Academic Studies: Age is Crap at Work, School or Anywhere

age MYTH ALERT!

I've been saving academic studies that examine generational differences and had a look at my collection this morning. Here's what I found:

1. One study about SCHOOLS and the myth of digital natives: the whole culture has become digital and those who grew up with it are not significantly different than those who didn't. We are all immersed in it now.

2. Two studies about the myth of generational differences in the WORKPLACE. One was actually two studies rolled into one: a meta study of 20 other research papers plus a new research report looking at how 118,000 people feel about various aspects of the workplace. The other tracked 600,000 people over 8 years. Answer? No significant differences were detected between people in various generations.

3. The Valuegraphics Database shows that across 100,000 people in North America, where 410 metrics about values, wants, needs and expectations were measured, the variance between generations was negligible in ANY setting.

So, with a big paintbrush, anyone telling you that there should be differences in schools, the workplace, or ANYWHERE based on age is full of hot air.

Want to read for yourself?

The Myths of the Digital Native and the MultiTasker: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2017-kirschner.pdf

Generational Differences at Work Are Much Ado About Very Little: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/KRQVGDA6

Generational Differences in Workplace Attitudes and Job Satisfaction https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JMP-03-2017-0115/full/html?skipTracking=true