Millennial bashing. It's pretty hard to avoid these days. It's on Facebook, Twitter, newspapers. Your parents are doing it, your aunts and uncles, maybe even some of your friends are doing it. But why?
What is so bad about being a millennial? For the life of me, I cannot figure it out. Honestly, it's the most annoying part of my day, when I'm scrolling through Facebook and I see people who have made songs, written articles and written posts about how useless millennials are.
I don't understand all the grievances older people and sometimes even other millennials have for millennials. For some reason, we have been labeled as useless, entitled, lazy, out-of-touch and the list of negative adjectives goes on.
We have been so harshly judged and labeled for the situations we inherited from older generations. We grew up in a recession created by our parents and grandparents. We are facing outstandingly high college costs. The older generations have made it increasingly harder for us to do to things they were able to do so easily.
They were able to work at minimum wage and pay for college. They were almost guaranteed a good job out college. Yet these are things we don't have the luxury of having.
Sure, we use technology a lot and we want our careers and lives to progress faster than they are, but does that make us the worst generation ever. I don't think so. I think that we are just like every other generation.
We are learning how to live in the older generations world on our own terms. We are a creative, innovative group that want to make an impact. We are growing up. We are doing what the older people did when they were young.
The older generations have always criticized the rising one. The only difference between what Baby Boomers did to the Gen X'ers and what the Gen X'ers are doing to the millennials, is the Gen X'ers and to some extent, the Baby Boomers are using Facebook and other social media to crush the spirits of the rising population.
I think that is the most ironic thing about the millennial bashing I see on a daily basis. The social media and other similar platforms that have been made popular by millennials that have assimilated into the lives of the older generations are being used to tell us we have no use.
So maybe before you share that song that tells you that millennials only care about Snapchat and Instagram think about what you cared about when you were 20. What you think about and do now and what you thought about and did when you were 20 are completely polar opposites.
Sure, we have a lot of growing up to do and we know that and we are doing it in the digital age where our every move and thought can be documented and picked apart. And sure, there are dumb millennials and useless millennials, just like there are dumb and useless Gen X'ers, but that is not all of us and that's important to remember. So please, just think before you bash.
