When I hear the word "millennial," I think: liberal, Tinder, BuzzFeed, iPhone, and idiots. There about one million ways to describe my "generation." Somehow people see us as both lazy and extremely stressed out, well-educated yet overly-sensitive, entitled but frugal because of the recession. So what are we? No one seems to have any clue. That might be because grouping people into generational groups is not only bogus but ineffective.
Saying that everyone of a certain age group has the same types of problems, beliefs, and backgrounds is just an over-generalization. For example, let’s say that I have six Gatorades, all different flavors. I then make a blanket statement saying that all of the Gatorades taste the same because they are all Gatorade. Not true, lemon lime is not nearly the same as orange and also it is very gross. The same logic can be applied to the idea of ‘Millennials.’ Not everyone struggles with student loan debt from their peace studies major, not everyone is working at a startup, and, most importantly, not everyone comes from the same ethnicity and background. So how does age make us all indistinguishable in our struggles and the way we choose to live our lives? The truth is, it doesn’t.
When I read articles that claim to have the answers about each of the generation’s personality traits, it feels a lot like a palm-reading. Very vague and generalizing words are used: hard-working, resourceful, adaptable. These same words can also be used to describe hunter-gatherers living 10,000 years ago. I wonder if people were sitting around and labeling their children as lazy or incompetent for deciding to throw away the nomad life to set up permanent homes and civilizations. Kids these days! They will never know the reward of picking berries with their bare hands! The truth is, you can be 80 and hard-working, or sixteen and hard-working. Personality traits are not unique to one generation. My mother called me lazy just the other day, just as her mother did when she was my age. Laziness has a transcendent spirit that knows no bounds.
Human beings are constantly evolving as time goes by. Problems change, tastes changes, technology becomes more innovative. I think that it is human nature to look for answers about situations today. A question adults love to throw around is: “Why are young people so darn mad all the time?” Some might say it because as children were coddled growing up and their fragile feelings were never hurt. Blame the parents. (Hey! I know what struggle is, I was called fat in the sixth grade.) An easier answer could just be people have more access to information, so naturally there are more injustices to be mad about. I’m no social scientist but it seems logical! Helicopter parents are ruining America! Or racial injustice is ruining America, take your pick.
Yes, maybe I could relate more to someone who is close in age to me, but that just might be my irrational fear of authority. In fact, I know many people who are my age who I simply cannot relate to, and I am sure many people feel the same about me. (For instance, people that like juicing or entourage.) I can get along with older people, maybe even be friends with them (OMG!). But it is important that they don’t treat me like the only sources I get my news from are Twitter and BuzzFeed. There is a lot that happens in a person’s life that makes them who they are. Maybe it is the economy, or their gender, or their ethnicity, or their income, or their IQ, or their laziness (millions of factors!). Maybe it is a few of those traits for one person, and a few different traits for another. It’s time to stop looking at generations as some kind of huge unified monster. There are young people with many different ideas, values, and for the millionth time, backgrounds, and it’s time we start recognizing that. Dump ‘Millennials’ please.
