I love my phone; it's true. It's practically an extension of my right arm and every time I drop it I cringe, praying that it didn't shatter. But there are so many things that I value more than my phone or any other materialistic object.
As a Millenial, we are often all lumped into one giant, negative category. If you listen to how older generations talk about us or look up articles about the "Millenial Generation" or "Generation Y," words that commonly come up are entitled, narcissistic, lazy and materialistic. What I find most amusing is that these articles, and the people talking about us, aren't Millenials themselves... so how would they know? What gives them the right to belittle our entire generation?
Many people say that we have too high of expectations for the amount of work we put in. We "cling to our parents success," (of course, that usually comes from a person in our parents' generation...) so we don't know how to be successful or accomplish things ourselves. We are "frustrating employees" because we job hop frequently. We delay being an "adult" because we live in our parents' home too long. We are too tied to our technology that we can't experience the "real world." We are the "worst generation yet."
By the looks of it, it seems like we really have nothing going for us, doesn't it? Well, I'm actually here to argue that we do.
We recognize that we are not the only generation there is, and that we're not going to be the ones that single-handedly change the world, but we have made some large contributions already. We are the first generation to grow up with computers in our homes. We have helped create social media. We have embraced our freedom of speech. We have drastically increased the amount of people who are educated and continue on to college. We are confident that we will make a difference.
I hate being a Millenial. Not because I'm embarrassed by our generation, but because I hate how we are viewed. We are seen as "narcissistic" because we are confident. We are seen as "entitled" because we stand for what we believe in. We are seen as "lazy" because we rely more on our parents in order to afford a college degree. We are seen as "materialistic" because of all of the incredible advancements we have made with technology.
Parents want nothing more than for their kids to have a better life than they did. Even taking emotions out of it, biologically we want our genes to survive and thrive in the best environment. I urge older generations to see that this is what we want too; that, in fact, we are all after the same goal.
