Dusseldorf There are issues that affect almost everyone: climate change, social inequalities, digitization, the changing labor market. At the same time, however, there are notable differences between the generations: some adults today do not know life without “Big Tech” such as Google, Facebook, Instagram and Co. and even had a smartphone in their hands as children. Only a few older children, on the other hand, remember a childhood without the internet, computers and mobile phones.
The two books “Generation Z” by Valentina Vapaux and “The Supple Ones” by Nora Bossong offer a glimpse into the realities of two women of different ages: a young journalist, blogger and poet who talks about her life among today’s 19 to 25 year olds on Social -Writes for media-savvy, feminist and political young people. And a novelist who talks about her generation of between 37 and 47 year olds, with the Iron Curtain, the fall of the Wall and the colorful 90s.
“Generation Z” transports the reader into the author’s poetic world of thought. The book reads like the diary of a young woman who meets many people and thinks empathetically and critically about the emotional world of her age group and their world views.
The informal style of writing, filled with Anglicisms, sympathetically forms the connection to the “bubble” from which Vapaux describes her generation: cosmopolitan, socio-political, but also a “sad generation with happy pictures”. So the social media that make young people appear happy and in the best scene, but behind which there are supposed to be lonely, stressed people who have endless opportunities online and offline, but just as much uncertainty.
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Much about influencers and the impact of social media in the book isn’t surprising, but the unfiltered insight into the generation’s hopes for politics and society pulls into the book.
Valentina VapauxGeneration Z
Gräfe and Unzer
Munich 2021
192 pages
14.99 euros
Political and social events also run through the book as a common thread in “The Smooth Ones”: reunification, Chernobyl, the dot-com bubble and the quest for prosperity and peace in the 90s. In addition, Bossong addresses how her generation was shaped by unrest – by the events of September 11th, an increasingly globalized economic system and the high unemployment in Germany in the early 2000s. As in a kind of journalistic journal, Bossong analytically reports his own impressions of that time.
The concerns and hopes of 40-year-olds today tend to be hidden by analyzes of politicians’ attitudes. Most of Bossong’s lines don’t read like a portrait of a generation, but rather like a critique and analysis of the economic and political events of the past decades.
The author tells how her generation is noticing an acute crisis for the first time – the corona pandemic – for which she is now also taking responsibility – and should find answers. She counts Annalena Baerbock, Jens Spahn and Christian Lindner among them, who suddenly not only find themselves confronted with the task of building a climate-neutral, prosperous country from a prosperous country, but are also suddenly unprepared for crises.
On the one hand, Bossong conveys that her generation is hardly radical when it comes to political demands and is rather characterized by the strong pursuit of wealth, especially at the beginning of the 2000s. On the other hand, her generation is probably the last that can still take comparatively level-headed action and change things in the climate crisis and that bears a special responsibility – the same generation that Bossong describes as the “adapted”, the “quiet” who spent their youth in the sheltered 90s. A generation that could mediate between the sluggish “keep it up” of the older ones and the revolutionary spirit of the younger ones.
Nora Bossong: The Supple Ones.
Ullstein Verlag
Berlin 2022
240 pages
19.99 euros
There are some parallels to today’s Generation Z. For example, that both see a dichotomy between self-realization and responsibility in their lives. Vapaux conveys that her generation hardly questions whether one should take to the streets for the climate or whether equality is an option. She tells of a politically active young age group who want to drive change and who fear standing still.
In addition, it is the online media in “late capitalism” that tease the young: those who feel too fat can download a fitness app, those who feel alone can download a dating app, whose skin is not smooth enough would soon be an advertisement see for the latest makeup.
It can be read that Vapaux sees social media as an unavoidable part of her life, that she also feels the sometimes immense social pressure that goes hand in hand with ideals of beauty, self-optimization and a “perfect” life on Instagram, Tiktok and Co.
But she also questions him and gives tips on how young people can free themselves from the compulsion to always be online and want to satisfy their dopamine levels with pictures and likes on social media.
Contradictions in the worlds of life
Vapaux describes the contradiction between striving for a fair, equal opportunity world on the one hand and a world with pressure to perform and loneliness on the other. For Bossong’s generation, on the other hand, social media is just “another step on the way to your own life”.
Her generation first had to get used to presenting themselves privately and professionally on social media. Having grown up in an analogue world, she increasingly grew up in a digital world. Above all, she looks at the influence of social media on democracy and politics. Disinformation can be a significant tool for radicalization.
Vapaux, on the other hand, also discusses the positive sides of social networks: They are also an opportunity for interesting encounters or inspiring ideas that she might never have encountered offline.
The respective age groups will probably find themselves reading “their” book and will feel a little strange in the other. But a look at both books shows that when it comes to the pressing issues of our time, the worlds of life are not that far apart.
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