Millennials are a unique group. Many of us were born before the Internet existed and before other high-tech gadgets such as iPhones flooded the market. However, both the Internet and cellphones are intertwined with our daily lives and routines. We were alive on 9/11, but many of us were too young to fully comprehend what had happened until after the Iraq War began. Significant events such as the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 occurred during our childhoods and teen years, and now we're getting educated, entering the workforce, all the while trying to pick up the pieces of a seemingly unstable economy left for us to somehow fix.
Older generations might have negative views of "kids these days," but millennials show uniquely optimistic trends in their behavior and achievements. For example, teen pregnancies and birth rates have been steadily declining over the past 25 years. With more young men and women seeking dependable, long-term contraception, those rates will likely continue to go down. Additionally, recent data shows that more teenagers today are graduating high school than ever before, but college enrollment is remaining steady, likely due to the rising costs of tuition. That's not to say that "kids these days" aren't willing to work hard, though. In fact, one third of all working-age people in the United States are millennials. And by 2020, half of the global workforce will be comprised of millennials.
Millennials are a force to be reckoned with. In 2015, we surpassed the baby boomers as the largest living generation in the U.S., and this year, even the youngest of the millennial generation will be old enough to drive. Democrat or Republican, most millennials can agree on large issues that generally incapacitate our government of today, such as the importance of transitioning to clean energy, closing gun law loopholes while still upholding the Second Amendment, accepting refugees from foreign conflicts and much more.
With the millennial generation now surpassing that of the baby boomers in regards to number of voting-age individuals, millennials hold more power than they did before in determining the future of both our country and world. Whether we know it or not, we now have the potential to be extremely influential.
