Is the Facebook generation guilty as charged?

Stepping into Tribeka pub on Nairobi’s Banda Street last Friday evening seemed like a bad decision.

The club was filled to the brim. Most of the clientele was in their 20s or early 30s. There was a vibrant drinking scene just like any other joint frequented by youngsters and the young at heart.

Most of the girls’ sense of fashion was expressive and amusing. Few were not in the craze that is dress tops worn over stockings or coloured tights. Bolder spirits were in lace tights.

“A fun Friday night like this helps me to calm and relax after a hectic week,” says 23 year old Mary Wambui, a student at a local university.

“I love drinking in a social setting to blow off steam and relieve stress. No other activity accomplishes this,” says 27 year old Michael Ouma, a marketing executive.

While there’s nothing wrong having a good time, the question that comes to view is, are they watching their back and making sure that one fun night doesn’t haunt then for the rest of their life?

A Nairobi writer opened up a can of worms when he recently said the older generation in Kenya “is looking on helplessly at their offspring, particularly the Google generation, and weeping with despair.”

According to the writer Kenya’s latest generations are lost. There has been continuous furore about the kind of lives that young adults born after 1980 are living now.

The older generation is accusing the twenty-somethings of not taking life serious enough. Others wonder why they are not outstandingly productive.

The youngsters are retaliating saying they are plagued by the mess created and perpetuated by the older generation; that they are struggling to chart a way out for themselves.

They are pointing fingers at the older generation for creating the political and economic mire that they are sinking in. Of course not every lass and lad born after 1980 maybe what the old folks describe.

But who really is to blame for the slight or salient observation that the Kenyan twenty-somethings are not well polished to successfully boom intellectually, politically economically and socially?

How has the family, education and changing technologies influenced their values and outlook on life?

The question that quickly comes to mind is: Was this generation raised up to cherish healthy values, intellectual curiosity and pursue financial independence?

Were the twenty-somethings amply told the vast importance of becoming independent, innovative and critical thinkers during their formative years?

If it is within the family that a person receives the foundation of values moral direction and the sense of duty did the family unit falter in its functions at some point?

Social science lecturer Mabel Odima says “the children born in the 1980s came about when their parents were beginning to adjust to change in a different light.

Women were just beginning to realise that they could excel in all areas like men and began to pick up career lines and further studies.