How Millennials Will Change the World With Technology
Generational evolution is a fascinating thing to witness. There are currently eight distinctive waves of generations researchers largely agree upon within the post-industrial revolution era of the United States, and each has played its own idiosyncratic role in shaping the current social, economic, and political climate. Among these generations are the recently christened, endlessly buzzed about members of Generation Y, a.k.a. Millennials. This demographic has received unprecedented amounts of sensationalized press coverage, with the term “Millennial” itself practically becoming an insult. The demographic has received its fair share of negative coverage, with journalists and analysts associating Millennials with an array of unsavory characteristics: lazy, self-absorbed, entitled, and materialistic are some of the descriptions that frequently surface in the press, in turn abetting the silent judgement that has fallen upon the average twenty-something smartphone user in the public eye.
Questioning the Millennial stereotype
Fortunately for the demographic as a whole, people have begun asking why there is so much venom and pigeonholing directed toward millennials, and how the term even became so offensive to begin with. Many have pointed at technology and its collective influence on people, arguing that it’s not the Millennials themselves who are to blame for popularizing unsettling phenomena like selfies and the Kardashians, but rather that the newly emerging climate of widely-accessible technology has entitled everyone to waste way too much time on electronic devices regardless of age. Millennials, however much they may participate in this indulgence, are taking technology and running with it for far more productive causes than their predecessors, because they’ve entered adulthood in a world that can’t sustain much more of the abuse it receives from human excess. Millennials have discovered they are the ones with the power to reverse the damage, and it appears that’s what they hope to do.
Millennials are shifting the paradigm
One of the traits of this generation that seems to rub older onlookers the wrong way is the strong aversion from the status quo that the Millennial generation unapologetically displays. Suddenly, this latest population of emerging business leaders, professionals, and influencers are turning a lot of common complacencies and beliefs on their head. They arestatistically more distrustful of authorities, corporations, and marketers than the generations that came before them. They don’t blindly accept the state of the world that has been handed to them, and are anything but apathetic about fixing its problems, however idealistic they may seem in the approach. Many Millennials are making practical demands for progress that incorporate technological innovation and simple lifestyle changesthey themselves are willing to adopt, and are even shifting the way advertisers have to reach out to them. Underneath the illusion that Millennials are mindless technology consumers devoid of societal contributions, there is an important paradigm shift they are catalyzing for the future of sustainability that promises to transfer an even more constructive energy to generations that follow, and it’s partly because of the directionMillennials are taking technological developments as they grow in their own roles within the industry.
Out with the old, in with the new
Something that may be difficult for older generations to swallow is that they themselves are moving past their prime, while Millennials are just now approaching their own. Millennials will have the most influence on the innovations in technology in the next decade, and will accompany that influence with their strong taste for progressive values and sustainability. It’s just as difficult for older generations today to accept radical disruptions as it was for older generations in the past. Consider, for example, how wasteful modern technology can be. Electricity usage in the US alone is the second highest in the world, and the Millennial generation is one of the first to openly and widely question the widespread reliance on fossil fuels, while previous generations seem to cling more to the familiarity and reliability of the way things have always been — aversion to change is no new phenomenon. When Millennials gain full momentum and take over the business and economics world, they are going to be focusing more than any other era on how to create more sustainable infrastructure and technology, harnessing alternative energy and focusing on reducing technology’s impact on the planet. They will ultimately determine that green approaches to the industry is where both the financial and ethical incentives lie.
Technology is the tool of the trade for Millennials
Looking back to the first part of the 20th century, there is a distinct point around the Great Depression when Americans began forging a path toward future prosperity with an almost untouchable fervor. People reacted to the conditions imposed on them with a utilitarian focus on survival, work ethic, and sense of duty toward future populations. That generation, in addition to the couple of similar generations that closely followed, began carving out a future for its own children that promised greener pastures and creature comforts that people of the time were otherwise lacking. Baby Boomers were born of this era, and as they came of age headlong into the middle of the 20th century, they caused technology to explode and head toward the rapidly developing state it’s in now. While they imparted a burgeoning social consciousness that earlier generations hadn’t had the mainstream motivation for, the Boomers nonetheless maintained the status quo and didn’t deviate too much from what was known and reliable. Generation X had its own dilemmas, with nihilism and skepticism arising from some of the newly awakened issues facing society, and brought technology to the speed it’s at today. Then, Millennials stepped into their adulthood just as a recession hit and a tech boom had consumed the modern world. While being disproportionately accused of self-absorption, there is also a sense of duty toward future inhabitants that has been mostly dormant since the depression era. Through their unrestricted access to technology, the Millennial generation learned of societal ills more in-depth through social networking and have access to a clearer portrait of the patterns that have caused some of our most pressing issues, which in turn set them on a permanent course of beliefs and actions that may someday reverse the damage that has been done through their own involvement in the economy and in technology. And if Millennials don’t save the world themselves, they are at least setting a meaningful precedent for future generations of business leaders to learn.
