What even is a ‘millennial’?
In the last five or so years, there seems to have been a rise in people online talking about ‘millennials’. Saying things like “Millennials are more likely to so and so” or “Here’s how to understand the mind of a millennial”. But does anybody really know what a ‘millennial’ is?
Well, some people will simply say a millennial is a person that happened to have been born between year x and year y. While that would make sense, a quick google search about when these dates are will only leave you confused about which ones are actually correct.
The most common dates found online are 1981 to 1996, meaning that as of 2019, if you are aged 23–38 then you are a millennial. This would mean that I, having been born in 1998, am not a millennial and yet people will refer to me as one. Does this mean that those people are wrong? Not necessarily. For when they did their research on the year ranges, they may have come across another site that states confidently that a millennial is anyone born between the years 1982 and 2002. Or they could even have just relied on Wikipedia who state, in an unhelpfully vague manor, that the date range is from “the early 1980s” to “the mid-1990s to early 2000s”. So, it’s anybody’s guess really. Basically, it would seem that if you’re younger than 40, but old enough to drive, you’re probably a millennial.
I suppose the real question is: are you only a millennial depending on the date you were born?
For example, if the start date is in fact 1981, then does that make somebody born on December 31st, 1980 not one? Equally if someone was born on, let’s say, January 1st, 1997, do they not count when people are talking about millennials?
I think the truth is both of questions are irrelevant because the word ‘millennial’ is simply used as a general term to mean ‘people who aren’t quite middle-aged yet but are old enough to make decisions for themselves’. Which is a mouthful, granted.
Interestingly, some people help to define millennials by saying that they are people who grew up in an era defined by 9/11 terrorist attacks, or who were affected financially (in their early adulthood) by the 2008 credit crunch.
What this all shows us, in my humble opinion at least, is that some things in order to make sense, have to be left vague. For something like this, where being a millennial means something completely different to being another generation, there is no real mathematical cut off point. Also, general terms are never a good idea anyway because you can’t say a whole group of people acts a certain way. We are all different. We are not just millennials. We are more.