Millennial-Bashing Is Class Warfare
It’s not funny or cute — it’s classism, and it’s destroying our economy
In 2013, Time magazine published an article entitled “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation,” which bemoaned millennials’ inability to live up to the gumption and sturdiness of baby boomers or the entrepreneurial spirit of Generation X. It had a laundry list of criticisms, but the one that stood out was that millennials were “stunted, having prolonged a life stage between teenager and adult.”
While the article ultimately shifted its tone toward optimistic ambiguity, it fanned the flames of an already rising media trend: bashing millennials for perceived reliance on technology and social media, inability to sustain conflict, and hitting adult benchmarks at later ages than previous generations.
In other words, that line about millennials being stunted between their teenage/college years and true adulthood has stuck in cultural memory and rears its ugly head in just about every article about millennials.
