Questão 44

TEXT II Generational conflict (...) The generations are turning over faster than ever before. While the Silent generation (1925 to 1945) was a strech of 21 years, the Millennial generation (1980 - 1994) ended just 15 years after it began. As technological change accelerates, people born a mere ten years apart can be released into an utterly different environment. A person born into the era of the smartphone, for example, will exhibit different behaviours to one who predates it, helping explain those teenagers lip-syncing pop songs and pacing out dance trots $\in$ supermarkets and carparks. Technology, like the television, the internet, and the smartphone, have a marked effect on not only how we live but on our values and beliefs. (...) In his 2020 book Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, Karl Pillemar surveyed 1,340 Americans aged 18 and over, asking them the question: 'Do you have any family members from whom you are currently estranged?' He discovered that more than a quarter of Americans, surveyed, or 27 per cent, reported being estranged from a family member - a parent, grandparent, sibling, child, and so on. Extrapolated to the US adult population, that amounts to some 67 million people who are estranged from a family member. Pillemar found that ten per cent are estranged from a parent or child and eight per cent are no longer talking to a sibling. Some $\in$ the media are calling it a 'silent epidemic' of family break-ups. 'When we meet people, it's devastating to tell the truth,' Skye Ferrero laments, a mother quoted $\in P$ illemar's book. 'We deal with it by being straightforward: 'Oh, there are problems... we don't see each other'.' Five years ago, Skye and her husband were cut off from their daughter and nothing they have done since has brought the couple any closer to her. 'I've been approached by former neighbours and they say, 'Well, you seem like such nice people. How come it's like this? We've been labelled with this black cloud.' Skye thinks the issue is more widespread than it appears, it's just that people don't wish to talk it. 'This is happening $\in$ many families,' she says. Family estrangement can happen for any number of reasons, notwithstanding highly justifiable ones for why someone may wish to cut contact. But such serious offenses aside, fissures $\in$ the nuclear family can also happen as family members squabble over rival ideologies: politics, Brexit, vaccinations, conspiracy theories, pronouns, and any number of headline-grabbing social issues. Nasty comments on social media can inflame grievances, prompting one member to declare, 'I'm done. I never want to see or speak to them again.' Adapted from: https://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/generational-conflict accessed on March 21st, 2024.