I've started to notice over the last year, a sort of obsession with classifying and analyzing generations.

By this, I mean groups ranging from Baby Boomers, Generation X, Y and Z. And along with this obsession I've noticed something else: incessant bashing of "Millennials." Now, a Millennial is another way to describe a member of Generation Y (someone born around 1982-2004, and this range varies based on the source), but people use the term colloquially to demean almost anyone under 35 with a smartphone.

The point of all the articles written, surveys conducted and statistics analyzed about different age groups is to explain how their overarching characteristics can be attributed to historical, cultural, and technological developments. The general (biased) consensus about Millennials is that we are entitled, narcissistic, lazy and tech-obsessed. While these traits have basis in conducted research, people are using them as evidence for explaining why we are ruining almost everything, from napkins, to department stores, to Canadian tourism. Even though these are based on stats of what certain age groups tend to use/do more, it seems as though individual members of a generation are being blamed for ruining life as Boomers knew it.

Here’s the thing, though: stereotyping an entire age group as possessing certain negative qualities won’t provide any thorough analysis of our cultural climate. I get it, each generation tends to loathe the one that comes after it. This isn’t new. The Greatest Generation certainly clashed the Baby Boomers, culturally and ideologically. This pattern will probably only continue. But when you’re trying to make an impactful social statement about the world today and why it sucks, it might be more compelling to focus on historical and technological developments, on social and cultural change, then fixating on bashing the "brats" of the new millennium.