Alright, for those of you who seem to be confused on the general education on the generations, here’s a little bit of help before we begin.
According to The Center For Generational Kinetics, a generation is a group of people that are born and raised around the same time era. As of now, we have 5 generations and they go as follows:
Tradionalists or The Silent Generation: born between 1945 and before
Baby Boomers: born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X: born between 1965 and 1976
Millennials or Gen Y: born between 1977 and 1995
Gen Z, iGen, or Centennials: born from 1996 until now
Now to the fun part. For all of you baby boomers and Gen X, for the love of all that is good, stop categorizing anyone younger than you as a “stupid, naive, entitled millennial.” Overall, just stop generalizing all of us off of information you’ve obtained from not only the internet but Facebook.
As a 20 year old college student female, I have gotten a lot of crap from mainly those over the age of 32.
“All you millennials think you know everything about anything and expect everything to be handed to you.”
“Millennials have no common sense anymore, snorting condoms and eating Tide Pods, our future is going down the toilet!”
Seriously?
While I’m in no way excusing the idiocy of the so called “trends” or “challenges” kids are doing today, but we really need to look at the bigger picture here.
For one, NOT ALL kids have been doing these challenges. Second, the only reason it has gotten the amount of attention it’s received is due to the ever growing majority of people using social media.
Let’s go down memory lane shall we?
Must we forget the sensational moments of stupidity where the generations before us were; drinking robitussin, huffing rush, eraser/cinnamon challenge, and so on.
Just because we didn’t have social media documenting all of these actions at a flash frenzy pace, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. While I’m sure you’re sitting there thinking, “I didn’t do that stuff that doesn’t pertain to me,” think of all the teens and 20 somethings you’ve been bashing for something they haven’t done either.
Stop blaming an entire generation of people for something a small group of idiots in that generation did.
Motioning back to our “entitlement,” while I don’t agree with a lot of what my generation may stand for or how easily some may get offended, what I do know is that we are far from being or feeling entitled to anything.
Majority of us are extremely hard workers, working 2-3 jobs to pay for college, paying our own bills and so forth. College tuition has grown immensely and it’s our responsibility to pay off the student loan debt we receive from a college education, that was so intensely pushed on us.
While some of us may not have our priorities fully straight, the majority of us work our asses off to get what we deserve and want.
For the next person who decides to call me a millennial and bash my beliefs, what I stand for, my work ethic, etc. please educate yourself on the generations and the fact that not everyone's the same. Take the minute to get to know people of that generation and you may be surprised on the delightful intellectual conversation you can have.
