If you’re reading this, congratulations: chances are you’re a millennial. For those of us born between 1980 and 2000, the title is non-negotiable. It’s been administered in the same way that Generation X was dubbed the “MTV Generation.” If you’ve read one of the myriad columns about the state of ‘kids today,’ you know that it isn’t meant as a term of endearment — to be a millennial is to be seen as self-absorbed, lazy and rude by the rest of the population, who will often grumble something incoherent about how things were different “back in their day.”
Having been born in the early 1990s, I doubt that I’m the only member of Generation Y who has trouble self-identifying as a millennial: apart from its almost exclusively negative connotation, it just isn’t a term that I relate to. Even the word “millennial” seems forced, like a tagline used to sell hair products to college freshmen.
Tempting though the “millennial” buzzword may be to columnists who single-mindedly seek to typecast us as hipsters and layabouts, we are not defined solely by the time period in which we are emerging into the harsh light of the public sphere. We did not choose to grow up in this time and, had we been given a choice, it’s doubtful this would have been it. Our youth unemployment rate is at 13.6 per cent, and one in 10 Canadians between the ages of 15 and 24 is neither working nor enrolled in school.
Tuition is more expensive than it used to be — by 2017, it’s expected to have tripled since 1990 — and, as a result, we’re piling on more debt than any generation before us. But we don’t have a choice: post-secondary education is the new high school diploma. Unemployment rates in 2011 for 24-to-35 year olds with a degree was 6.8 per cent, compared to 18.1 for those without one; compare this with 55-to-64 year olds, whose unemployment rate was 4 per cent with a high school diploma and 8.8 without.
The jobs that baby boomers and Generation X-ers used to be able to find without a degree are becoming more and more scarce, and we’re taking on mountains of debt to find alternatives — no wonder we’re so worried about money.
Yet one of the most common statistics cited in the tirade against millennials is that we value cash — or, more specifically, having some — as our number one most important life goal, whereas in 1971 it was only number eight. This is one of the most frequently cited factoids used as irrefutable proof that we are narcissistic and self-absorbed, as though having enough money to pay for a home or to support ourselves and our families is undesirable. Can you really blame us for valuing financial stability?
The answer, predictably, is yes. Journalists and researchers have found a way to blame millennials for pretty much every issue we face in modern society: how us marrying later and living at home longer is killing the economy (J. Maureen Henderson, Forbes); how we’re cheap under-consumers who are destroying the economy (Joseph P. Kahn, The Boston Globe); how we lack focus and commitment (Patricia Sellers, Fortune). It’s enough to make your head spin, and your blood boil. But it doesn’t stop there.
One of the most well-known critics of Generation Y is Jean M. Twenge. She’s a psychologist who has authored books titled Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic, and she’s often featured in publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. Her position is that the current generation of young people is comprised of self-absorbed narcissists, and Western culture is to blame: parents, teachers and other adults put too much emphasis on young people being “special,” giving every kid a trophy and encouraging success before it happens rather than rewarding it once it does.
To be a millennial is to be seen as self-absorbed, lazy and rude by the rest of the population.
Her celebrity is built on a foundation of aging baby boomers and Generation X-ers: parents, grandparents and people who watch Good Morning America have rallied behind her research, all too happy to find another reason to blame youth for being entitled and selfish.
Twenty-somethings happen to be particularly easy targets, and all it takes is a few pseudo-scientific claims to send baby boomers into rants about pretentious bohemians and unemployed slackers.
But Twenge’s research, which is dependent on a test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, has met controversy from her peers: Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a research professor in psychology at Clark University, accused Twenge of “vastly misinterpreting and over-interpreting the data,” and “inviting ridicule for a group of people about which there is already negative stereotypes.”
It’s not hard to see why: among the questions Twenge includes as indicators of narcissism are yes-or-no descriptors like “I am assertive” and “I like to take responsibility for my actions.” Since we can assume that most millennials are answering “yes,” this clashes with the view many hold of the younger generation as lazy and terrified of commitment. Not to mention, many might see taking responsibility and being assertive as a sign of maturity and good work ethic, rather than selfishness.
Echoing some of Twenge’s views is Joel Stein, whose June 2013 front-page Time’s article “The Me Me Me Generation” has become the blueprint for millennial mudslinging. My personal favourite quote is this one: “Not only do millennials lack the kind of empathy that allows them to feel concerned for others, they even have trouble intellectually understanding others’ points of view.” As a millennial, the only intellectual point of view I have trouble understanding is one which trades insight and restraint for acidity and hyperbole — Stein’s being my permanent go-to example.
To back up his hateful (and just plain untrue) arguments, he proposes that unlike his parents and grandparents, who likely made similar claims about the previous youth generation, he has proof — that is, proof that narcissistic personality disorder is thrice as common in twenty-somethings as it is in those over 65. But this figure has little to do with a generation gap: as Brent W. Roberts, Grant Edmonds and Emily Grijalva write in their 2010 paper “It Is Developmental Me, Not Generational Me,” narcissistic personality disorder is simply more common in young people, with no notable difference across generations.
“[When] older people are told that younger people are getting increasingly narcissistic, they may be prone to agree because they confuse the claim for generational change with the fact that younger people are simply more narcissistic than they are,” the paper states.
Stein’s article, apart from being written in a crotchety and, frankly, insulting tone, is also laced with a heavy dose of irony, albeit an unintentional one — surely there’s something narcissistic and self-aggrandizing about characterizing the younger generation as lazy, narcissistic and unmotivated, and characterizing your own as hard-working, selfless and motivated.
This is a common thread in these columns: a smug sense of superiority pervades any assessment of the Me Generation, as exemplified in “The End of Courtship?” a New York Times opinion piece wherein writer Alex Williams laments the increasing technological nature of relationships and longs for the “courage” involved in traditional courtship.
Every person would surely like to believe that theirs is the best generation, that their hardships were worse than those the current one is facing. But it’s myth.
Many millennials are among the most intelligent and motivated people you’re likely to meet.
It takes a lot of hubris to think that this generation is somehow worse than every one that has come before, but it’s been happening for centuries. From the Greek poet Hesiod’s dismissal of the youth of 700 BC as “reckless beyond words,” to an article in a 1907 issue of The Atlantic decrying “the latter-day cult of individualism; the worship of the brazen calf of the Self,” to Tom Wolfe’s 1976 New York article that promised “the 1970s […] will come to be known as the Me Decade,” the older generations have always criticized the younger ones.
This casual form of ageism — one that many aging millennials will doubtlessly administer on the not-yet-nicknamed Generation Z — only serves to further dampen the spirits of a generation whose economic and social prospects are among the worst in recent history. I don’t mean to rebuke every claim of narcissism in young people: a percentage of teenagers and twenty-somethings will always be self-absorbed, lethargic snobs, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
But there is also a whole lot to love about millennials — and I’m not just saying that because I am one. They’re more educated, racially integrated and politically engaged than the generations that have come before. They tend to be more tolerant, progressive and open to change than their seniors. You can thank them for dropping the teen pregnancy rate in Canada by 37 per cent in the last decade, and for dropping youth crime rates in BC by 49 per cent between 1991 and 2006.
In fact, about a third of millennials have children of their own, and are raising them to be active and engaged members of society, despite the capricious Canadian job market and climbing cost of rent. According to the Pew Research Center, even those who don’t have children value being a good parent above having a successful marriage — 10 per cent more than their Gen X counterparts.
The problem here is generalization. It’s easy to define a group of people based on a set of characteristics and traits. It’s why stereotypes exist, and it plays a pretty big hand in sexism, racism and whole lot of other -isms. But like the generations before them and the ones yet to come, millennials are made up of both the worst and best human beings that this world has to offer.
This is because they happen to be people, and people make mistakes — some more than others, and this shouldn’t have a negative effect on those millennials who are doing the best that they can to make it in the world they’re about to inherit.
After all, Generation Y is the workforce of the future. They are the doctors, lawyers, artists, journalists, architects, scientists and teachers that will lead the world into the uncertain haze of the 21st century. Some of them will doubtlessly create new jobs as old ones continue to disappear into obsoletion. Many of them are among the most intelligent and motivated people you’re likely to meet — even if a few of them have a little growing up to do.
So relax. We’ll do just fine.
