Understanding I-Gen: Perspective of Modern Generation

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Different generations have different perspectives which were affected by various aspects such as economic status, norms, family orientation, political, and the social context as a whole. Oftentimes, people would conceptualize that nowadays learners are millennial (Generation Y). However, most of the classrooms were filled of the New Generation. Based on the misconceptions with regard to this generation, the researcher urged to work on this research and to give useful information on how to deal with them. This study aimed to understand I-Generation (Generation Z-Mid 1995 up-to-present) of Arinda Elementary School and their perspectives in terms of Social and Educational practices.

METHODS

The researcher utilized qualitative approach. The respondents were randomly selected from intermediate level and whose ages fall from 1996-up-to-present. Interview and observation were conducted between the researcher and the learners. After the interview, the researcher analyzed the data, compared it to the observation, and lastly generalized it against the existing research.

RESULTS

Most of the respondents were engaged in social media like Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram while the remaining small portions were still not fully engaged yet knowledgeable. Large portions were interested in making new projects like vlogs, blogs, infographics and social media pictures and no longer interested in dioramas, book reports, and letter-making. Time consumed by the I-Gen was widely spent in browsing social media rather than reading books.

DISCUSSIONS

The results strongly demonstrate that Millennial and I-Gen are completely different in terms of Social and Educational perspectives. The latter generation is more engaged with the use of Internet and likely to do more if social media was involved. Hence, the results also show that learners were no longer interested in making dioramas, book reports and letter-making as they find them boring. However, the researcher also recommends to conduct more relevant researches to fully understand the big picture of the behavior and characteristics of modern generation.