The internet gives us the power to unshackle us from our desks, so why hasn’t it?

I have never felt grown-up, and I suspect the same is true for many my age. I make jokes on my dating profiles and twitter-bios that I’m a “part-time adult” and I constantly bemoan the form that responsibility takes for twenty-somethings my age.

I hate the idea of working for someone else from 9AM to 5PM every day, and on top of that being made to feel guilty for not working extra after 5PM has rolled around.

I hate the idea of spending my prime years chained to a desk, even it’s a standing desk with 2 very large, rather expensive monitors that make me feel like I’m a stock trader all day, when in reality I’m just wrangling excel files.

Aww Yiss. Motha. Fuckin. Monitors.

I hate that I’m expected to “just do it” when it comes to things like this. After all: I have to eat, right?

I can already hear the responses to statements like these:

“Grow up! There’s no such thing as a free ride!”
“That’s just what being an adult is!”
“That’s the price you pay for living in a civilized society!”

In fact, I recently complained about not feeling “adult-like” to a friend of mine and I got a long diatribe about how my current work-from-home job isn’t a “real” job, and having a “real” job is a necessary part of being an adult. My friend all but called me a child simply because I prefer to work from home, and I attempt to eschew the concept of the 9 to 5.

But in the same breath this friend and others who share his ideals will talk about all the lies we’re sold as children when it comes to work. They’ll insist to others that happiness doesn’t come from your job, and it doesn’t come in discrete milestones so “stop looking for that one thing that will make you feel fulfilled”. They’ll do their own complaining about how college as a necessary part of the American dream is a lie told to boost enrollment numbers and how a bachelor’s degree is practically worthless in our modern economy.

I’m not trying to trash talk my friend here, I just think it’s strange how many of the work-related stereotypes he’s able to slough off, but not wanting to be a cubicle monkey working 80 hour weeks is, in his mind, a “pseudo-adolescent”.
I’m not sure I buy that argument, and even if I did I’m not sure the “extended adolescence” people say the kids these days experience is anything of the sort.

Pseudo Adolescence and the Rise of the “Digital Nomad”

Millennials are often pegged by their older coworkers as immature, lazy, or entitled. Oddly enough, and in true millennial fashion, I think Madison Montgomery from Season 3 of the TV show “American Horror Story” said it best:

"They call us the global generation. We are known for our entitlement and narcissism. Some say it’s because we’re the first generation where every kid gets a trophy just for showing up. Others think it’s because social media allows us to post when we fart or have a sandwich for all the world to see."

Like most stereotypes this one has a small kernel of truth to it. No other generation has had such access to near unlimited supplies of banal musings, quips, photos, video, soundbites, articles, and more. And it’s clear from myriad examples of psychological research that we’re all slowly becoming addicted to social media and it has the potential to discourage attention, disrupt our regular reward pathways, and is a bit more likely to affect youth.

In short, we millennials love the internet. We live on the internet. We were born in the digital darkness, molded by it, and the rest of you just adopted it (and also invented it but who’s counting).

The internet — ever a double-edged sword — has brought not only Skinner-box style social media addiction, but also the rise of a polarizing work trend that us millennials are said to love: remote work.

shared living arrangements or living out their tiny-home dreams. Others are sating their wanderlust by working remotely in relatively low cost of living countries like Singapore or Taiwan. I’d bet money some are even doing all 3. Talk about entitlement.Like Madison said: they call us the global generation, and for good reason. Terms like “digital nomad”, #vanlife, and the ever sought after “work/life balance” are so commonplace as to have become cliche. Hordes of young people are ditching their apartments for subscription style

But is it entitlement? Or is it a natural consequence of being exposed more readily to the world beyond our front lawns by the magic windows in our pockets?

If I wanted, right now I could open up google maps and drop myself onto virtually any street on the planet. Going even further, I can strap on my Oculus Rift and feel like I’m towering over any city in the world with Google Earth VR.

Do experiences like this satiate us? Or make us yearn for more?Any of us can place ourselves digitally in any corner of the world, but for many constrained by traditional modes of work (read: office jobs), that’s all we’ll ever be able to do. With the average working hours in the US being as high as they are, and with the average vacation time being a paltry 10 days per year, it’s no wonder that a minority of Americans have ever traveled abroad. How would they even find the time?

Presented with the comparatively shitty hand that a 9 to 5 existence deals you, and the easily accessible glimpse at what could be, is it any wonder that us youngin’s want to find another way to make it in this world? Is it entitlement and a childish attitude that has us redefining work as we see fit, or are we uniquely poised to see the direction work is headed in our ever more networked world?

Knowledge Work, Automation, and You

This argument comes from a place of extreme first-world privilege, right? Surely only the bloggers, YouTube celebrities, and brogrammers of the world stand to benefit from the impending digital apocalypse. There’s no room for the coal miners or factory workers to jump on this yuppy bandwagon, right?

Well, yes and no. Some might argue that there’s no place anywhere on any bandwagon for the coal miners of the world. And US manufacturing production levels are poised to reach an all-time high in recent years, while conversely US manufacturing employment is lower than it’s been since the 1940s.

The down-players of the world are very likely going to have to eat some crow as more and more traditionally blue-collar jobs are replaced by automation, and the space for robot nannies on factory floors shrinks as artificial intelligence picks up the slack. Fear mongering and doomsdaying about the age of automation aside, this time really is different.

The last respite of the American worker, at least for a time, may be in the space of employment called “Knowledge Work”. Although nobody can really agree on what knowledge work truly means, it typically refers to people who do non-repetitive work that involves a great amount of technical know-how to accomplish. Lawyers, Executives, Programmers, Engineers, and the like.

And it is knowledge work that is uniquely amenable to remote employment. There’s no physical need for a programmer to be in the office, a journalist needn’t be at a desk to write their next expose, and the stereotype of the jet-setting executive is already well-ingrained in our culture.

Perhaps in this way the digital nomads of the world who yearn for something more than a corner office aren’t bucking a trend, they’re riding a new one that nobody else seems to have noticed.

And so in the end I say to my friend and those who think like him: Maybe I’m stuck in pseudo-adolescence, but maybe you’re stuck in a bygone age of work and preconceived notions of adulthood. Maybe you should ask to work from home tomorrow.

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