Saturday, January 14, 2017

Stereotyping Millenials

Who came up with the term millennials?
Is this a useful category?
I believe the term was originally used for marketing and political purposes but soon everyone was attempting to stereotype the group on every conceivable characteristic. Polls were taken and while the label was used to understand the demographic on a economic basis people started to make wild generalizations about the personalities and dysfunctions of the group in order to identify any "problems" that might arise as these people join the work force, become voters and start to spend money. Understanding the youth seems to be important to those attempting to predict and potentially manipulate the next big wave of adults but are such generalizations accurate

There is no "problem" with millennials. There are problems in society and most importantly in individuals but stereotyping based on an age group so wide spread does not seem to be useful. It is a complicated task to identify real problems and even more complicated to try to solve those problems but when you can just make wild allegations about an entire group of people based on anecdotes, like that of millennials feeling 'entitled", you can simplify it all down to a few talking points and give people the illusion of enlightenment. All new generations deal with new challenges and alter culture in new ways and it seems like there will always be fear of the unknown future this new generation will bring. 

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