Conversations about millennials are often followed by a series of common questions: Aren’t millennials entitled children who live with their parents? They are all oversensitive neurotics, no? Why are they suddenly getting all of the attention? Each fall under a larger, overarching categorical question: Why should we care about millennials and the trends popular among them? For centuries, of course, believing younger generations to be lazy, stupid and unoriginal has been a rite of passage for those entering middle age, but there really is a reason we pay attention to the tendencies and plights of emerging generational cohorts.
I am one of the 90 million members of this generation born between the early ’80s and 2000. I am not only interested in the discussion that is taking place about us, I am invested in participating and helping to steer it. When I first entered this exchange back when we were more commonly referred to as Generation Y, the conversation was dominated largely by elder generations observing us from the outside. Our tendencies toward narcissism and our political outlooks were being reported on. News magazines focused on our impact on the workplace. Suggestions for how to get along with us at work, and how to monetize our skills, were being offered at conferences.
It was at one of conferences that I decided I wanted to better understand my generation from the perspective of those I shared the moniker with. In the fall of 2008, with the support of the Case Foundation, I embarked on a 30-city research tour to better understand what and who we were. The tour, which was called Millennials Changing America, was an attempt to get in touch with as many millennials face to face in as many locations throughout the country as possible. I learned many things: we are all different, diverse, from a range of divergent experiences. Many of the numbers that indicate some of our collective tendencies that had then been reported by The Pew Charitable Trusts rang true: we are optimistic, generally progressive, unsatisfied with traditional working environments and globally concerned.
While there is a range of different backgrounds, ages and perspectives represented among us, we, like any generation, have been shaped by shared events. Just as the Greatest Generation was defined by its relationship with the Depression and World War II, the Silent Generation by the Korean War and post-war boom, the baby boomers by the turbulence of the ’60s and ’70s, the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism and Vietnam, and Generation X by the rise of Reaganism and wrap of the Cold War, millennials share a proximity and have been shaped by life in a post-bipolar world, 9/11, the war in Iraq, the so-called Great Recession and more. On that trip in 2008, I met young people who were excited for the future — a young, black, globally minded former activist had just become president — though we were staring down the barrel of what seemed to be financial catastrophe. Despite our differences, our perspectives have been shaped by many of these shared events.
We also share being shaped by the rise of the Internet, which has helped to ensure we are even more on the same page with each other than previous generations had the luxury of being. When the police in Ferguson, Missouri, responded by sieging the town with paramilitary force, we, along with many others, not only watched it reported back to us, but we were there via Twitter, in real time. We were outraged, having exchanges with each other, demanding press coverage and, by David Carr’s account, our behaviors changed the narrative at large. Not only is this an outcome we know to be possible, it is one we have grown to expect.
I am interested because I am a millennial, but our collective interest for where generations come from and where they are going comes from a desire to understand where we will go as a culture and society. Millennials make up nearly 30 percent of the population, which is a substantial chunk of the electorate, and in that, a substantial political power. We are a substantial consuming power, too. The youngest of our generational cohort is not yet even 18, and our tendencies are changing the ways of the workplace, the narratives of elections and the way the news is covered. We care not because the millennials have taken the place of or are better than preceding generations, but because understanding the millennials is a matter of understanding the future. As millennials go, so goes the nation.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager and is a former candidate for the Legislature. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish. His column will appear here every other week.