mil·len·nial
“(also known as Generation Y) The generational demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years. Millennials are sometimes referred to as “echo boomers” due to a major surge in birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s, and because millennials are often the children of the baby boomers.” – from Wikipedia.com, May 2018
If you’re older than thirty-five, your definition of this word is probably more closely linked to the Millennial Falcon from the original Star Wars, or maybe even the definition that is still in print in the traditional Webster’s Dictionary: “denoting or relating to a period of a thousand years.”
Regardless of the definition that you’ve adopted, one thing is for certain: We all must understand what millennial means today and we all need to understand the mind of a millennial. There’s no better way to do that than to talk to one.
For my research, I sat down with a group of people in their early twenties to ask them to describe, in their own words, what makes their generation unique and what can we expect in ten years. Here’s what they had to say:
“We’ve been taught our entire life to be the change that we want to see, to do what you love and not what you have to – to shoot for the stars. For example, if you come from a long line of bankers, who says you have to be one, too? If you don’t want to carry on a family tradition, you don’t have to. Be your own person. Be different.
“Our generation has never known a time without Internet access. Search engines drive our lives and big data companies, like Google, can put out an ad that says ‘It gets better’ and millions of people notice it. Everything, and I mean just about everything, can be instant. If you want something, you’re only a click away from it. Social media is a place for instant affirmation and applause. Whatever you do, you can find someone, somewhere, who will agree with you.
“Our generation also is known as the ‘everybody gets a trophy’ generation. Everybody is treated like a superstar and recognized for simply participating. That’s probably the biggest adjustment our age group has to make in college. College is where you realize you’re not as good as people have been telling you you were your entire life and you have to earn your place. A lot of peers are struggling with that.
“When our parents graduated, they instantly moved to a new place to start a life and it was a life on a budget. Now, after graduation, it’s completely acceptable to move back home and continue pulling financial support from your parents.
“The mentality of many young people now is that they may have hopes and dreams, but they may not want to work very hard to get it. If your dream is to be an astronaut, no one is going to give you a degree in that or do the work for you – you’re going to have to work hard for it.
“In spite of everything, millennials are a sensitive and caring generation. They want to make the world a better place and many adopt humanitarian political stances. There is a gap, though, in wanting the world to be a better place and actually working hard to make that happen. It could be said that millennials are ‘front-end’ people and not ‘back-end’ people. We want to be out front. Our goals are good, but we want someone else to do the work. This attitude is not completely our fault. Almost 100% of the time we are growing up in a higher income society than our parents did, and our parents want us to have a better life than they had.
“Our generation is rebellious. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out in the future. We’ve never known a time without technology – that’s good and that’s bad.
“We’ve never known a time when there’s not been war in the Middle East.
“We like new stuff. We like fresh and pretty and things that work.
“Probably the best attribute of our generation is that we are inclusive of everyone. We don’t judge. Everybody’s human and makes mistakes. We’re seeing retailers start to market with that. For example, Planet Fitness has a ‘judge free zone’. You can go there and not be judged for being overweight or in bad physical shape. It’s a brilliant concept. Even the most conservative universities in the country now have areas on campus that are labeled ‘no judging here’.”
The mind of a millennial is really not that different than my mind thirty-five years ago. As a matter of fact, if someone would have written an article or two then on my generation, it may have sounded similar to my post today. The bottom line is that every generation is unique and in their unique way they will lead us into the future. It will always take hard work to become an astronaut and everyone should always want the world to be a better place, and as long as those core principles don’t change, our future will be bright.
Recent Comments