and believed in love and flower power and bellbottoms. Where did they go when we needed them? What happened to the dreams and the love and the bellbottoms?
I see Millennials arranging charity auctions on social media sites, sending a few dollars via PayPal or Venmo to friends in need, donating and sharing fundraising accounts for funeral expenses, medical bills, emergency surgeries for beloved pets, and more.
Speaking of Venmo, it was created by Millennials (Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail). As were Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), GoFundMe (Brad Damphousse), Tumblr (David Karp), Pinterest (Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp), Mashable (Peter Cashmore), Instagram (Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom), AirBnB (Brian Chesky), Lyft (John Zimmer), Spotify (Daniel Ek), Snapchat (Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy), WordPress (Matthew Mullenweg), Tinder (Whitney Wolfe, Alexa Mateen, Sean Rad, Jonathan Badeen, Justin Mateen, Joe Munoz, and Dinesh Moorjani), and Groupon (Andrew Mason).
I see us trading services and goods to help each other out. I see us buying things from work-at-home moms and small businesses rather than supporting large corporate stores. That’s not to say that we’re the first to do so—indeed, many Gen X and Boomer individuals also shop small and local as a rule. But Millennials have taken the idea and run to the internet with it, making work from home accessible and lucrative across the globe. Millennials are driven by a need to empower each other and become independent from the status quo. And it’s pissing off the establishment something fierce.
Anecdotal evidence is great, but there’s also science to back up the whimsical empowerment driving the Millennial Generation. There are some eighty million Millennials, making us the largest cohort in history—and an easy generation to study. The following statistics are pulled from a 2012 report from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.1
Not only are Millennials the largest demographic, we’re also the most diverse. We are 60 percent non-Hispanic white (compared to 70 percent for older generations), 19 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Black, 4 percent Asian, and 3 percent mixed-race. Eleven percent of us are born to an immigrant parent. Additionally, “young people are more tolerant of races and groups than older generations (47 percent vs. 19 percent) with 45 percent agreeing with preferential treatment to improve the position of minorities.” So the generation that hears “Why are you kids so offended by everything these days?” is offended because we’re sick and tired of seeing minorities vilified and punished by systemic racism.
We stand up for what we believe in, and we’re not afraid to call it out. So what are we doing with our time and energy?
Millennials are multi-taskers, despite the fact that multi-tasking is actually harmful to the brain and leads to a huge decrease in productivity. But, you know, we have to work all these jobs and get everything done, lest we die penniless in the gutter, eulogized as people who just didn’t want it bad enough.
Millennials are engaged and expressive: 75 percent have a social networking profile, 20 percent have posted a video of themselves online, 38 percent have between one and six tattoos, and 23 percent have non-earlobe piercings. The research indicates a trend toward “self-promoting,” which some skew to mean that Millennials are self-confident (yay) and self-absorbed (sigh). Others take this data to conclude that Millennials are identifying their passions and making their own path instead of following others’ paths for them.
Interestingly (or morbidly), Millennials are the first generation in over a hundred years to have a decrease of their average lifespan. [Insert joke here: Something something working themselves to death].
Millennials have a high graduation rate from high school (72 percent in 2012) and high college enrollment rate (68 percent in 2012). Over half (58 percent) of Millennials who enroll in a four-year college graduate within six years.
Data from the New Strategist Press, a consumer trends resource, shares that in 2013, 34.9 percent of Millennials had a bachelor’s degree or higher (compared to 34.6 percent of Gen Xers and 31.1 percent of Baby Boomers). Even without graduating, Millennials and Gen X received more college education than the Boomers (63 percent of Millennials, 62 percent of Gen Xers, and 58 percent of Baby Boomers).2
Speaking of college, Millennials have an average of twenty-five thousand dollars in student loans. There is more student loan debt than credit card debt in the United States, and tuition rates are rising faster than inflation. However, enrollment continues to increase.
Millennials Struggle with Mental Health
Many Millennials struggle with mental illness to some degree: anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and more. You have to wonder how much of that anxiety comes from being told that wanting a living wage, affordable college, or adequate healthcare means that you’re a dependent leech guzzling from the government teat.
The generations before us had a more accessible living wage, tuition cost, and adequate healthcare. But now, inflation has reduced the value of the minimum wage, college tuition and loan interest rates are through the proverbial roof, and medical bills are the top cause of bankruptcy in America.
These things were not caused by Millennials, but after a steady diet of hearing “You’re entitled” as we developed our adult identities, we don’t even need to hear it from other people now. We believe it about ourselves. As a society, we now romanticize struggle, busy-ness, and “the hustle.” If you’re not losing sleep and working two or three jobs, you must not want it enough.
Conclusions (For Now)
Millennials have begun waking up to the fact that the ways we were treated as children and as young adults in the work force are not normal. We’re understanding that our generation is bigger than the last. We’re coming to terms with the fact that we will inherit the earth and want to make it very, very clear that while we absolutely intend to clean up this mess, we are not the ones that made it.
Part I
Millennials Are Entitled, Disrespectful Punks
Chapter 1
Millennials Are Killing the American Dream
“Millennials Say the American Dream is Dead? They killed it”
—Red Alert Politics, 2014
“American dream slips out of reach for Millennials, study finds”
—LA Times, 2016
“Millionaire to Millennials: Lay off the avocado toast if you want to buy a house”
—CNN, 2017
The American Dream: having a home, a family with 2.5 kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. The stuff of Pleasantville and the ‘50s and housewives with dinner on the table when dad gets home from work. Maybe it was this way for our grandparents, but the new American Dream is more like having affordable health care, a therapist who takes you seriously, and being able to afford your expenses with only one job. When did the American Dream become a struggle to wake from the slog of reality?
Enter the Millennial troublemakers, screwing things up. We’re told that our wasteful and luxurious spending on hipster foods and specialty coffees prevents us from buying a home, but when faced with mountains of student loan debt and spending on necessities like shelter, running water, and medical care, it’s hard to find the wiggle room to save up an appropriate down payment. The wiggle room to treat yourself
