Youth are disconnected?

 
Had the chance to hear a few entrepreneurs to speak today when my friend, Kid Chan (which I love to write a post in tribute to him one day and will, at a later date), invited me to come to a university college just across the street from my office. As I have the car today, due to another meeting, I drove to the place. I was in two minds of whether I want to go or not this afternoon but when I heard the talks given by these three entrepreneurs, I was not disappointed. They have stories to tell and then some. The talk was for the launch of 1Malaysia Entrepreneurship Month at this university called Sunway University College.

One of the speakers is Khailee, the founder of a website called YouthAsia which is basically an internet survey website which do surveys among those between the age of 16 to 35. I am a member though I am at the final age bracket. The other two are accomplished too (which I will reserved for another post) but what this guy said was what hit me about youth today.

As he owns a survey website, he basically threw at the audience statistic which he had collected through his website which was just over a year old. Among the statistic is the question, can the youth of today lead the country and what do they think of the current Malaysian leader. His site was the one which had asked, under instruction of the Prime Minister's office, what do the youth think of the current Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak which came back with 45% of them favouring him.

 

The man...

Then after showing the 'surprising' statistics, he made a statement which hit me quite hard. That statement is how far the youth, with all these capabilities and all, is so disconnected with their parents generation. They are so into the internet that they can connect in an instance with each other around the world, regardless whether they have met each other or not, but they cannot even talk about the basic stuff with their parents. Parents came to Khailee and asked him how to connect with their children 24/7 on the Playstation or the internet. Some even joined Facebook or other social network to understand their children.

In the next few month, movies like Gamer and Surrogates will be released. Watch them and try to understand how we are disconnected by technology. Then think back to what this guy had said, then crawl back into whatever cocoon you have chosen to be in...