English 1A
The Millennial Generation
Who are the Millennial Generation? They are the children, rather, the young adults, born in the 1980s through the millennium. Generation M, Generation Y, the Net Generation, the iGeneration, and Generation Next are the many names by which the Millennial Generation are known. The most indistinct label, “Generation Y,” is simply a placeholder, chosen because Generation Y follows Generation X, those people born sometime between the 1960s and early 1980s. The variety of tags are ways the media, politicians, social critics, and demographers have defined this generation of young people.
Alternatively, terms such as iGeneration, and Net Generation indicate the global demographer’s facility with technology, especially its presumed mastery of the Internet and communication technologies. The iGeneration tag is often reserved for those born after the Internet gained wide public use, thus singling this slice of global population as people who have never known a world without the World Wide Web. Even the universal “Next Generation” suggests this group will shape a world enhanced with even more astounding technological breakthroughs, as well as changes in environmental practices, geopolitics, economics, and cultural interrelations. “Whatever name is applied, however, the intention is almost always to show how distinct this generation will be from those that have come before them” (“Millennial Generation”).
According to historians Neil Howe and William Strauss, in their book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, this generation’s uniqueness is a truly positive force. When writing about the qualities of Generation Y in the United States, Howe and Strauss claim, "As a group, Millennials are unlike any other youth generation in living memory. They are more numerous, more affluent, better educated, and more ethnically diverse. More important, they are beginning to manifest a wide array of positive social habits that older Americans no longer associate with youth, including a new focus on teamwork, achievement, modesty, and good conduct. Only a few years from now, this can-do revolution will overwhelm the cynics and pessimists" (4). The authors believe that Millennials were raised with good values, including tolerance and eagerness to help others. They believe these values will triumph over adversity and make the world a better place.
Millennials even have their own website, The Next Great Generation (TNGG), which projects their can-do attitudes and shows a connection to issues ranging from marketing, fashion, media, and politicians. Their website is an on-line magazine written by an “up-and-coming generation of journalists and bloggers.” This website is “an experiment in crowd-sourced journalism, a mixture of blogging, opinions, and commentary” about their lives, their issues, and the world around them. The TNGG claim to “straddle the line between ‘I love the ‘80s’ and the digital revolution.” Also, they state they are the children of the Baby Boomers who are growing up in the information age and are not afraid to say what they think. The website community has three main goals: “1. Give the up-and-coming generation a platform where they can share and develop their voice; 2. Uncover greater truths about our generation as a whole: how we feel, care, want, create, spend, love; 3. Promote new ideas and awesome talent, paving the way for innovation in media in the 21st Century.” These goals illustrate the confidence and can-do attitude of the Millennial Generation.
Some critics, however, view the Millennials’ confidence as excessive self-interest. According to a widely-referenced CBS 60 Minutes segment from November 2007 and update May 23, 2008, correspondent Morley Safer found that businesses were fearful of hiring Millennials because they had their own priorities that seemed to trump work duties. In his May 25, 2008 broadcast, Safer claims that they are young adults who have been coddled by their parents to the point of being ill-prepared for a demanding workplace.
According to employers, this new group of young workers wants to set their own hours and put personal engagements before all others. The CBS writers concluded, “Their priorities are simple: they [the Millennials] come first.” One employment consultant, who had been interviewed for the piece, argued that years of coddling had made Millennial workers expect nothing but praise and rewards for their efforts. She maintained that this generation of workers needs to be “coached” rather than “bossed.” She also warned that businesses would have to change their methods if they hoped to retain young employees.
Other commentators have laid the supposed self-absorption on the variety of personal digital gadgetry and the on-line social network sites which encourage their users to express themselves wholly and broadcast their personal lives as if everyone in the universe needs to know about every significant moment of their lives. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor, in her book, The Narcissism Epidemic, accused young people of using the social medias, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube as venues for shameless, self-promotion instead of for meaningful sharing, connectivity, and creativity.
“Whether the Millennial generation is really ‘Generation Me’ as Twenge contends is still a subject of debate” (qtd. in “Millennial Generation”). Millennials resist this labeling of their generation, while older generations want to know why the young people of today are so different. In a report published in 2010, two psychology professors, Karl H. Trzesniewski, University of Western Ontario, and M. Brent Donnellan, Michigan State University, surveyed high school seniors from 1976 to 2006. They gathered data on the student’s sense of egotism, life satisfaction, reaction to authorities, political activity, and other habits and attitudes. Trzesniewski and Donnellan believe, given the data from the study group, a doubt is cast as to the generations born in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s being singularly different. “According to Donnellan, as quoted on the website Gimundo, “Kids these days are about the same as they were back in the mid-1970s” (qtd. in “Millennial Rising”).
Generational conflicts have been around forever. Baby Boomers were criticized for their anti-authoritarianism, and their embrace of rebellious rock and roll. Members of Generation X were labeled as “slackers.” Generation Y, or as they are more commonly known, Millennials, have been labeled as “coddled,” “self-absorbed,” and the “ME” generation. However, despite the negative generalizations, this is a generation of young adults who could change the world as we know it today with their take-charge attitudes and their seemingly strong attitude of speaking out about any subject on the social media websites.
Works Cited
Howe, Neil and William Strauss. “Millenials Rising: The Next Generation. New York: Vintage Books. 2000. Print.
“Millennial Generation.” Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Detroit: Gale. 2012. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
Pearlman, Alex, et al. "About TNGG." www.thenextgreatgeneration.com. N.p. The Boston Globe, Boston.com. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Safer, Morley. “The ‘Millenials’ Are Coming.” 60 Minutes. Prod. Katy Textor. CBS. CBSNews.com. 11 Nov. 2007. Updated 23 May 2008. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.