Why GEN Y is a lame ENTITLED AMBITIOUS creative whiny ENGAGED underrated optimistic lazy SPECIAL generation
They came of age to high hopes but diminishing prospects. And now: The greatest generation gap.
They stare into the camera with puppy dog eyes, sporting hoodies, graphic tees and thick-framed glasses. “I’m a millennial — and I’m sorry,” each of the four 20-somethings say, their voices tinged with sarcasm.
“We suck, and we know it. We’re self-centred, we’re entitled, we’re narcissistic, lazy and immature.
“If only we could be more like our parents.”
The three-minute video, which went viral in a matter of days last month, goes on to blame baby boomers for the woes set before the generation once pegged as the next great hope — a raft of young people that would shed the husk of cynicism and alienation of its predecessors, one that would be upbeat and engaged.
“I’ve definitely felt it, and I understand where people are coming from when they mock us and deride us. but the goal is to look at yourselves as well,” said the video’s creator, 28-year-old Stephen Parkhurst, who works as a digital tech for a film company in New york city.
“I think the ultimate point I was trying to make is we’re all a little bit terrible and that’s OK.”
Mr. Parkhurst’s video, which now has more than 1.6 million views, set out to skewer the ping-pong match between his generation and those that come before.
It’s aimed at a whole new wave of generational bashing — and resultant self-defence — that has percolated in the past few weeks.
Last Sunday, Prozac Nation author elizabeth Wurtzel, a one-time wunderkind now in her mid-40s, declared today’s “lamest generation” devoid of creative genius, unwilling to take the kind of risks she and her contemporaries embraced two decades prior. Another viral video, this one of ex-journalist Marina Shrifin quitting her allegedly soul-destroying job with a dance party, had people both celebrating her chutzpah and deriding her refusal to stay the course in a difficult job market.
The generation gap is nothing new; the first one played out between baby boomers and their parents in the 1960s and ’70s; Gen Xers were written off as slackers in the ’80s.
but the scrutiny applied to Generation y is as unprecedented as its challenges, researchers say, and the negative reaction — however justified — is a unique brand of generational warfare.
“It’s become a sport, in recent years, to disparage millennials as not having lived up to their potential,” said Sean Lyons, an associate professor of leadership and management at the university of Guelph, who has been studying generational differences since the late ’90s.
“but there’s a good argument to be made that says ‘Just wait: There are a number of things that point to them having not come close to reaching their potential. There are economic signals, the way the economy has changed has really changed the way careers unfold,” he said.
The number of young people enrolled in canadian universities and colleges has more than doubled since the 1980s, translating to an elbowsout level of competition for skilled jobs. Greater educational demands have made 23 the new 18, Prof. Lyons said, and 27 is fast becoming the threshold for actual adulthood.
As such, there’s been a “decisive shift” in the past decade in the way people talk about millennials, Prof. Lyons said, now that the oldest cohorts have crossed the threshold of age 30 — an age at which a person surely has established some sort of respectable adult life, with a solid career, if not a home and family too.
The 30-year-olds who haven’t quite made it, he said, are being seen as a “disappointment.”
The disappointment, of course, comes as a result of high expectations. When generational studies gurus Neil Howe and William Strauss released their seminal book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation in September, 2000, young people were predicted to become strong, civic-minded adults, cashing in on their middle-class childhoods of opportunity.
Many of these high hopes haven’t played out, said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San diego State university and author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.
“When you look at the data that show what makes generations different, almost all of it points to less civic engagement than more in terms of interest in government affairs and thinking about social issues,” she said. “They’re not huge drops, but they’re lower than baby boomers and in some cases even lower than Gen Xers who got a real rep for being very politically disengaged. Supposedly the millennial generation came along and changed all that — nope, they continued the trend.”
Volunteering has been on a slight uptick, she said, but that’s coincided with schools starting to require it for graduation.
Last fall, 81% of college students in a long-running national survey said their most important life goal was to become financially wealthy — the highest percentage since the survey was first offered in 1966.
“There are both negative and positive trends,” Prof. Twenge said.
“Focusing a little more on the negative trends isn’t necessarily bad, as it helps us figure out what needs to change. but the positive trends are important, too.”
At the same time, there’s also been little evidence to prove that members of Gen y are very different from their predecessors when it comes to their work values or how achievement-driven they are, added Harvey Krahn, a professor of social structure and social policy at the university of Alberta, who, with colleague and psychology professor Nancy Galambos, has conducted longitudinal research of canadian young people on this topic. The difference they face, he said, is a more fragmented labour market.
Michael McFadden, 25, had to manage his expectations upon graduation from carleton university’s business school a few years ago. After he returned to the Ottawa area from a year of study in england, he worked for two years as an independent financial advisor because he couldn’t get an entry-level job at a bank. And so he headed west to Olds, Alta., where the prospects were brighter.
“My hopes were to be making six figures six years out of school in the finance industry,” he said. “Sounds silly but that is what I always had in my head. right away I knew in Ontario this wasn’t a reality.”
He sees truth in the stereotype of young people being overly expectant, basing their future hopes on the success of parents who grew up in a vastly different world.
“unfortunately our generation cares more about reality television and going to restaurants they can’t afford than sitting down and doing some career planning,” he said.
Having coined the word “millennials,” and thus holding a sort of stake in their well-being, Mr. Howe says he’s been dismayed at the way Gen yers are being disparaged.
“you have this generation that’s trying to do everything right, trying to play nice and not arguing back and
It happens when people find themselves fighting over scraps
they get unmitigated hell for it,” said the historian, economist and demographer who serves as president of Lifecourse Associates in Great Falls, Va., a strategic planning consultancy based on generational research.
The animosity can be explained by an innate competitiveness, he said — “there’s always been an old buck, young buck competition — that’s not generational, that’s just a fact of life.”
And as they get older, Gen Xers join the pile-on, he said.
“In my feeling, a lot of Xers are a little bit envious and jealous of the fact that everyone is being taught to treat millennials so special, regard them with care, give them all kinds of feedback and structure,” he said. “No one did that to them.”
That’s not to say boomers and Gen Xers are blind to the harsh economic realities, said Karen Foster, a sociologist and banting post-doctoral fellow at Saint Mary’s university in Halifax who studies generational difference.
“[Older people] get that things are getting harder, but they still can’t quite relate to what young people are going through and there’s this sort of disbelief that if you really apply yourself that you still can get a job, or at least a good one,” she said, adding that boomers themselves are shouldering some of this burden by shelling out for tuition, down payments — anything to help their children achieve the dream they were able to score more easily.
but as Prof. Twenge puts it, we’re all victims of our own “self-serving bias” — the tendency to blame others for our failures but be far less forgiving of others’ mistakes. While the generations are quick to play the blame-game with one another, she said, there are actually larger cultural shifts that stoke these fires and are not anyone’s fault in particular.
Not unlike the stereotypical Gen yer, Prof. Foster is optimistic these animosities will fade with time.
“If we’re so lucky that the global economy takes a huge turn upward, I think you’ll see a lot of this stuff melt away,” she said.
“I think it happens when people find themselves fighting over scraps. They start to look at other people and say ‘Well you’re going about this all wrong, you don’t deserve this and here’s why.’”