year-olds have social network profiles, only 22 percent of them used Twitter.
Some Gen-Yers started an account to try Twitter before abandoning it shortly thereafter. NYU Junior Ariel Altschuler, 20, opened an account in April 2009, with his first ‘tweet’ reading, “I give in. Against my better judgment, I’m trying twitter.” Every few days, he posted his thoughts, upcoming events and even shared funny links. But a month later, he stopped. “I just stopped updating it. No reason – I just didn’t think about it anymore, unless one of my friends mentioned it.”
Twitter has yet to capture the attention garnered by Facebook. With an impressive 409 friends on Facebook, Altschuler seems like a popular guy. But compare that to his 22 followers on Twitter. And with only 22 people occasionally reading your ‘tweets,’ there is no need to invest as much time in upkeep.
While Gen Y worries that their friends won’t read their tweets, they also worry about strangers who might. “Facebook is a closed network,” Brusilovsky said. “It’s a network of people and friends that you trust to be connected to, to share information like your email address, AIM screen name, and phone number. You know who’s getting your status messages, because you either approved or added each person to your network.”
Brusilovsky, author of the TechCrunch.com article, “Why Teens Don’t Twitter”, believes that security issues have a lot to do with Gen Y’s hesitancy toward Twitter. “Twitter is the exact opposite. Anyone can follow your status updates. It’s a completely open network that makes teenagers feel unsafe about posting their content there. Who knows who will read it?”
For other young people who used Facebook since the beginning, there simply isn’t a need for Twitter. “I post things on Facebook for my friends to see,” said 20-year-old Alexandra Marchese, a junior at NYU. “Considering none of my friends are on Twitter, there is no guarantee anyone I know, or even care about, will read what I’m writing.”
Marchese decided against activating a Twitter account. “If Twitter came first, it might be a different story,” she said. “I have everything I need on Facebook. And for now, that’s not going to change.”
The Electronic Umbilical Cord: A New Way to Keep In Touch
Oct 27th
Constant text messaging keeps Gen Y and their parents connected
“Straight to boogie and tequila.”
Farrah Aldjufrie, a senior at the University of Southern California, received that text message last week from her father who lives in Bali.
“He speaks broken English because he’s Indonesian,” Aldjufrie says. “He was asking me about my birthday, and I told him I was going out with some friends. That was his response.”
Aldjufrie, like many in Generation Y, constantly contacts her parents through text messaging, about five times a day to her mom, and every other day to her dad.
“It’s the easiest way to keep in contact with my dad because he lives so far away. I can send him a text message, and if it’s really late on his time, he can write me back when he gets up,” she says.