If We Could Stop Blaming Millennials for Everything, That’d Be Great
It’s nearly impossible to be online on any given day and not see some kind of article, tweet, or whatever that’s blaming millennials for something or another. Where did all of this hate come from?
There is always a new article being shared that points the finger at millennials for the demise of an industry or product. Or a change occurs and everyone sarcastically thanks millennials for the cause.
No One Even Knows How Old Millennials Are
At this point, millennial is just a buzzword. People throw the word around without even really understanding its meaning. They automatically assume that every young person is a millennial. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: millennials are anyone born between the years 1981 and 1996. That means that millennials are between 22 and 37 years of age.
We’re not eating tide pods.
We’re not snorting condoms up our noses.
We didn’t grow up with high levels of technology. (In fact, we’re part of the unique generation that grew up watching the rise of it; so we actually have a higher level of knowledge on both ends of the spectrum).
Today’s teenagers are not millennials.
We’re Scapegoats
Whenever you read an article about millennials, it’s more than often negative. The writer or sharer of the article is looking for someone to blame for the cause of whatever the topic is, because surely it couldn’t be the “adults” of the world. Oh no, the baby boomers can do no wrong. Anytime something goes wrong, people throw out the term millennials just to assign a scapegoat.
The beer and wine industry is failing? Millennials.
The housing market is suffering? Millennials.
Decrease in population? Millennials.
Severe Lack of Understanding
It’s beyond my level of comprehension as to why baby boomers feel the need to dictate what millennials should spend their money on or what path they choose in their lives. But, for some reason they feel the need to insert their opinion wherever necessary.
Baby boomers think that we should be buying real estate, starting families, and “taking what we can get” in terms of career aspirations. One thing seems to be eluding them as to why this is impossible: student loan debt.
Excuse us for asking for a specific amount of money to be able to afford to pay our bills. Excuse us for not digging a deeper hole of debt by taking out a mortgage. Excuse us for not bringing new life into this world when we can barely afford to feed ourselves. Seriously, how dare we?
Baby Boomers Think They Know Everything
Let’s be honest: baby boomers “hate” millennials because they think we don’t know how to do basic things like writing a check or drive a manual transmission vehicle. But have you ever asked a baby boomer to create an excel document? I think we can all agree that this is now a basic in the technological world we now live in and more than 75% of them probably wouldn’t be able to effectively create one.
As millennials, we’ve grown up adapting to a technological world. Baby boomers are still stuck in the past, unwilling to change. Not only are they unwilling to adapt to new technologies, they’re unwilling to be open-minded enough to understand this new world we live in. More often than not, these baby boomers have never contributed anything to society other than their negative opinion.
Back Off Of Millennials
Why don’t we all just take a moment, take a step back, and really think about why we’re blaming millennials for everything. Are we supporting our claims with knowledgeable facts, or are we birthing these opinions from any old article online?
It’s time these millennial haters actually took a moment to learn about who we really are and what we really go through. A bit of understanding goes a very long way.
