Why are millenials geting a lot of flak

[MenaMecca]

Just that really. Surely every generation has its pros and cons?

Divide and conquer.

the joke generation are the zombie phone starers and coffee clutchers - I was looking at a central London google streetview image the other day and it is hilarious. Ripped jeans are also quite amusing, especially given how much people pay for them.

happily the worst of the doof-doof crap rap bleeding from earphones seems to have gone out of fashion.

the zombies may of course be laughing at me, but I doubt it because they really don't notice much.

So because people and technology and the way people interact with the technology has changed then they are a joke? And because fashion has changed they are a joke? It's thinking like that which causes arguments and divides people. It would be like me saying all baby boomers are useless at using technology and can't keep up in the modern world.

Society and attitudes change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Its fair to say that 30 years ago house options were better - more council houses, more affordable homes to buy. Now there are less social housing, AST's and higher house prices.

There used to be "jobs for life" now there are ZHC's.

Its not all black and white there were high interest rates in the past and redundancies but making jokes about avocado's, mobile phone contracts and "worthless" degrees adds nothing to the debate.

I'm hoping this picture attaches , thought it was an entertaining way of seeing that we all hammer the next generation for something , I've been reading recently about the 18th century panic on novel reading and the similarities to millenials being hammered for their phone use.

I was expecting the quote to be this Socrates one:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

www.bartleby.com/73/195.html

Clearly Socrates was predicting my DC

Wonder if he has any quotes on what ds2 has done with the remote

I'm sure the millenials will complain about what my DC will be called when they grow up (maybe they will start at the beginning of the alphabet as we are getting close to the end with Generation A ?)

I'm a Gen Xer born to boomers. I was born 1968 - my parents born 1950 and 51. Excuse me while I impose my own experiences on entire generations.

I was one of the glut of unwanted kids the late 60s sexual revolution produced. My primary school in a working class area of South London had quite a few of us. Brought up by aunts, grandparents and - in my case - by a detached single parent. My mother made no bones about the fact I was an obstacle to her living the life she wanted. She wanted less 'Cathy come home' and more 'Take three girls'.

I grew up to be ferociously independent and detached in my own way. I was also the first generation where divorce was rife and the system such that I never saw my father again. We grew up very fast - I was in the pub at 15, moved out at 16 and took any drug that came my way. I fucked up and dealt with it on my own.

I think my generation are more likely the parents of millenials? I can see why they were perhaps over-indulged as a reaction to our upbringing. I work with several under 30s - on the whole they're great to be around (even if the "omg i literally like died!!!" and heavy consumerism is hard to take). They're not especially independent though. Every decision seems to need the hive to concur.

They're indulged, they're given so much - but the chance of them getting much without it is slim.. The independence we were forced into just isn't possible now.

i agree prole it's harder to be independent at a young age now; you can't just go and get a job at 16 anymore, so many jobs require degress, rents are high so it's hard to move out etc. I do think it's weird ppl are still on about millenials though, as a pp said they're not the 'youth' are they anymore? Shouldn't ppl be complaining about generation z (as i think they're called?)?

i don't relate to the media image of the millenial though i am one technically; chomping on avocados, drinking coffee constantly and flying off to Thailand all the time, having lots of gadgets, working in 'media' etc. i think that image might be the result of columnists having a rather limited worldview. although tbh all of that sounds quite nice now i've written it down it's probably a bit of a fantasy that only the richest can indulge in as a constant lifestyle.

I don't like avocado or coffee so maybe I should hand in my millennial card....

I find the notion that everyone in the same age group thinks the same way rather weird anyway.

I don't know what I am. Too young for baby boomer, too old for millennial. What am I? Gen X (born 1972).

yes, gen x

A nice celebration of gen x here: www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/millenials-generation-x-baby-boomers-a7570326.html

Forgive my ignorance...

How do we define all these terms?

Well, at work our millennials do like to have a good moan, need quite a bit of hand holding too. We have a lot of uni graduates who's parents paid for most of that so they didn't have to work a lot and it shows. they're entitled, and always looking for a promotion when they aren't ven doing the job they have well yet.
They also complain about their living conditions - mostly at home at parents with washing done, low-no rent, wi-fi, etc. - about how they can't afford to rent but when you ask them what they're looking for it's a whole house at a standard above what I can barely afford now! Because they don't want to 'waste' money renting.
One girl went on about it so much - her mum won't get her hands off girls life etc. - I lost patience and, VERY gently, said move out then. Get a room somewhere, not fancy but you get your independence. She burst into tears. FFS. I was picking on her and didn't understand ANYTHING apparently.
Maybe that's because I lived in a bloody squat after Uni then a serious of pretty rubbish rented rooms with mates in the 'bad' part of town till my jobs and pay got better and didn't ask my mum and dad to fund me at the age of 24.

I’m a gen Xer, and identify a lot with what prole said. Add in the points that we were the generation who grew up in the miner’s strikes, so the first to be reminded of London government’s real attitude to its own people and those who grew up with the socioeconomic consequences of being abandoned. I’m relatively lucky but I remember it. We’ve also had to watch as house prices go up and up while wages don’t. We were stuck in that gap between being expected to support the older family and the millennial need to be supported, and 20 years on we’re still caught in the middle.

I work with a fair few and while many are fine there is a tendency for the following:
Unnecessary visits to the GP due to sore throats/just in case the spot is cancer.
Mum and dads sort out their utilities as it is ‘conplicated’. Staring at Facebook and posting pouting photos at random crap locations. And an inability to know what is going on in the news.
And my favourite: I don’t like getting up early as I am not a ‘morning person’.
It isn’t all of them but a significant minority are vocal about their lack of ability to get on with life without their parents.

All the millennials I know are massively hard-working and successful. So the stereotypical millennial in my mind:

has a graduate degree in a lucrative subject (economics, engineering, physics)

is saving for a deposit on a house, even though buying in London is a distant dream

therefore never goes out

yearns for John Lewis and made.com

runs a lot - Runkeeper is basically their social media

is vegetarian at inconvenient times

Iamnotanumber, the problem I had when I lived with parents was that the rented accommodation near me started at nice one bed flats I couldn't afford. I didn't need something that nice but there was no healthy medium.

In my experience the flak comes from babyboomers. It's because the babyboomers can't or won't admit how lucky they were/ are, so therefore the lack of opportunities must be the fault of the young. It seems that daily an article appears on how lucky the babyboomers are, with no admission that a) some baby boomers weren't at all lucky b) there are some ways in which being a babyboomer wasn't lucky - eg no access to university for the vast majority, poor maternity leave, open misogyny at work, bullying and sexual harassment at work. It's not surprising that babyboomers want to fight back. And as someone has said up thread, it's a lot easier to continue the policies which are causing ever greater inequality in society if all of us in the lower reaches are busy blaming each other.

In a lot of lists, there seems to be confusion about what age a millennial is - and much of it applies more to upper MC millenials than WC.
I am a late 20s millennial who started FT work at 16, so seeing tips for working with all these millenials who are just now entering the workforce is kinda .

Also, I do think there is a lack of understanding with regards to housing ladder/job seeking when older people try to advise younger people.

My dad was very “march in with your CV and ask for a manager” whenever I was seeking work. Then he retired from his career (which he got with A-levels and would nowadays require a degree) and started looking for lower paid part time work. He had quite the shock.

I’ve heard a lot of this lately and even DH has started doing it. I find it irritating and lazy and it would piss me off no end if I was one.
I think I react all sweeping statements relating to a wide range of people sharing one attribute.
“The problem with women/ old people/ Arabs is ....”

I didn't even know I was a millennial until last week. Ridiculous term! I'm a person. I work hard. I was born in the 90s. It doesn't define me.

I like that article.

I t explains why I spend an inordinate amount of time banging my head against a brick wall trying to explain to Millennials that Boomers really didn't have all the benefits they think they did. Conversely trying to explain to Boomers that Millennials just do things differently, have different aspirations.

I have often felt stuck in the middle of squabbling children, that article explains why. It missed the Gen Jones though, Gen Xers who really got competitive with the need for conspicuous consumerism. They'd run Millennials a very close thing in the electronics, gizmos and excessive leisure needs stakes.