I have heard a lot of different stereotypes associated with the millennial generation. Being my defensive self, I decided to use my most trusted source for information, Google, to see what some of the common ones were. By simply typing “millennials are…” into my search engine, top suggestions included: lazy, entitled, the worst generation and selfish, but also progressive, hard workers, intelligent, and my personal favorite, drinking so much wine.
I struggled at first because I didn’t know how to defend an entire generation against such a huge spectrum of accusations, especially since a lot of them contradicted themselves. I realized, however, if you can’t defend everyone from the same accusations, then you also can’t accuse everyone. There are over 80 million people grouped into the millennial generation, and the more stereotypes given to us, the more it proves itself that we are not all the same.
Millennials are the most studied generation to date. These studies explicitly show facts on top of facts depicting what millennials are. However, the sheer amount of them and their contradicting nature, actually highlights the fact that we cannot all be the same.
When compared, many of the statistics about millennials just don’t make sense. According to the Washington Post, millennials are equally as racist as their predecessors. However, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said 47 percent of millennials agree to improve the position of minorities, while only 19 percent agree in older generations.
Also, the Wall Street Journal said 45 percent of millennials believe a decent paying job is a privilege. Contrarily, a recent survey showed that 92 percent of millennials believe that success should be measured by more than just profit.
Lastly, Forbes magazine tried to prove the laziness stereotype and said that 67 percent of non-millennial workers say that millennial workers are less motivated to take on responsibility and produce quality work than other generations. Whereas other studies show that 36 percent of employed millennials have started their own business and 46 percent plan to start a business in the next five years.
These statistics are just a fraction of what is said and researched about millennials, and they are proving for themselves that the perceptions of millennials are not all legitimate. Although it’s almost obvious that they wouldn’t all be correct because there is no way they can when they are trying to explain 80 million people the same way.
Ultimately no, I am not here to say that millennials aren’t lazy, entitled, selfish, racist, etc. I am also not here so say that we are all the opposite of those attributes. We do not all fit into one mold, and the more stereotypes people try to give us, the more they themselves validate the fact that we are different.
Sam Miner can be reached at mine0034@stthomas.edu