On the Ever-Changing Plans of Millennials
How Technology is Redefining Commitment
“But I thought we agreed on Wednesday…”
Our generation is engaged in the new norm of being extremely noncommittal. We’ve developed the collective habit of making specific plans with each other, and leaving the actual decision on whether to follow through with them until the day (or even hour) before they’re supposed to happen (often, when Facebook reminds us we actually even agreed to those plans in the first place).
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone when I say that in the past few months I’ve made and gotten excited about plans on several occasions, only to be told shortly before the actual date and time of the planned event that something else has come up and that people can’t make it.
- Dinner Friday: “Oh, wait, that was this Friday?”
- Beers on Saturday: …no response until the next day, “Hey! Sorry I missed your message. I ended up doing X with some friends. I hope it was fun!”
- Asking a group of people on Facebook if they want to do something together Sunday, getting a whole bunch of “Sure!”s and “I’m down!”s, but when it comes time for people to actually come out to that event, maybe a small handful at best actually come
- Etc. etc. etc.
However on the flip-side, there is a 100% chance I’ve done the exact same thing to other people, without even realizing it.
I think this happens most commonly with people who we’re more than acquaintances with but not good friends. The sort of “in-betweeners”. Thank goodness we still have our best friends to rely on (hopefully!).
But, when your friend bails, this isn’t their fault. Nor is it yours. This is nobody’s fault — everyone does it. So who’s to blame?
I actually think this is a product of technology, and specifically social media. The ability to like and comment on so much material with such ease has transferred to us wanting to engage (though only briefly) with the idea of any and all things that get us excited, real-life events included. It’s so easy to post a comment saying that we’re interested in being a part of something, or to like a post about an event, or to agree with a quick message to join in on something.
Facebook might even be supporting this behaviour, though likely unintentionally. Think about how we can click “interested” on all of the seemingly endless number of events that appear on our news feeds as we scroll through them. And sure, they all seem exciting. We might actually want to do the things we suggest that we’re “interested” in, at the time we click the button or send the message. (Toronto Food Festival? Hell yeah!)
But let me introduce an concept that you might already be familiar with:
The paradox of choice
The paradox of choice is the idea that in a decision-making scenario, the more options we are given, the harder it becomes to make the actual decision at hand. If you have ever been in a scenario of trying to decide which product to buy (let’s say it’s a phone charger on Amazon), and spent a solid twenty minutes scrolling through the endless options before finally realizing you’re wasting too much time and just picking one that looks decent, you’ve experienced this firsthand.
But how exactly does this translate to the commitments we make? My guess is that given the continuously refreshing plethora of Facebook events, invitations, and offers from friends we are consistently exposed to, we just don’t feel obligated to take care of deciding on them all. Actually, perhaps the problem is that we actually can’t manage all of these invitations. There are so many options available to us, to the point that to actually remember what we’ve said yes to and what we really wanted to do when we first heard about it becomes impossible. Our brains are too busy to process it all.
So maybe this isn’t a product of the paradox of choice. Perhaps it’s something called information overload.
Information overload
Information overload is what happens when our brain takes in too much information, to the point that it hardly processes most of it. Ever tried memorizing a whole bunch of information before an exam by just reading the textbook, only to soon stop with a feeling of despair, knowing that you’ll never remember any of it? That’s a perfect case of information overload.
Our human brains have been shaped by tens thousands of years of evolution to only remember a certain number of things at one time, including things we have committed to or said that we are interested in. Since Facebook was launched roughly ten years ago, the amount of information we have come to be exposed to on a daily basis has increased by an insane (and I’m pretty sure even exponential) amount. And evolution does not (usually? often? ever?) take place in so short a span of time as one decade. Therefore we shouldn’t expect our brains to be able to keep up with the new environment they’ve been placed in, and to remember all of the things we’ve committed to.
My point here is that when we bail on plans or don’t follow through on commitments, it’s not entirely our fault. It can still feel shitty when we’re excited for an event, only to be disappointed when plans fall through because the other person or people didn’t keep their commitment. But these outcomes are not a conscious decision. They’re the result of the complex interactions between our human brains and our technological environment.
Nobody wants to bail on plans or to disappoint others, but my belief is that the digital architecture that we’re surrounded by is here to stay. As such, this trend is likely to continue.
So what can you do to improve this?
Well, if you don’t see our generation’s inability to uphold commitments as a problem, then I guess you don’t have to do anything about it.
However if you do see it as a problem, you can at least change your own behaviour. I’m not an expert on any of this, so I won’t claim to have the perfect answer. But I believe that you can make a point of being more aware of what you say yes to. When someone asks if you want to do something (ie. have lunch, play pickup hockey on the weekend, help run their charity event, whatever it is), remember that both your time and capacity to make commitments are limited. Consider whether you actually want to take part in what’s being offered before you actually agree, and if you realize it’s either impractical or uncertain, you can tell them you can’t commit right now and that you’ll have to think more about it.
So what now?
Even if a lot of people read this article and start being more conscious about commitments they make, this problem still probably won’t go away. But if you read this, and going forward you keep in mind why it’s more difficult for our generation to keep our commitments than ever before, you might not feel as frustrated the next time someone bails or doesn’t follow through on what they told you. And, maybe, you’ll then have more clarity towards what you actually want to commit to as well.
Our brains are being shaped in some pretty insane ways by the new technological reality we are building, this just being one of them. It’s impossible to keep track of all of them, but ideas like this make me feel both amazed by the world we live in and curious about its future.
Anyways, if you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this! If you have comments (or disagreements) about any of the ideas, let me know. I’m always willing to change my mind based on better arguments. Also, if you have suggestions towards how I can improve my writing, please tell me! I really want to improve, and practicing through articles like this is one of the ways I’m working on that.
Thanks!
