Who are the Millennials?

For a long time, I wasn’t clear on what that word meant. Eventually, I started to get the idea that “millennial” might mean me, so I might want to figure out what it implied exactly.

The term “Millennials” most commonly refers to people born between the years 1982 and 2000. This generation of people has also been referred to as “Generation Y” (only because it follows Generation X), the “Peter Pan” or “Boomerang Generation”, “Echo Boomers”, the “Global Generation”, and “Generation We”.

In the U.S., the Millennial generation is the largest in history- even larger than the infamous Baby Boomer generation following World War Two- hence the term “Echo Boomers”.

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with the internet and cell phones, although they are also some of the last people whose baby pictures were taken on film.

Millennials are also unique in their current financial situation: they are being paid comparatively less or have fewer opportunities than previous generations, and they are owing more and more in college debt. As a result, millennials so far have been slower to move out of their parent’s homes and purchase their own and to get married. Not that they don’t plan to: a majority of millennials say they plan to move into their own home, get married, and have a family someday; they’re just waiting a little longer to do so.

Furthermore, because of the technology they have access to and the information they can gain from it, the majority of millennials no longer rely on strong brand names to decide whose product they purchase. Instead, they choose the product that, based off of reviews and product information, offers the highest convenience at the lowest cost. According Goldman and Sachs’ data comparison, millennials are going to have an impressive impact on the economy due to their huge size, especially as they reach more financially stable points in their lives and are able to achieve their goals of owning homes and starting families.

Millennials have also been criticized for being extremely narcissistic and more focused on material values. Although authors William Strauss and Neil Howe believe that, because generations seem to echo each other, the Millennials will turn out to be like very civic-minded “Greatest Generation” that grew up in the U.S. during the Great Depression and went on to fight in World War Two, many researches agree that Millennials are “more civically and politically disengaged”. However, studies have also suggested a rise in volunteering and a decline in prejudice among the Millennial generation; in general, they are much more open-minded and supportive of minority rights than previous generations.

All of that sounds great. Well, not great- I’m really not looking forward to handling that college debt- but manageable, I guess. But as I was reading through article after article about my generation, I started to notice a trend: these conclusions sounded like they applied specifically to the population of Millennials who grew up with the kind of white-picket-fence, “American Dream” sort of life- that is to say, primarily white, affluent, suburban people. But surely that wasn’t the entire population of Millennials? I started poking around in these articles some more, and noticed that several of them mentioned that “Other scholars have pointed out that the attempt to make generalizations about an entire generation is a futile effort. Further, some have suggested that discussion of "Millennials" tends to focus on mostly white youth from suburban areas, ignoring the unique experience of immigrants and minorities”. That was it, that’s what seemed off, but I couldn’t put my finger on: when these articles described Millennials, they seemed to be leaving out a giant group of people who didn’t fit this mainstream idea. Fred Bonner said that many of the studies were over-generalized, as they seemed to apply to "white, affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying to super-selective colleges, and who multitask with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them." In his study, Bonner heard black and Hispanic students describe how many of the traits attributed to Millennials do not apply to them, and noted that many other students from other socio-economic groups shared this opinion.

It’s possible that this discrepancy is due to each study’s failure to survey a diverse group of people, which is not a good excuse, but I have no way of checking because I do not know the study’s demographics.

When I started researching exactly who the term “Millennial” applied to, my only intent was to answer my questions of “who” and “what”. Now, I have another: why are studies and organizations claiming to represent the entire Millennial population, when in reality, a huge group of minorities are not being represented?