Look, I’m a ‘millennial’ born in 1991. I am very hard working, skilled, talented, smart, charismatic, funny, tech-savy, and I am not alone. I am not an extraordinary human being and I am extremely lucky to be surrounded by the blessings of America during this era, but that doesn’t make me suck because I am a ‘millennial’. I am very similar to many of my peers and fellow millennials in aspects of owning and being addicted to a smartphone, having gone to college, delaying purchasing a house, and even using my parents as a place of living after finishing my degree in Chemical Engineering. However, the media is complete lies, Millennials Are Not The Cause of Any Economic Crisis or Societal Problems Different Than Any Previous Generations. We are all a product of the environment just like everyone else in the world. The largest environmental impact is the technology that developed rapidly as we were growing up. We are the only generation to know life before the internet and in turn grow up parallel to the expansion of the world wide web.
This report for the White House was made and used to advise President Obama and guide his economic policy in regards towards millennials. First, millennials make up a majority of the population and that 23-24 year old people are the most abundant. That’s people like myself, learning to make a living just like everyone else and attempting to find fulfillment in our lives. We are extremely young individuals only having lived ~20% of our lives and only remembering 12-15% of our average lifespan if the years before 5 are assumed to be forgotten, we are a huge part of this world. If, as millennials, we are going to be ostracized and told as a collective group we suck, than there is a larger fundamental issue at hand and it’s not us. 
I believe that it’s the understanding of who we are and the circumstances of how we are becoming who we are.
A large factor that needs addressed is the social media powerful nature. At first glance one would think that the police suck, millennials are stupid (majority of users on social media), overindulgent, superficial, and whatever trend is most noticed at the time. A vast majority of police officers are great people dubbed horrible by social media and the grimy situations their jobs require them to confront. As also, I beg anyone to take a look at the facts and actually spend time with millennials because one will find that we are not what we post and the best of our generation are not represented on social media. The most highly educated generation is the millennial generation with more and more of us going to college each year. Keep in mind the basic curriculum has not changed drastically in most fields, therefore, classes may be easier, but it’s the same material that people were learning in higher education of the 1980’s. Educated individuals have their ‘blonde’ moments, but for the most part social media presence in a highly negative way goes down with higher education (opinion not necessarily fact). Social media shows us the entertaining stories, not the average or the good deeds that aren’t seeking attention. Ask the young adult who volunteers at the local non-profit if he hashtags himself sweeping the floor? Of course not, it’s not bragging material. Ask the young professional how awesome it is to instagram waking up at 7am to beat the early morning traffic on his commute to work? It’s boring and sucks, breakfast is much more important. Facebook might as well be FakeBook and we are judging generations on opinions of what we see on these sites. Just as an experiment, take a look at your personal Facebook. Honestly ask yourself, doesn’t our own life look pretty awesome because all of our profile pictures were take at highlight moments? The social media argument goes on many different paths, but in general social media is the porn of gossip. It’s not the real life socializing an ‘boring’ interaction that we associated with the ‘good old days’.
So Millennials are lazy and don’t stick with their jobs for as long because they don’t know what commitment is. This is because technology has made them overstimulated and they can’t handle routine because that work is beneath them. That’s actually very false. Take a look back at the list and you’ll find that we are staying at jobs on average longer than generation x’ers (1960’s to 1980’s birth year). My personal experience with my peers is that we are willing and ready to work. Since there is a current economic down turn we are willing to hold on to a good paying job longer. Not only are we in a current down cycle, but we are in debt and the payments start instantly after we get that shiny diploma in that overpriced frame we thought was important to commemorate ourselves (which we know now is us getting sold another product). Personally, I don’t find that aspect of millennials lazy, so how is that lazy? We have a problem, debt, and we are willing to stick out jobs that we may not necessarily enjoy to make right on our college loan payments. We are also not buying houses or mortgages like previous generations. I believe this is due to debt. One doesn’t want to have college debt and turn around and ask oneself if we’d want to take out another long term debt for a house. Millennials are educated enough to know when the numbers aren’t viable, more loans doesn’t make sense. Patience and trying to spend right is a high sign of maturity in life. We are not trying to rush towards a house when the house doesn’t benefit our current lives.
Still convinced millennials suck? I hope not, but let’s look at some of the economic situations that happened while we are still learning to crawl in the world. First, the Ipod was invented. We were told by a product the word I. We were being marketed to be narcissistic from the beginning of Apple and similar companies. And our parents bought the products for us! The lucky few didn’t have the money or had to earn the money working like myself. Personalized trophies were bought left and right which included all kinds of products: Ipods, Iphones, Computers, Legos, Video Games, and many more products. You name it and it could be personalized to be yours and they were relatively cheap, but the personalized feeling didn’t have a price, yet. All of our products were made to make us feel as if we are the most important individual to walk to Earth, which is hard to resist, but tell that to my Android who calls me Awesome when I ask it my name (yes I set it that way for the humor). We were marketed to be narcissistic because it feeds into selling more products and building economy. Yes, narcissism is bad, but can we be at complete fault? These newfound dilemmas with personal products and internet exposure weren’t well understood and as young individuals were allowed to make our own judgements. Some of us were going to be left behind with narcissism because the power and freedom affected us at a young age. However, that is not the majority of us. Most of us are just like me, looking to find fulfillment and genuine confidence in themselves.
Looking back in comparison, what was the American Dream 20 years ago? My best guesstimate from reading and searching is similar to these lines: “Find a well paying job to support my family, buy a house and own property, have a family, and achieve a better life for my kids.” Nothing is wrong with the old version of the American dream, but I think millennials are getting smarter. We are observing the world and becoming conscientiously aware whether we know what we are doing or not. We have noticed that divorce rates are higher, so we wait to get married later in life which has scientifically been studied and known to be better. We have seen the corporate latter be cruel to our parents, so we look to forge our own paths, so be that it requires us to open our own businesses and take a risk (millennials have learned and developed crowdfunding never seen previously). So be it that the world dubs the millennials as a ‘sucky’ generation because that is not a fact. We are individuals and we have ample experiences to add to the world even in our short lived lives thus far. We have a tremendous amount of lessons to learn since we are still young, but we must first fall and be put down before we lead the future. Soon enough millennials if some not already will be world leaders having true influence. I believe in my generation, there are many talented individuals growing up right now who are millennials, who will change this world.
Thanks for tuning in!
Phillip.Hagerty@gmail.com
I’d love to hear from ya!
hen looking at your peers slightly ahead of yourself. “Man I really messed up and should have tried harder” The problem arises when there was no immediate reason for me in the moment to actually try harder or perform better.
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