I was going to open this article by linking to a think piece about coddled millennials, but there were so many, I could not choose one. It seems as if every person over the age of 35 believes that our generation is selfish, lazy and entitled. We have been spoiled since the day we were born. We are easily offended and, like whiny babies, demand trigger warnings placed everywhere. If you spend any time reading Time magazine or the Atlantic, you’d think our generation’s sole purpose since birth has been to simultaneously herald the collapse of Western civilization as we know it and the arrival of the Antichrist.

I believe reports of our generation’s faults are greatly exaggerated. First of all, the idea that every person born between 1980 and 2000 somehow shares the same values and personality is silly and ridiculous. Secondly, people who critique millennials so harshly blithely ignore one thing —

it is incredibly difficult to be a young person today.

Our generation is lazy and entitled, obviously. That is why so many young people are unemployed or underemployed —

not because our country is still recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a crisis caused by irresponsible speculation on the part of venture capitalists of the generation before us in their quest to increase their personal wealth. Especially for those of us in the tail end of Generation Y, we grew up knowing from a very young age what the realities of an economic crisis are and that our economic prospects were bleak. For those of us lucky enough to be able to afford to go to college at all, in a time where the average tuition for a private college is greater than the average American income, we are faced with mountains of student loan debt after college.

Home ownership is not even a remote possibility. The biggest dream for many of my generation is to work at a job with a reasonable salary that we don’t hate and to be able to rent an apartment by ourselves with no cockroaches, maybe a window big enough to let in some natural light —

and even that is hard to attain. We want to afford a vermin-free living space? How entitled can you get?

Some point to the fact that we have, on average, received more attention from our parents than previous generations as evidence of the fact that we’re spoiled. We were shuttled from dance class to soccer practice to piano lesson as children and never played independently. Our parents involved themselves in our education and helped us with homework. Even after going away to college, we are still dependent on them.

We are not spoiled. We are over-scheduled. There is so much pressure placed on today’s kids to succeed, they are forced into activities every day after school in the hopes of finding an extracurricular that will look good on college applications. Parents put so much pressure on their children to succeed that many prestigious high schools across the countries have installed suicide guards. My high school always locked the sixth-floor bathrooms and one teacher told me it was for fear of students jumping.

Helicopter parenting has not resulted in kids that lay on the couch all day while their parents do all their work for them but in young people who are overworked, overstressed and have high levels of mental illness. For many of us, the first time we are able to choose our own activities is when we go away to college. The reason millennials appear dependent on their parents to help them navigate adult life is that, while I was lucky enough that my parents encouraged me to be independent, many of my peers never learned the skills necessary to live for themselves.

I am also surprised at the obsession critics of millennials have over trigger warnings. The reason people advocate for trigger warnings put in place for lectures and other things dealing with sensitive topics, such as rape, is because not everybody is mentally ready to process those things. Our culture is slowly but surely evolving to recognize that mental illness exists and can be very difficult to deal with. A trigger warning can help a rape survivor avoid a painful PTSD flashback. But by demanding trigger warnings become the norm, we’re all just being too sensitive, aren’t we? Mental illness is something we’ve made up, right?

Apparently, so is political correctness. This generation is “too PC.” We do not recognize the value of free speech. We do not want to be challenged by ideas we find offensive. Our minds are being coddled.

Our minds are not being coddled — they are being opened. We are beginning to realize the effect our words have on others and how innocuous phrases tossed off by a member of a privileged group can hurt a minority. Contrary to what this Fox News segment seems to argue, millennials finding Donald Trump offensive because of his comments against racial minorities and women does not mean we’re too sensitive. It means we have common sense and basic human decency. Our generation is becoming more sensitive, sensitive to the feelings of others. I fail to see why that is a bad thing.

It seems as if nowadays everybody has a different reason why this generation has gone wrong. We watched too much TV. We played too many video games. Our parents threw us one too many birthday parties. To anyone who is thinking of

writing another one of those pieces, I have a message for you: don’t. You have nothing new to say. Everything about us, from our work ethic to our favorite breakfast food has already been critiqued, yet no one seems to appreciate the strides towards a better future our generation is taking. Despite your best efforts, the kids really are all right.