With an election year upon us and the United States in a critical position, millennials may very well decide the General Election. While Hillary Clinton has been running on a platform of real change, her opponent in the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, is preaching a revolution in social justice. Hillary may say that there is more that unites her with Sanders than divides her, but it doesn’t help that she just can’t seem to put the Vermont Senator away. This is mainly due to Bernie’s popularity with millennials, a key voting group that Clinton is just dying to get her hands on. However, Sanders is holding firm on his grip of this group with his cries of radical change from the ground up.
Also not helping Hillary, is her likely opponent in November on the Republican side--Donald Trump-- who is also promising drastic changes. Millennials could very well decide the 2016 election, and they are often misunderstood by the media and members of older generations. The common conception about Millennials is that they are “entitled, spoiled, uninformed, and apathetic” towards many issues currently facing them. However, many of the perceived character flaws of the members of this generation are either false or justifiably explained.
Regarding the previously mentioned traits of Millennials, the fact that they are "entitled" and "spoiled" seems to be the most poignant. This article is by no means an accurate representation of all members of this generation, but rather a general rule of thumb. Whether or not Millennials are entitled is a major issue because one of the larger issues of this election is regulating minimum wage and unemployment.In the general sense, many Millennials support an increase in minimum wage, gravitating more towards Bernie Sanders who is promising $15 an hour. However, the common argument why Millennials are spoiled is because they "had bad parents who never properly taught them the value of hard work turning them into a generation of lazy people looking for a government handout’. This notion is unfounded, but the explanation for why the Millennial generation has these personality traits lies in their upbringing in the digital age.
No one takes the technological strides that civilization has made over the past 35-years more for granted than Millennials. This is understandable, considering that many have spent more of their life with the internet than without it. Millennials grew up with information constantly at their fingertips in an instant, for free. It should be expected that they would support a candidate promising such radical changes in such little time at no cost to them. While the internet and social media has had its benefits on Millennials-- such as making them more accepting to social changes because the internet was a platform that gave a voice to the voiceless-- it has also had its disadvantages.
The rise of social media’s prominence,as well as the internet,has led to many members of this generation being misinformed. It is a common occurrence for a fake news story to spread like wildfire, or for opinion to be treated as fact throughout the internet. The playing field has essentially been leveled, and while giving those who ordinarily would have never been heard a chance to be heard is a great thing, when they overshadow the voice of reason it leads to exponential problems. Perhaps this overwhelming nature of the world as we know it has led to voter apathy in the youth, culminating in 12% voter turnout among young people in 2010.
It is being seen again with a great deal of Sanders supporters claiming they are “Bernie or Bust” essentially stating that they will stay home in November if the nomination goes to Hillary. This only feeds into the notion of entitlement among Millennials because it’s a concrete example of them not getting their way and revolting, or throwing a tantrum in the eyes of a cynic.
Moving forward, the only way for Millennials to change their perception is to be informed by breaking away from the disadvantages of social media. Democracy relies on an informed general public making decisions for the greater good into the future, and with a growing apathy towards that for any number of reasons, the country could be heading into dire straits. The election in November will be a turning point in the history of the United States of America, and the results may fall on how the Millennials lean, if at all. Whether they support Sanders, Clinton, or Trump, what they cannot do is support anyone blindly. A misinformed general public will only get progressively worse as generations and democracy moves forward. Unless Millennials decide to ask themselves the hard questions, democracy may find itself in a tailspin.
