In Defense of Millennials
Millennials: the favorite scapegoat of failing corporations, political arguments, and probably your middle-aged aunt on Facebook. Addicted to smartphones, unwilling to get our hands dirty, perpetually offended, and sensitive to a fault- these are stereotypes we know, and know well.
But I am here to say that I am proud of being a millennial, and I will never apologize for it. We have our faults, obviously, but I venture to say that we will be the ones to change the world, to make it better in a way the generations before us never could. I think the best way to do this is to refute the stereotypes we all know and despise.
The classic "Millennials Killing Yet Another Beloved American Business" headline.
Corporations fail not because young people refuse to shop at them, but because they aren't affordable for children of the economic recession, sagging under the weight of student debt. Business is not a game of mercy, and there is always a chance of failure.
Millennials are a bunch of unpatriotic liberals. Millennials aren't all liberals, to be clear. But our generation, whatever affiliation, has been exposed to more global influences than any other. We learn Spanish (however poorly) in school, we sit next to foreign students in our classes and at work, we write papers over Europe's refugee crisis instead of the Kennedy assassination. We aren't unpatriotic, we see beyond our noses. There is a world out beyond our borders, and it is just as real as the place we call home.
Can't function without a smartphone.
And where does so much of our knowledge come from? Those smartphones we like to keep our noses stuck in. Love it or hate it, we have had screens pushed in our faces since we were children, so indignation at our technical prowess is hardly justified.
Millennials hate working hard.
This one I find personally offensive as a full-time student with three jobs on the side. In a survey, more than 83% of full-time students at my university hold jobs on the side, a workload that I can imagine no Baby Boomers and only slightly more Gen Xers taking on. In addition to a day of class, there is work, evenings and weekends and all the times in between. I have gone weeks without a day off, mixing the intense mental strain of studying for exams and reading chapters with the misery of working in the food industry on weekends for years now.
Being a millennial is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to rejoice in. We have more choices, more opportunities, more responsibilities than any generation before us. We work smarter and harder, we try to listen before acting. We want to call each thing by its right name, to test what is possible, to just be ourselves. And love it or hate it, that's not going to change.
