Top 7 Baby Boomer Myths about Generation Y
I’m a 25 year-old, true-blue Millennial and I’ve got the internet flowing through my veins.
I’m plugged in: I’ve got an iPod, a BlackBerry and a laptop. I’ve got a Facebook account and my own personal blog. I’m a walking Gen Y stereotype and my net-sense has been tingling lately.
The more I read about my generation, the more I think we are being unfairly stereotyped.
As our Baby Boomer parents and bosses seek to understand us, they’ve created an all encompassing typecast for their children’s generation. While stereotyping is a necessity when talking about something as large and diverse as an entire population born during a specific time period, it seems like all you have to do these days is toss in a few standard follies of youth, add a couple of realistic adaptations to living in our time and voila! You have created a Millennial archetype.
While some of the traits bandied about us are true, many of them miss the mark as far as I’m concerned. Below are 7 Millennial myths I’d like to disband.
- We care more about our social networks than our jobs - Ah yes, us Gen Y’s are more concerned about a friend-of-a-friend-from-three-years-ago’s new picture album of them out at the club than with the job that pays ours bills, puts food on our tables and keeps the student loan collectors from breaking our legs. Seems logical, right? I think not. The only Millennials this applies to are the ones who don’t actually need their jobs, i.e. the ones that are still teenagers. When you are a teenager just about everything is more important than your shity job. I think this stereotype must have been perpetuated by the Boomers that are intimidated by scary new technology like My Space and wonder why we seem to be so obsessed with it. To set the record straight, our hierarchy of needs goes: sustenance and survival first, Facebook a close second.
- We’re obsessed with pop culture – There is this impression out there all of us under-30-set are obsessed with Britney, Lindsay, Paris and Brangelina. This is an appalling stereotype because pop-culture addiction crosses many demographic lines. I am not going to say that none of us care about the tawdry lives of Hollywood debutants, but I will confidently argue that there are plenty of old ladies out there picking up copies of US magazine at the supermarket; I know, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The only other thing I would like to say on this subject is that celebrity gossip was alive and well long before I could even read, so this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. I blame the media for this stereotype – they can sell a lot of ad space drumming up fear in our parents. Don’t worry Boomers, your daughters won’t grow up to be like Britney.
- We’re enviro-nazis – How many times have I and will I read a political article where the author states that a particular candidate is courting the youth vote by acting strongly on the environment? The answer is a lot. It seems like environmental protection and youth go hand in hand. The funny thing is you can go back nearly 30 years and read the same stories, but the youth they were talking about then are now in their forties and fifties. The truth is I know old school hippies that grow their own vegetables and talk about being “green”, while I honestly couldn’t be arsed to recycle unless it’s made very convenient for me to do so. Older people think that because I am young I must be some kind of eco-crusader, when I’m really far less of one than I should be. The other truth is that our environment is pretty fucked up and threatens everyone’s survival, not just young peoples, so let’s make not it a Generation Y only issue.
- We’re job hoppers with no loyalty to our employers – This myth definitely falls into both the “realistic adaptation to living in our time” and the “standard folly of youth” categories. People don’t stay at one job for their entire lives any more, this is true. But that reality cuts across all generations that haven’t reached retirement age yet, including Generation X and Baby Boomers. When reality changes (i.e. companies “restructure” themselves more than ever; technology makes it easier to for people to find better jobs) people of all ages change with it. I think all the generations understand now that they have to build their own ladder, so-to-speak, because the corporate one they’ve been climbing might get blocked or a few rungs might fall off without notice. How this stereotype got pegged on us exclusively I do not know. Maybe it is because many of us are still young and working McJobs? Who really expects anyone to have any loyalty to a McJob? Millennials, like everyone else, are more than willing to stick around once we find a job we like doing, that fits with our lifestyle and pays well enough for us to not think about leaving for a while. Boomers with short memories created this myth. They’ve had the same six-figure jobs since they were 38 (which was probably 20 years ago!) and don’t remember the uncertain times of their youth.
- We’re overly optimistic – The Deloitte Consulting Group’s Millennial Fact Sheet contains a quote from Neil Howe and William Strauss, authors of Millennials Rising that says “…The Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged—with potentially seismic consequences for America.” Well, doesn’t that sound fantastic? If only it were true. This actually seems like one of those stereotypes that just cover some of Generation Y, some of the time, rather than most of us, most of the time. Like other human beings, I’m very optimistic about some things and completely pessimistic about others. This stereotype seems like it was created by the media, who were just trying to fill space in the articles they were writing about us. While I think most of us are self confident and self assured, there is certainly no shortage of scepticism amongst our ranks, which brings me to the next myth:
- We’re overly cynical – By now, it’s common knowledge that Generation Y has been the most targeted market demographic in history. We’re so media-aware that
it takes a team of business consultants with Harvard MBA’s just to figure out how to make a commercial we won’t reject. Politicians stumble around making My Space pages and You Tube videos in a vain effort to “keep it real”. We get our news with a sarcastic twist from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rather than from traditionalist CNN and USA Today. Oh yeah, we’re real cracker jacks. That’s why Fall Out Boy is one of the most popular bands of the decade and the Wayans Brother’s dumb-assed parody movies are so successful. I would like to think my generation really is the savviest of them all, but evidence of our stupidity keeps hitting me upside the head.
- We’ve got a smug sense of entitlement – This has to be the worst stereotype of them all because a) it’s partially true, and because b) the Baby Boomers created it themselves by spending the first 18 (actually, in most cases 20+) years of our life building us up and bailing us out. Never before has a generation been so coddled. We certainly did have a sense of entitlement and many of us – the younger ones – still do. This stereotype makes the list is because as the Millennials age, it becomes less and less true. 21 and 22 year old college grads do have a sense of entitlement – they expect 50k + jobs to fall in their laps, and they expect to be managers within 6 months, handling all the important work at the office. I mean we went to college for fuck’s sake! Teachers, parents and TV have told us over and over again that a 4 year degree was the golden ticket to success. Holding a university degree was tantamount to the great divide between being a poor labourer or a sophisticated (and well-off) professional. Well, it turns out the concept of paying your dues didn’t go away with the changing of the generational guard. Sure, a degree is helpful most of the time, but it doesn’t replace the fact that you don’t have any real experience and are going to have to prove yourself for a while. Like 5 to 10 years a while. Generation Y is learning, slowly but surely, that nothing is given to a typical adult in this world. Every single thing our parents have they earned and we’ll be no different.
Picture Source: Joel Stein’s column for TIME | “You are Not My Friend“
Illustration by Francisco Caceres for TIME
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Comments
oooh, a boomer burn. Well, I’m not saying I’m a wise man, but I think should have the authority to write about my own generation
Two of these aren’t Gen Y stereotypes - everyone is obsessed with pop culture and green is the flavour-of-the-week in our society. I’ve never heard either of them associated with Gen Y.
I’ve also never actually heard anyone say or even suggest that we care more about social networks than our jobs. I think it’s fair to say that we’re either overly optimistic or cynical are stereotypes, but the two remaining points you make about Gen Y job hopping and having a sense of entitlement aren’t necessarily stereotypes. If you live in a city like Toronto, where new jobs open up every day, you can job hop. I think this can lead to a sense of entitlement among Gen Yers.
Another myth is that you can be wise and 25 at the same time, lol!