Richard Gottlieb

Are we ready for the "Age Compression" parents?

Friday night I found myself in a dance club called Santos Party House. I was surrounded by hundreds of people who were wildly dancing to the music of my girlfriend’s niece, Tessa Greenberg and her group Tayisha Busay.

Everyone there was in their early 20’s except …well…me and my date. We were older; quite a bit older, actually. I mean when they had the “shake your booty” contest I quietly pushed myself so close to the wall that I was almost in the wall. 

As I watched this group of young people of all races, religions and sexual preferences dancing, singing drinking and generally being high together, it suddenly occurred to me that these were the “age compression” kids all grown up. And what was more, they were going to be buying toys for their kids in about another five years. 

I was, in short, looking at our future gatekeepers and wondering if we were ready for them. I mean after all we have, as an industry, finally come to grips with the fact that today’s kids are different than we were but have we considered that their parents are different too?

As I watched them on the stage and dance floor, they seemed both the same and different than we were at that age. 

·         We danced and they dance but they dance harder, by themselves and with a lot more abandon. 

·         We socialized and they socialize but we socialized with our own kind and everyone is their kind. 

·         We were smart and they are smart but they may be smarter (technology will do that).

·         We were connected with our friends and they are connected with their friends but they are wired and we weren’t.

In short, they didn’t look that different from us (minus a few tattoos and piercings) but somehow they were different. Maybe age compression still applies and they seemed somehow more worldly and sophisticated then we were at the same age.

As I sipped my coffee the next morning I thought that we had better figure out now what they are going to want for themselves and their kids. Failure to do so may be that as an industry we boogie alone on an empty dance floor.

Posted by Richard Gottlieb on July 20, 2009 | Comments (0)