April 23, 2024
Dear Friends and Family,
The millennial generation has become infamous for their attitudes. Hopefully, this segment will bring some better understanding of the generation and its struggles.
A Genealogical Perspective: It is too early in the generations development to draw definitive comparisons with other generations. Currently their ages are between 28 and 43 so they are only at midlife at best. They are considered a Civic Type with the following definition:
Dear Friends and Family,
The millennial generation has become infamous for their attitudes. Hopefully, this segment will bring some better understanding of the generation and its struggles.
A Genealogical Perspective: It is too early in the generations development to draw definitive comparisons with other generations. Currently their ages are between 28 and 43 so they are only at midlife at best. They are considered a Civic Type with the following definition:
A dominate outer-fixate Civic Generation grows up as increasingly protected youths; comes of age overcoming a secular crisis; unites into a heroic and achieving cadre of rising adults; sustains that image while building institutions as powerful midlifers; and busy elders attacked by the next spiritual awakening.
The two previous civic generations – the Republican and G.I. – fought in wars, the Revolutionary and World War II, respectively. The Civil War cycle had no Civic generation as you will recall. So, the Millennials are not following the generational pattern, in part, because we have not yet had a secular crisis in the Millennial Cycle.
The Millennials Plight: The plight of the Millennials is significant, most particularly due to student loan debt and difficulty finding good paying jobs. Our university system is partially to blame for that plight. Their adoption of the woke ideology and indoctrination of same is the reason for the skyrocketing tuition costs. Today most colleges have more administrators than faculty as a result. This shift has also led to the multitude of “studies” majors – black studies, gender studies, judicial studies, environmental studies, etc. (e.g., Arizona State has 18 of them)– none of which leads to getting a good paying job. But yet many millennials think, “If I get a college degree – no matter the major – I’m entitled to a good job, so let me take out a student loan to do so.” Then they can’t get a good paying job because the major didn’t prepare them to do so. That is seemingly the naivete of many of this generation.
Happy Learning,
Harley
The Millennials Plight: The plight of the Millennials is significant, most particularly due to student loan debt and difficulty finding good paying jobs. Our university system is partially to blame for that plight. Their adoption of the woke ideology and indoctrination of same is the reason for the skyrocketing tuition costs. Today most colleges have more administrators than faculty as a result. This shift has also led to the multitude of “studies” majors – black studies, gender studies, judicial studies, environmental studies, etc. (e.g., Arizona State has 18 of them)– none of which leads to getting a good paying job. But yet many millennials think, “If I get a college degree – no matter the major – I’m entitled to a good job, so let me take out a student loan to do so.” Then they can’t get a good paying job because the major didn’t prepare them to do so. That is seemingly the naivete of many of this generation.
Happy Learning,
Harley
THE STUDY OF AMERICAN GENERATIONS – SEGMENT 8
THE MILLENNIAL CYCLE – MILLENNIALS – EXCERPTS
Born: 1981 – 1996. Breakdown: White 57.6%, Black 13.1%, Hispanic 20.8%, Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander 7.3%, Native American 1.2%
THE ME-ME-ME GENERATION: At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age grouping in American history. Each country’s millennials are different, but because of globalization, social media, the exporting of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials world-wide are more similar to one another than to older generations within their nations.
In the 1970s, people wanted to improve kids’ chances of success by instilling self-esteem. It turns out that self-esteem is great for getting a job or hooking up at a bar but not so great for keeping a job or relationship. The problem is that when people try to boost self-esteem, they accidentally boost narcissism instead. “When they’re little it seems cute to tell them they’re special or a princess or a rock star or whatever their T-shirt says. When they’re 14 it’s no longer cute.” All that self-esteem leads them to be disappointed when the world refuses to affirm how great they know they are. “This generation has the highest likelihood of having unmet expectations with respect to their careers and the lowest levels of satisfaction with their careers at the stage that they’re at,” says Sean Lyons. “It is sort of a crisis of unmet expectations.”
The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance.
What millennials are most famous for besides narcissism is its effect: entitlement. Though they’re cocky about their place in the world, millennials are also stunted, having prolonged a life state between teenager and adult that this magazine once called twixters. Never before in history have people been able to grow up and reach the age of 23 so dominated by peers. To develop intellectually you’ve got to relate to older people, 17-year-olds never grow up if they’re just hanging around other 17-year-olds.
Millennials are interacting all day but almost entirely through a screen. They’re deeply anxious about missing out on something better. Seventy percent of them check their phones every hour. Scores on tests of empathy similarly fell sharply, starting in 2000, likely because of both a lack of face-to-face time and higher degrees of narcissism. Not only do millennials lack the kind of empathy that allows them to feel concerned for others, but they also have trouble even intellectually understanding others’ points of view.
Millennials are more accepting of differences, not just among gays, women and minorities but in everyone. “There are many, many subcultures, and you can dip into them and search around. There’s not this us-vs.-them thing now. Maybe that’s why millennials don’t rebel.” Because millennials don’t respect authority, they also don’t resent it. That’s why they’re the first teens who aren’t rebelling. They’re not even sullen.
So, here’s a more rounded picture of millennials. They’re earnest and optimistic. They embrace the system. They are pragmatic idealists, tinkerers more than dreamers, life hackers. Their world is so flat that they have no leaders. They want constant approval. They have a massive fear of missing out and have an acronym for everything. They want new experiences, which are more important to them than material goods. They are cool and reserved and not all that passionate. They are probusiness. They’re financially responsible; although student loans have hit record highs, they have less household and credit-card debt than any previous generation on record – which, admittedly, isn’t that hard when you’re living at home and using your parents’ credit card. They love their phones but hate talking on them.
Source: Time Magazine by Jean Twenge professor at San Diego University (2013)
MILLENNIALS OR GENERATION Y: Millennials are the most diverse generation in American history, with a higher proportion of minorities and foreign-born individuals than any previous generation. They are also the most educated generation, with more of them attending college than any other cohort. This has led to a greater emphasis on knowledge work, entrepreneurship, and innovation, as Millennials seek to create their own paths and define success on their own terms. At the same time, Millennials face significant challenges, including mounting student debt, limited job opportunities, and increasing income inequality. They also came of age during a time of global instability, marked by terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and the Great Recession of 2008. Despite these challenges, Millennials have shown a strong commitment to social justice, environmental sustainability, and community involvement. They are more likely than previous generations to volunteer, donate to charity, and engage in political activism. They are also known for their digital fluency, social media savvy, and preference for mobile technology.
In terms of work, Millennials prioritize flexibility, work-life balance, and meaningful work over traditional measures of success such as salary and status. They value collaboration and feedback and tend to work well in teams. They are also more likely to job-hop than previous generations, as they seek to find the right fit and pursue their passions. In terms of family, Millennials are delaying marriage and child rearing, and are more likely to live with their parents or roommates than previous generations. This is partly due to financial constraints, but also reflects a desire for independence and exploration. They are also more likely to prioritize gender and LGBTQ+ equality, and to support policies and support work-life balance and family leave.
Overall, Millennials are a generation marked by their idealism, diversity, and adaptability. They face significant challenges, but also hold great promise for shaping the future of America and the world. Here are some potential impacts of the Millennial generation in each of these areas.
Work: The Millennial generation has placed a strong emphasis on work-life balance, flexibility, and meaningful work. They have also been known for job hopping more frequently than previous generations, seeking out opportunities that align with their values and offer personal growth.
Mindset: Millennials have been characterized as optimistic, confident, and collaborative. They have grown up with technology and tend to be comfortable with change and innovation. They are also more likely to prioritize social and environmental issues.
Life Expectations: Millennials have faced economic challenges such as high levels of student debt and a difficult job market, leading to delayed milestones such as marriage and homeownership. However, they are generally optimistic about their future and see the potential for positive change in the world.
Traveling: Millennials have been known for valuing experiences over material possessions, and travel has been a key part of that. They are more likely to seek out unique and authentic experiences and prioritize sustainability and cultural immersion in their travel choices.
Medicine: As the first generation to grow up with widespread access to the internet, Millennials have been proactive in seeking out health information and resources online. They have also been more likely to prioritize mental health and wellness, and to seek out alternative medicine and holistic approaches to healthcare.
Source: Generations Reimagined by Amanda Lisetti (2023)
THE MILLENNIALS: A generation of wanted children, the Millennials’ childhood years originated the word parenting as a verb – and created a sense of judgment and competition around child raising. Parents became obsessed with “enrichment” activities for kids in an age of global competition and income inequality, transitioning from the hands-off parenting experience by Gen Xers to “helicopter” parenting with lots of guidance and supervision for Millennials. After that, adulthood often came as a rude shock, giving rise to the Millennial term adulting, a reference to boring but necessary grown-up activities such as working, paying bills, and doing laundry.
Self-Esteem: Self-esteem was not just talk – it was backed up by action. At awards ceremonies, schools began giving awards to every child, not just the top performers, so everyone would feel good. Instead of having just the winning teams getting trophies, children’s sports teams began giving every child a trophy just for playing.
Those positive self-views also translate into higher expectations for their future lives. Millennials continued the trend toward high expectations that Gen X started, with increasing number of high school seniors expecting to earn graduate degrees and work in professional jobs. By the early 2020s, 7 out of 10 believed they would be in the top 20% of performance in their jobs – a mathematical impossibility but a psychological reality for a generation raised to think highly of themselves. Millennials are the most optimistic and self-confident generation in history.
The academic equivalent of “everyone gets a trophy” is “everyone gets an A.” So, what did Millennials hear about their academic performance? Teachers gave students better grades even though students were spending less time on homework. The boosting of empty self-esteem was no longer theoretical – it was real. There were more A students because parents and teachers decided to make more students feel like A students.
In a 2008 survey, 2 out of 3 college students said they thought professors should increase their grade if they explained they were trying hard, and a third thought they deserved at least a B for simply attending most of the classes for a course. Once Millennials began to enter the workforce in the 2000s, managers sat up and took notice. Stories began to circulate about young employees who expected to get promoted after a few months’ experience on the job. Others described employees who seemed to need constant praise or could not take criticism – “the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world.” When Time magazine finally ran a cover story on Millennials in 2013, it was titled the “Me-Me-Me Generation.”
In adulthood, Millennials’ sky-high expectations inevitably led to disappointment, especially after the Great Recession hit the generation especially hard. American culture basically told Millennials they were great – and everything was great – right before it most definitely wasn’t great. Many Millennials came to recognize that their buoyant childhood did not prepare them for the reality of adulthood, even as they appealed to older generations to stop criticizing them.
Narcissism, usually defined as an inflated sense of self, is a complex and often misunderstood trait. Narcissists are usually not insecure underneath; they have high self-esteem and truly believe that they are better than others. Narcissists are nearly always bad news for the people around them; they are so focused on themselves that they often disregard the needs and feelings of others. Narcissism is individualism on steroids. Researchers interested in studying narcissism in a nonclinical population almost always use the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). Interestingly, narcissists have few qualms admitting to their traits – most who score high on the NPI also readily agree with the statement, “I am a narcissist.” As individualism promoted self-focus and unrealistic positive self-views during the 1990s and the 2000s, college students’ narcissism steadily rose – and then, as the economic bubble burst, so did the bubble of narcissism.
Millennials are the first American generation in which more that 1 out of 3 had a four-year college degree by their late 20s, up from 1 out of 4 when Gen Xers were in that age bracket.
Economic challenges are often cited as the reason why Millennials aren’t having children. “No one is getting paid enough, there’s not adequate maternity leave, no one can afford hospital bills, most of us can’t afford a house – like what did you think would happen?” The idea that Millennials were dealt a bad economic hand is treated as close to gospel. The numbers tell a very different story. By 2019, households headed by Millennials actually made more money than Silents, Boomers, and Gen Xers at the same age – and yes, that’s after the numbers are adjusted for inflation. Fewer Millennials have children, so they have fewer people to support on their incomes. Looked at this way, Millennials are doing not just well but extremely well – they are making more money to support fewer people. What about the lower end of the scale? The news there is also good. Fewer Millennials were in poverty than when Gen Xers and Boomers were the same age. So, fewer Millennials, not more, are at the lowest rungs of the income ladder.
College Loan Debt: Millennials are the most highly educated generation in American history. That came with a cost: college loan debt. Overall, the cost of attending college has more than doubled since the Boomers arrived on campus in 1964, even after correcting for inflation. The average amount of student loans has doubled since the 1990s even after correcting for inflation.
Feeling poor instead of being poor: First, Millennials had high expectations as young adults – more than half, for example, expected to earn a graduate degree and as a result more thought they would work in professional job than actually would. The classic formula says that happiness equals reality minus expectations. So, if expectations are high (and Millennial expectations were sky-high), then reality won’t measure up even if it is pretty good. Second, feeling well-off is relative. Social psychology research finds a big disconnect between objective indicators (say, income) and people’s subjective perceptions of income based on comparing themselves to others. Social media and TV showcase those at the very top of the income distribution (or at least those who appear to be at the very top), giving a skewed view of others’ income. Third, online stories have endlessly repeated the idea that Millennials have gotten the economic shaft. Negative news stories, especially those that incite anger, get more traffic and thus make more money. Social media sites thrive when people get riled up and spend more time on the site.
The end result: More Millennials believe they got screwed economically, which has downstream consequences for their political attitudes and values. More felt that the system is not working. More will be attracted to government policies that alleviate financial burdens, such as college loan forgiveness, childcare subsidies, and housing subsidies. More will criticize capitalism and champion socialism.
Why are Millennials having fewer kids and waiting longer to have them? Two of the usual causes are involved: the slow life and individualism. The core feature of the slow-life strategy is waiting longer to have children and having fewer children when you do. Individualism – being able to focus on yourself – is another key driver. When younger adults who don’t want children are asked why, the majority give reasons like, desire for more leisure time, wanting more personal independence, and “I just don’t want them” – all centered-on individualism. Another reason for the falling birth rate is more complex: Raising children takes more effort than it used to. Breastfeeding is encouraged, kids enroll in more structured activities, and closer supervision is required. When Silents were raising their Gen X kids, it was common for children to roam their neighborhoods unsupervised; try that now and neighbors might call Child Protective Services. Constant supervision makes parenting more time-consuming and exhausting. Contrary to the idea that mothers spend less time with their kids now, they actually spend more – which makes having kids more challenging.
Less Sexually Active: Part of the sex drought is due to the slow life of young adults delaying settling down with a romantic partner. With the average age of marriage increasing to 28 for women and 31 for men and cohabitation not increasing enough to keep up, fewer young adults are in a live-in relationship. To have more sex, more have to go find sex. One problem is that digital technology designed to connect people, has resulted in a system that connects some people. Dating apps have created the relationship equivalent of income inequality. Just as the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, the physically beautiful can easily find partners on dating apps while the average or below average find it difficult.
There is one type of sex that has become more common, having sex with a partner of the same gender. While only 1 in 20 Boomers had had at least one same-sex partners by their late 20s to mid-30s, 1 in 5 Millennial women and 1 in 8 Millennial men did. The change is especially large for women: Lesbian sexual experience quadrupled between Boomers and Millennials, while gay male sex doubled. Identifying as LGBT – which is distinct from sexual behavior – also varies by generation. In a 2021 Gallup poll, 1 in 11 Millennials identified as LGBTs, compared to 1 in 26 Gen Xers and 1 in 50 Boomers. About half of LGBT Millennials – 1 in 20 of the generation overall – identified as bisexual.
Political Affiliation: The number of Americans who consider themselves not just conservative or liberal but “very conservative” or “very liberal” had been stable between 2010 and 2017, but by 2020 more than twice as many Americans identified with the extremes as had in the early 2010s. This has meant not just political polarization, but also generational polarization. Older generations tend to be conservative and younger ones liberal, so when citizens move to the extremes of political belief, generation gaps widen. Since 2017, more Millennials and Gen Zers have turned hard left and more Silents, Boomers, and Gen Xers have turned hard right. These generation gaps also played out within families, with Millennials increasingly divided from their Boomer parents.
Racial Views: The mid-2010s were a watershed moment, with Black-White racial issues at the forefront of national consciousness in a way they had not been since the 1990s. It’s clear that something shifted in American culture in the mid-2010s. The number of American adults who agreed that racism was a “big problem” jumped from 28% in November 2011 to 50% by July 2015; by June 2020, after George Floyd (b. 1973) was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, 76% said racism was a big problem. As recently as 2012, only half of Black Americans said discrimination was the main reason why Black people had less desirable jobs incomes and housing than Whites. Then that began to change with more and more Black adults pointing to discrimination: 57% said so in 2014, 61% in 2016, 66% in 2018, and 83% in 2021.
By 2020 something historically unprecedented occurred: On several measures, White Democrats were just as radically liberal as Black Democrats. By 2021, 82% of White Democrats thought that discrimination was the main reason for racial disparities in jobs, income and housing – almost identical to the 83% of Black who thought so. In contrast, the number of White Republicans who thought discrimination was the primary reason for racial disparities declined during the 1990s and stayed low through 2021. In some cases, White Democrats were actually more liberal on race issues than Black Democrats by 2020. In a 2021 Pew Research poll, 37% of young adults agreed that “because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups, most U.S. laws/institutions need to be completely rebuilt.” Only 16% of people over 65 felt the same.
Mental Health: When Millennials were in their teens their mental health looked more positive than the Gen Xers. Then came adulthood and rates of depression started to soar. The ebullient happiness of Millennial adolescents was beginning to shift into depression among Millennial adults. The increase in mental health struggles was largest among 25-to-29-year-olds who were Millennials born in the early 1990s. Death rates among 30-to-39-year-olds rose sharply after 2014. This is a surprising development, as innovations in medical care and safety should have lowered the death rate. The culprit is “deaths of despair” such as drug overdoses, suicide, and liver disease.
Source: Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents and What They Mean for America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge, PhD. (2023)
HOW MILLENNIALS BECAME THE BURNOUT GENERATION: The name “millennial” – and much of the anxiety that still surrounds it – emerged in the mid-2000s, when the first wave of us were entering the workforce. Our expectations were too high, we were scolded, and our work ethic too low. We were sheltered and naïve, unschooled in the ways of the world – understandings that have ossified around our generation, with little regard to the ways we confronted and weathered the Great Recession, how much student debt we’re shouldering, and how inaccessible so many milestones of adulthood have become. The predominant message of our upbringing was deceptively simple: All roads should lead to college, and from there with more work, we’d find the American Dream, which might no longer include a picket fence, but certainly had a family, financial security, and something like happiness as a result. We were raised to believe that if we worked hard enough, we could win the system – of capitalism and meritocracy – or at least live comfortably within it. But something Happened in the late 2020s. We looked up from our work and realized, there is no winning the system when the system itself if broken. Millennials live with the reality that we’re going to work forever, die before we pay off our student loans, potentially bankrupt our children with care, or get wiped out in a global apocalypse.
Trying to do all of that at once, with little support or safety net – that’s what makes millennials the burnout generation. Burnout, after all, is a symptom of living in our modern capitalist society. For millennials, burnout is foundational: the best way to describe who we’ve been raised to be is how we interact with and think about the world and our everyday experience thereof.
Source: Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
THE MILLENNIAL CYCLE – MILLENNIALS – EXCERPTS
Born: 1981 – 1996. Breakdown: White 57.6%, Black 13.1%, Hispanic 20.8%, Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander 7.3%, Native American 1.2%
THE ME-ME-ME GENERATION: At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age grouping in American history. Each country’s millennials are different, but because of globalization, social media, the exporting of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials world-wide are more similar to one another than to older generations within their nations.
In the 1970s, people wanted to improve kids’ chances of success by instilling self-esteem. It turns out that self-esteem is great for getting a job or hooking up at a bar but not so great for keeping a job or relationship. The problem is that when people try to boost self-esteem, they accidentally boost narcissism instead. “When they’re little it seems cute to tell them they’re special or a princess or a rock star or whatever their T-shirt says. When they’re 14 it’s no longer cute.” All that self-esteem leads them to be disappointed when the world refuses to affirm how great they know they are. “This generation has the highest likelihood of having unmet expectations with respect to their careers and the lowest levels of satisfaction with their careers at the stage that they’re at,” says Sean Lyons. “It is sort of a crisis of unmet expectations.”
The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance.
What millennials are most famous for besides narcissism is its effect: entitlement. Though they’re cocky about their place in the world, millennials are also stunted, having prolonged a life state between teenager and adult that this magazine once called twixters. Never before in history have people been able to grow up and reach the age of 23 so dominated by peers. To develop intellectually you’ve got to relate to older people, 17-year-olds never grow up if they’re just hanging around other 17-year-olds.
Millennials are interacting all day but almost entirely through a screen. They’re deeply anxious about missing out on something better. Seventy percent of them check their phones every hour. Scores on tests of empathy similarly fell sharply, starting in 2000, likely because of both a lack of face-to-face time and higher degrees of narcissism. Not only do millennials lack the kind of empathy that allows them to feel concerned for others, but they also have trouble even intellectually understanding others’ points of view.
Millennials are more accepting of differences, not just among gays, women and minorities but in everyone. “There are many, many subcultures, and you can dip into them and search around. There’s not this us-vs.-them thing now. Maybe that’s why millennials don’t rebel.” Because millennials don’t respect authority, they also don’t resent it. That’s why they’re the first teens who aren’t rebelling. They’re not even sullen.
So, here’s a more rounded picture of millennials. They’re earnest and optimistic. They embrace the system. They are pragmatic idealists, tinkerers more than dreamers, life hackers. Their world is so flat that they have no leaders. They want constant approval. They have a massive fear of missing out and have an acronym for everything. They want new experiences, which are more important to them than material goods. They are cool and reserved and not all that passionate. They are probusiness. They’re financially responsible; although student loans have hit record highs, they have less household and credit-card debt than any previous generation on record – which, admittedly, isn’t that hard when you’re living at home and using your parents’ credit card. They love their phones but hate talking on them.
Source: Time Magazine by Jean Twenge professor at San Diego University (2013)
MILLENNIALS OR GENERATION Y: Millennials are the most diverse generation in American history, with a higher proportion of minorities and foreign-born individuals than any previous generation. They are also the most educated generation, with more of them attending college than any other cohort. This has led to a greater emphasis on knowledge work, entrepreneurship, and innovation, as Millennials seek to create their own paths and define success on their own terms. At the same time, Millennials face significant challenges, including mounting student debt, limited job opportunities, and increasing income inequality. They also came of age during a time of global instability, marked by terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and the Great Recession of 2008. Despite these challenges, Millennials have shown a strong commitment to social justice, environmental sustainability, and community involvement. They are more likely than previous generations to volunteer, donate to charity, and engage in political activism. They are also known for their digital fluency, social media savvy, and preference for mobile technology.
In terms of work, Millennials prioritize flexibility, work-life balance, and meaningful work over traditional measures of success such as salary and status. They value collaboration and feedback and tend to work well in teams. They are also more likely to job-hop than previous generations, as they seek to find the right fit and pursue their passions. In terms of family, Millennials are delaying marriage and child rearing, and are more likely to live with their parents or roommates than previous generations. This is partly due to financial constraints, but also reflects a desire for independence and exploration. They are also more likely to prioritize gender and LGBTQ+ equality, and to support policies and support work-life balance and family leave.
Overall, Millennials are a generation marked by their idealism, diversity, and adaptability. They face significant challenges, but also hold great promise for shaping the future of America and the world. Here are some potential impacts of the Millennial generation in each of these areas.
Work: The Millennial generation has placed a strong emphasis on work-life balance, flexibility, and meaningful work. They have also been known for job hopping more frequently than previous generations, seeking out opportunities that align with their values and offer personal growth.
Mindset: Millennials have been characterized as optimistic, confident, and collaborative. They have grown up with technology and tend to be comfortable with change and innovation. They are also more likely to prioritize social and environmental issues.
Life Expectations: Millennials have faced economic challenges such as high levels of student debt and a difficult job market, leading to delayed milestones such as marriage and homeownership. However, they are generally optimistic about their future and see the potential for positive change in the world.
Traveling: Millennials have been known for valuing experiences over material possessions, and travel has been a key part of that. They are more likely to seek out unique and authentic experiences and prioritize sustainability and cultural immersion in their travel choices.
Medicine: As the first generation to grow up with widespread access to the internet, Millennials have been proactive in seeking out health information and resources online. They have also been more likely to prioritize mental health and wellness, and to seek out alternative medicine and holistic approaches to healthcare.
Source: Generations Reimagined by Amanda Lisetti (2023)
THE MILLENNIALS: A generation of wanted children, the Millennials’ childhood years originated the word parenting as a verb – and created a sense of judgment and competition around child raising. Parents became obsessed with “enrichment” activities for kids in an age of global competition and income inequality, transitioning from the hands-off parenting experience by Gen Xers to “helicopter” parenting with lots of guidance and supervision for Millennials. After that, adulthood often came as a rude shock, giving rise to the Millennial term adulting, a reference to boring but necessary grown-up activities such as working, paying bills, and doing laundry.
Self-Esteem: Self-esteem was not just talk – it was backed up by action. At awards ceremonies, schools began giving awards to every child, not just the top performers, so everyone would feel good. Instead of having just the winning teams getting trophies, children’s sports teams began giving every child a trophy just for playing.
Those positive self-views also translate into higher expectations for their future lives. Millennials continued the trend toward high expectations that Gen X started, with increasing number of high school seniors expecting to earn graduate degrees and work in professional jobs. By the early 2020s, 7 out of 10 believed they would be in the top 20% of performance in their jobs – a mathematical impossibility but a psychological reality for a generation raised to think highly of themselves. Millennials are the most optimistic and self-confident generation in history.
The academic equivalent of “everyone gets a trophy” is “everyone gets an A.” So, what did Millennials hear about their academic performance? Teachers gave students better grades even though students were spending less time on homework. The boosting of empty self-esteem was no longer theoretical – it was real. There were more A students because parents and teachers decided to make more students feel like A students.
In a 2008 survey, 2 out of 3 college students said they thought professors should increase their grade if they explained they were trying hard, and a third thought they deserved at least a B for simply attending most of the classes for a course. Once Millennials began to enter the workforce in the 2000s, managers sat up and took notice. Stories began to circulate about young employees who expected to get promoted after a few months’ experience on the job. Others described employees who seemed to need constant praise or could not take criticism – “the most high-maintenance workforce in the history of the world.” When Time magazine finally ran a cover story on Millennials in 2013, it was titled the “Me-Me-Me Generation.”
In adulthood, Millennials’ sky-high expectations inevitably led to disappointment, especially after the Great Recession hit the generation especially hard. American culture basically told Millennials they were great – and everything was great – right before it most definitely wasn’t great. Many Millennials came to recognize that their buoyant childhood did not prepare them for the reality of adulthood, even as they appealed to older generations to stop criticizing them.
Narcissism, usually defined as an inflated sense of self, is a complex and often misunderstood trait. Narcissists are usually not insecure underneath; they have high self-esteem and truly believe that they are better than others. Narcissists are nearly always bad news for the people around them; they are so focused on themselves that they often disregard the needs and feelings of others. Narcissism is individualism on steroids. Researchers interested in studying narcissism in a nonclinical population almost always use the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). Interestingly, narcissists have few qualms admitting to their traits – most who score high on the NPI also readily agree with the statement, “I am a narcissist.” As individualism promoted self-focus and unrealistic positive self-views during the 1990s and the 2000s, college students’ narcissism steadily rose – and then, as the economic bubble burst, so did the bubble of narcissism.
Millennials are the first American generation in which more that 1 out of 3 had a four-year college degree by their late 20s, up from 1 out of 4 when Gen Xers were in that age bracket.
Economic challenges are often cited as the reason why Millennials aren’t having children. “No one is getting paid enough, there’s not adequate maternity leave, no one can afford hospital bills, most of us can’t afford a house – like what did you think would happen?” The idea that Millennials were dealt a bad economic hand is treated as close to gospel. The numbers tell a very different story. By 2019, households headed by Millennials actually made more money than Silents, Boomers, and Gen Xers at the same age – and yes, that’s after the numbers are adjusted for inflation. Fewer Millennials have children, so they have fewer people to support on their incomes. Looked at this way, Millennials are doing not just well but extremely well – they are making more money to support fewer people. What about the lower end of the scale? The news there is also good. Fewer Millennials were in poverty than when Gen Xers and Boomers were the same age. So, fewer Millennials, not more, are at the lowest rungs of the income ladder.
College Loan Debt: Millennials are the most highly educated generation in American history. That came with a cost: college loan debt. Overall, the cost of attending college has more than doubled since the Boomers arrived on campus in 1964, even after correcting for inflation. The average amount of student loans has doubled since the 1990s even after correcting for inflation.
Feeling poor instead of being poor: First, Millennials had high expectations as young adults – more than half, for example, expected to earn a graduate degree and as a result more thought they would work in professional job than actually would. The classic formula says that happiness equals reality minus expectations. So, if expectations are high (and Millennial expectations were sky-high), then reality won’t measure up even if it is pretty good. Second, feeling well-off is relative. Social psychology research finds a big disconnect between objective indicators (say, income) and people’s subjective perceptions of income based on comparing themselves to others. Social media and TV showcase those at the very top of the income distribution (or at least those who appear to be at the very top), giving a skewed view of others’ income. Third, online stories have endlessly repeated the idea that Millennials have gotten the economic shaft. Negative news stories, especially those that incite anger, get more traffic and thus make more money. Social media sites thrive when people get riled up and spend more time on the site.
The end result: More Millennials believe they got screwed economically, which has downstream consequences for their political attitudes and values. More felt that the system is not working. More will be attracted to government policies that alleviate financial burdens, such as college loan forgiveness, childcare subsidies, and housing subsidies. More will criticize capitalism and champion socialism.
Why are Millennials having fewer kids and waiting longer to have them? Two of the usual causes are involved: the slow life and individualism. The core feature of the slow-life strategy is waiting longer to have children and having fewer children when you do. Individualism – being able to focus on yourself – is another key driver. When younger adults who don’t want children are asked why, the majority give reasons like, desire for more leisure time, wanting more personal independence, and “I just don’t want them” – all centered-on individualism. Another reason for the falling birth rate is more complex: Raising children takes more effort than it used to. Breastfeeding is encouraged, kids enroll in more structured activities, and closer supervision is required. When Silents were raising their Gen X kids, it was common for children to roam their neighborhoods unsupervised; try that now and neighbors might call Child Protective Services. Constant supervision makes parenting more time-consuming and exhausting. Contrary to the idea that mothers spend less time with their kids now, they actually spend more – which makes having kids more challenging.
Less Sexually Active: Part of the sex drought is due to the slow life of young adults delaying settling down with a romantic partner. With the average age of marriage increasing to 28 for women and 31 for men and cohabitation not increasing enough to keep up, fewer young adults are in a live-in relationship. To have more sex, more have to go find sex. One problem is that digital technology designed to connect people, has resulted in a system that connects some people. Dating apps have created the relationship equivalent of income inequality. Just as the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, the physically beautiful can easily find partners on dating apps while the average or below average find it difficult.
There is one type of sex that has become more common, having sex with a partner of the same gender. While only 1 in 20 Boomers had had at least one same-sex partners by their late 20s to mid-30s, 1 in 5 Millennial women and 1 in 8 Millennial men did. The change is especially large for women: Lesbian sexual experience quadrupled between Boomers and Millennials, while gay male sex doubled. Identifying as LGBT – which is distinct from sexual behavior – also varies by generation. In a 2021 Gallup poll, 1 in 11 Millennials identified as LGBTs, compared to 1 in 26 Gen Xers and 1 in 50 Boomers. About half of LGBT Millennials – 1 in 20 of the generation overall – identified as bisexual.
Political Affiliation: The number of Americans who consider themselves not just conservative or liberal but “very conservative” or “very liberal” had been stable between 2010 and 2017, but by 2020 more than twice as many Americans identified with the extremes as had in the early 2010s. This has meant not just political polarization, but also generational polarization. Older generations tend to be conservative and younger ones liberal, so when citizens move to the extremes of political belief, generation gaps widen. Since 2017, more Millennials and Gen Zers have turned hard left and more Silents, Boomers, and Gen Xers have turned hard right. These generation gaps also played out within families, with Millennials increasingly divided from their Boomer parents.
Racial Views: The mid-2010s were a watershed moment, with Black-White racial issues at the forefront of national consciousness in a way they had not been since the 1990s. It’s clear that something shifted in American culture in the mid-2010s. The number of American adults who agreed that racism was a “big problem” jumped from 28% in November 2011 to 50% by July 2015; by June 2020, after George Floyd (b. 1973) was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, 76% said racism was a big problem. As recently as 2012, only half of Black Americans said discrimination was the main reason why Black people had less desirable jobs incomes and housing than Whites. Then that began to change with more and more Black adults pointing to discrimination: 57% said so in 2014, 61% in 2016, 66% in 2018, and 83% in 2021.
By 2020 something historically unprecedented occurred: On several measures, White Democrats were just as radically liberal as Black Democrats. By 2021, 82% of White Democrats thought that discrimination was the main reason for racial disparities in jobs, income and housing – almost identical to the 83% of Black who thought so. In contrast, the number of White Republicans who thought discrimination was the primary reason for racial disparities declined during the 1990s and stayed low through 2021. In some cases, White Democrats were actually more liberal on race issues than Black Democrats by 2020. In a 2021 Pew Research poll, 37% of young adults agreed that “because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups, most U.S. laws/institutions need to be completely rebuilt.” Only 16% of people over 65 felt the same.
Mental Health: When Millennials were in their teens their mental health looked more positive than the Gen Xers. Then came adulthood and rates of depression started to soar. The ebullient happiness of Millennial adolescents was beginning to shift into depression among Millennial adults. The increase in mental health struggles was largest among 25-to-29-year-olds who were Millennials born in the early 1990s. Death rates among 30-to-39-year-olds rose sharply after 2014. This is a surprising development, as innovations in medical care and safety should have lowered the death rate. The culprit is “deaths of despair” such as drug overdoses, suicide, and liver disease.
Source: Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents and What They Mean for America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge, PhD. (2023)
HOW MILLENNIALS BECAME THE BURNOUT GENERATION: The name “millennial” – and much of the anxiety that still surrounds it – emerged in the mid-2000s, when the first wave of us were entering the workforce. Our expectations were too high, we were scolded, and our work ethic too low. We were sheltered and naïve, unschooled in the ways of the world – understandings that have ossified around our generation, with little regard to the ways we confronted and weathered the Great Recession, how much student debt we’re shouldering, and how inaccessible so many milestones of adulthood have become. The predominant message of our upbringing was deceptively simple: All roads should lead to college, and from there with more work, we’d find the American Dream, which might no longer include a picket fence, but certainly had a family, financial security, and something like happiness as a result. We were raised to believe that if we worked hard enough, we could win the system – of capitalism and meritocracy – or at least live comfortably within it. But something Happened in the late 2020s. We looked up from our work and realized, there is no winning the system when the system itself if broken. Millennials live with the reality that we’re going to work forever, die before we pay off our student loans, potentially bankrupt our children with care, or get wiped out in a global apocalypse.
Trying to do all of that at once, with little support or safety net – that’s what makes millennials the burnout generation. Burnout, after all, is a symptom of living in our modern capitalist society. For millennials, burnout is foundational: the best way to describe who we’ve been raised to be is how we interact with and think about the world and our everyday experience thereof.
Source: Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| generations_8l_millennials_--_segment_8.pdf |