Almost a decade ago, while I was working for Macy’s in one of their stores located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I experienced an "A-Ha" moment about youth culture, business and adult stereotypes.
After a store visit from "headquarters", my co-workers and I were informed that, in management's opinion, employees were not dressing in line with the image that Macy’s wanted to portray to their (potential) customers. We were “warned” that an executive from the corporate office in New York was coming to hold a special training session regarding dress code issues. You can imagine what was running through our minds as employees, and what our expectations were regarding that training session.
We were all shocked when the "Big Executive" arrived and she was not only considerably younger than the majority of the employees who were in attendance, she was also sporting two nose piercings and several visible tattoos, AND she was there to speak to us about dressing in a way that was “fresh” in fashions that “popped”!
Now I grew up in a generation that was taught to make certain assumptions about people with tattoos and piercings (especially women), and one of those assumptions was that they were not employable, let alone mainstream management material. At that time, what I failed to realize was that tattoos and various piercings had become widely accepted and commonplace, especially among the trendy and uber-talented young people living and working in creative fields within the hubs of major cities, and employers had no choice but to adapt to this movement in youth culture, or their business interests would suffer.
At that time, Macy's was in the process of re-vamping their own image because of competition for the youth market from specialty stores aimed at their younger customer base. They installed TV's in the Junior's and Young Men's departments so they could play non-stop music videos for their shoppers, and they reworked the selling floor using themed decor and fixtures with names like "gun metal" and "urban decay chic". The long-standing, well-respected department store obviously wanted this youthful image makeover to sweep the cobwebs out of every department since our culture was spewing such sayings as "forty is the new twenty". Macy's wanted their employees to convey a message that seemed to say "this is not your grandmother's or even your mother's Macy's anymore".
Much of our culture and our consumer spending has become youth-driven. Just look at the current floor plan of any major mainstream department store to see which department actually occupies the prime location. “Back in the day” when you would enter through the main doors , the first two departments that would greet you on either side were the Women’s and the Men’s department. Today, when you enter a store, the first thing that you see is the Junior’s Department or the Young Men’s Department while all of the clothing for us old people is relegated to the back of the store, or even worse, the second floor.
Why am I mentioning any of this? Because last night, I found myself having yet another discussion with a parent of a young adult concerned about their kid’s content on Facebook. While I have been an advocate for Personal Branding and policing your online image, especially if you are an adult who is new to the entire concept, I also feel the need to tell parents to stop lecturing their children about their social media use in ways that are unproductive.
By now you’ve seen or at least heard about The Social Network, so you should know that Facebook was created for young people by young people. It is now the adults and corporate interests who are scrambling to get a handle on what this all means and how it all works. Your children could teach you a thing or two about building an audience and tailoring social media content to maintain the interest of followers. Business owners and corporations want to tap into what these young social media gurus know about the new digital age that has taken over our collective lives at such a fast pace that it has left the older generations of business leaders scratching their heads in bewilderment.
Technology is impacting our collective assumptions about our access to information. Are children acting like children when using social media? Of course, and employers who want to be tech savvy and tap into the creative offerings and audiences that young people are building online are going to over-look the indiscretions of youth as long as there is some substance included in their content along with the pictures of them slamming Jager Bombs on their birthday, or a few swear words found on their Facebook page-- young people today did not grow up during the Carlin-esque time of "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". We live in a day and age where there are even fewer words that you can’t say on network TV, and even those slip through every once in a while….
Listen to the advice of one employer, Gary Vaynerchuk , who is considered a thought leader in social media and business, as he addresses the issue of youthful indiscretions while giving advice to college students who are entering the work-world for Becky Johns.
Don’t try to scare your kids about their social media use or their content to the point that they don’t openly share their thoughts or participate---which could even be far more detrimental to their future than a few social media posts that would be deemed inappropriate by middle aged adult standards. And by all means, do not try to inhibit your children from being themselves online. Instead, encourage them to balance the content that they put out to maintain their peer contacts with content that would also appeal to a more mature audience so that they cultivate a well-rounded network that will be beneficial to them for years to come.
Read Becky John’s The Three Things Students Need to Know in its entirety. Her advice is beneficial to people of all ages.
