Graphic courtesy of Kinsey Ratzman ’21
BY CHLOE JENSEN ’20
Scrolling through The New York Times website, I frequently see think pieces of a similar style about millennials. Although the specific topic varies, each of these articles seek to achieve one thing: to figure out who millennials are. Baby boomers and Generation X are obsessed with trying to define millennials. Whether it’s telling us we are the coddled and triggered generation, the technologically codependent generation or the generation with the most bizarre sense of humor, we have to be defined as a monolith, and more often than not, a negative one. Baby boomers and people in Generation X are also obsessed with asking what this means for them, and more dramatically, what this means for the planet.
If there is anything millennials are, it is diverse. According to the Brookings Institute, more than 44 percent of millennials are people of color. We are also a large generation, making up 23 percent of the total population and 38 percent of the working population. We’re becoming the first generation since the baby boomers to surpass their population and workforce. More of us are identifying as LGBT than previous generations according to a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation study. Like any Americans, our interests, values, hobbies, goals and dreams differ dramatically depending on our upbringing. However, we could be described as champions of social progress. In the 2016 election, for example, two thirds of millennials voted for Hillary Clinton, according to the Brookings Institute.
In many ways, millennial championing of progressivism is in response to growing up witnessing critical events like the 9/11 attacks, the largest economic recession since the Great Depression, mass shootings and the resurgence of populism. But we have also witnessed marriage equality and the first non-white U.S. president It would only make sense that our diversity would respond to these events. Perhaps this is why we demand and believe in social change.
We are also the generation who has grown up with a taste for technology. We are the kids who grew up with cellphones in middle school, with a plethora of information on the internet within a palm-size object. We are the kids reliant on GPS devices to communicate with our friends and Snapchat to communicate with our friends.
Because of our tendency to demand social and societal change, as well as our heavy technological use, baby boomers and Generation Xers have depicted us as a self-righteous, weak and entitled generation, incapable of adapting to the real world.
While many of these think pieces, with titles like“Why Are Millennials Warry for Freedom” and “Millennials: the Me Me Me Generation,” portrays us as technology dependent, triggered snowflakes, we are actually the smartphone savvy activists.
We not only rely on our smartphones — like many older generations — but we also know how to use them effectively to promote change. One very recent example of this was in Parkland, FL where students attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are using social media as a platform to raise awareness about the battle for gun control. Other examples include the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as other nation-wide hashtag movements and Twitter fundraisers. Whereas in previous years, only small media outlets may have heard about the Stoneman Douglas High protests, now many young people hear about these movements and start similar protests of their own. Young people are using both a fondness for technology and interest in progressivism to become the generation of change.
Although baby boomers and people in Generation X generally portray millennial interest in technology and social justice as transfixing, annoying and unproductive, our recent strives for change prove otherwise. Perhaps our interests, values and diversity should not be frowned upon, but rather seen as a way in which we are actively improving the world.