The patronising crap aimed at Millennials says more about us than it does them
Most talk about millennials amounts to little more than lazy generalisations that are contradicted by the facts, argues Al Crawford.
Not a day goes by without my feed being clogged by the slew of spew directed at Millennials. They’re narcissistic. They’re self-entitled. They demand instant gratification.
Perhaps the latest and greatest in Millennial commentary is the machine-gun monologue of Simon Sinek, who delivers a speech that is smugger in twenty minutes than a fifteen hour ‘best of Trump’ compilation.
I enjoy a good bout of haughtiness as much as the next person, but the more you dig, the more you start to discover the ballistic bullshit alongside the truth bombs.
Nice piece Al. I’ve spent a goodly portion of the last five years on campus studying psychology. The students around me are in some cases more diligent than me, in others less diligent than me. Go figure.
One more similarity I’ve noticed. As a *cough* Gen X, I am now old. I have noticed that eyes on campus either avert away from mine or don’t even acknowledge my presence. Which is exactly the same as what I was doing to mature age students when I was at uni the first time around. Plus ca change…
Bravo mate.
Same shit they said about Gen Y, Gen X (our mob), and probably the Boomers, too.
Sadly, the same lazy thinking leaks through to marketing plans…
Remember people: psychographics over demographics.
If you buy into the names, the ‘Silent Generation’, raised during the Depression, were reportedly aghast at the spend-thrift nature of their Baby Boomer children.
These are the same Baby Boomers who now complain that Millennials overspend and don’t understand the value of money.
TL;DR – Kids always disappoint their parents.
There’s a weird clash for the Boomer generation. On one hand they’re raising kids to have more than they had growing up; on the other, millennials now apparently want too much. Go figure.
Agree about psychographics. Why do we use demographics at all?
In one day I’m just as likely to eat at KFC as I am a three hat restaurant. I go to festivals and clubs as often as I go to wineries and galleries. I play Pokemon Go and Scrabble.
What the hell demographic is that?
Someone with plenty of time on their hands.
‘Young people’
Boomers hold most of the wealth in Australia, and they are older, and will die sooner, and have poorer eyesight. These ‘facts’ makes that generation different from others (including Boomers that preexisted them).
Milllenialls are the first generation to grow up with the internet (a change so fundamental in culture that it has an impact on the entire generation and their behaviours. This makes them different to previous generations fundamentally.
It’s trendy to say generational demographics don’t mean anything. But it’s not right – it just depends on what difference you’re trying to tease out.
We have all been impacted by the internet, Adam. That experience is not unique to the younger skew, regardless of whether they saw life before it or not. There most certainly are generational differences, but I would hazard a guess that psychometrics would provide a more relevant categorisation than demographics. Agree with Tom above on this one.
Hey Adam. Cheers for the comment. I’m not saying that generational differences are meaningless. My point is that the differences that many people immediately reach for are either illusory, heavily contested or, most revealing of all, a product of their own biases. This is particularly the case when it comes to the narrative of self-obsession, entitlement and instant gratification. In my eyes, this is the trendy (30m views for Sinek and counting) viewpoint that needs to be scrutinised and challenged.
Good call.
The very idea of comparing Millennials to previous generations is itself meaningless, given that there is no ‘one’ type of Millennial in the first place. Whether a Millennial is similar to or different from the previous generation (which is of course also heterogeneous) depends entirely on what breed of cat you’re talking about.
Research we’ve done shows the existence of 4 distinct groups within the Millennial generation. Only one of these groups is really what people are referring to when they speak disparagingly about Millennials. In fact, at least half of the generation are much more like the previous generation in their values and attitudes.
The problem is not that businesses and marketers are gearing up for the future by trying to learn about Millennial tastes and preferences. The problem is that many are making the mistake of treating them all as one, just like those whingeing about a generation. If you’d like to see some evidence that challenges the treatment of the Millennial generation as one homogenous bunch, drop us a line. We can even help you identify which one you’re talking to, so you can be sure to get the message, or your generalisation, right.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
ATTRIBUTION:
Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L. Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277 (1953).
When people say “Millennials were raised by parents who told them they could do and be anything they want” I have to wonder which first world parents did these people speak to? Parents in Southeast Asians and East Asia still want their kids to become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Doesn’t sound much like “anything they want”. Sounds more like what Gen X and Y went through. These “anti millennial” generalizations are coming from the same people that brought about the 2008 world recession. You may THINK we are entitled but you BEHAVE narcissistically.