Today, it seems that “millennials" (the part the population aged from about 19 to 35) are blamed for an increasing number of problems within the U.S. They’re lazy—which is why they can’t find work, they’ve got no culture, they’ve got no morals, and as one article I recently read put it, they’re also the reason Hillary Clinton lost the presidential race. As a millennial myself, I can’t say I have unbiased opinion when I say I think a lot of these accusations are unfair and shortsighted; however, I think when people and the media start placing blame for the country’s problems on one particular generation, it makes us all lose sight of the real issues—because let’s be honest, millennials aren’t ruining the country.
First, we should keep in mind that as a society, we have a short memory. It may seem like millennials are just this new breed of wild young people who won’t listen to their parents’ conventional wisdom, but in reality, millennials are the first generation to gain their parents’ ire. We hear a lot about the 60’s and the “free love” movement and copious amount of drugs going around at the time, but we should keep in mind that the parents of these “flower children” would have lived through the Great Depression—something tells me they may have disapproved of a carefree lifestyle. The controversy surrounding the millennial generation could be seen as just history repeating itself—as it is bound to do again. Every new generation brings new ideas into the world, it is nothing new for the older generation to disapprove of them. In fact, perhaps the amount of controversy that surrounds the millennial generation is a sign that our ideas will actually have an impact on the country.
Secondly, even the oldest members of the millennial generation are just now reaching their mid-thirties. I don’t think we have been around long enough to ruin the job market. The millennial generation has been put in a unique situation with the cost of college, the need for a degree to get most well-paying jobs, and the changing career fields. I don’t think we can make a blanket statement like the millennials are just a lazy generation—anymore than we could about any other group of people—without considering the facts behind a statement like that. Furthermore, blaming a generation or any group of people for nation’s issues just enables us to miss the real problems, and therefore, stops our ability to fix them.
Whether people—including millennials themselves—like it or not, the millennial generation is the future of the country. Perhaps instead of placing blame on them, we should try to ensure they can make the country a better place.
