The Atlantic is claiming they "are the worst." CBS NEWS is warning all future bosses about them coming to "attack everything you hold sacred." The New York Times is referring to them as being "coddled and helicoptered," or "catered to" and "fussed over."

Everyone is talking about the Millennials, or Generation Y. Pew Research Center defines this generation as anyone being born after 1980 or "the first generation to come of age in the new millennium." There are around 80 million members of the generation in the U.S. alone.

The Millennial generation has grown up with access to a plethora of technology and has had a front row seat to the rapid growth of social media. Having technology like this at their fingertips is one factor that contributes to the negative perception a majority of society has of the generation. Getting to experience technological advances that older generations could have only dreamed of, “not appreciating” it, “abusing” social media, selfies, being “self-absorbed," never living in the moment and always “living on their phones” are just a few of the stereotypes.

Contradicting these negative views of the Millennials are statistics from the Pew Research Center. It’s been recorded that the generation seems to get along with their parents better than previous generations have, they respect their elders more, they are quickly becoming the most educated generation in U.S. history and appear to be more diverse than older generations. With reports like these surrounding their generations name, it makes the stereotypes awfully hard to believe.

Not only has this generation experienced a lot of advances in society through technology, but they have also witnessed a vast amount of tragedy. They’ve lived through the Great Recession, saw the horror of 9/11, experienced the devastation that natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina have caused, watched on their TVs news stories of school shooting after school shooting, have seen the War on Terror and the list can go on. Growing up in a country with all of this going on builds character, wisdom and experience.

Speaking as a Millennial myself, I do believe that we have the tendency to be selfish, entitled, unappreciative and don’t always live in the now. But I’m confident my grandmother can say the same of her generation, and if my great-grandmother were alive, she could attest to hers being guilty of this, too. These characteristics are human nature and not a generation’s nature. We as a generation cannot be deemed “the worst” because of this, and I don’t believe we are “the worst," but instead, I believe that we are quite the opposite.

We may not be made like they used to be, and we may not have grown up in a world that had to work ten times harder than you do now in, but that’s a good thing. That means that our previous generations have done their job and made the world a little bit better and easier of a place to live in. Now, it’s the Millennials' turn to do the same. I believe, through our unique experiences, unlike that of past generations, our tendencies to be more open minded as a whole, and through lessons we’ve learned from those that came before us, we have the opportunity to be one of the greatest generations the U.S. has ever seen.

The Millennials are the future, a byproduct of their predecessors, and they make the years to come look full of promise.