I need a rant about millennials

[HanG77]

Okay, I may offend millennials but hear me out (and please, millennials, offer me an explanation as to why your generation do this)...I've just had a discussion with a millennial on a thread for a social media post showing the Tartan Army having a blast in Boston, her comment was about how it was "healing the millennials". I replied saying it's lovely for all generations to watch given how divisive the world is, and she said due to 9/11 millennials crave the world healing more. I get this a lot with millennials - like they think every cultural experience is about them or for them - even taking things that are from other generations and claiming it as their era - and they act like no other generation has had any big events to deal with. I argued the Lost Generation (world war) and Gen Z (being children/early adults when the whole world stopped) have had it worse out of all the living generations (in my opinion).

For context, I'm a British Gen X, also I have a lot of close millennial friends so it's not personal, it's about them as a collective. Also, this person was American - I think maybe the American nationalism adds to it (more so than with Brits of this generation).

I think both of you are being silly in making this about the range of years somebody happened to be born in.

Exactly this. Like a few others, I HATE ageist threads, (whether it's about older people or younger people.) They are always full of ridiculous sweeping generalisations.

@HanG77 I do not recognise what you're going on about at ALL! You are definitely not describing any millennials I know.

Indeed.

You aren’t. It is stuff and nonsense. And easier to describe generations by the years they lived.

Yes, imagine all the complaints about ageism if it was the other way round!

I'm a millennial and I'm just terribly glad I wasn't born 15 years later (Gen Z?).

I'm glad I had my analogue childhood and teen years without social media.

I think kids now have a much more stressful and anxious life with much less freedom than we had.

And I feel all the convenience stuff which makes us more efficient so we can work more has led to an erosion of childhood and family. Just little things like using a map to navigate back from a family camping trip. All sitting down to watch TV together on a Saturday night because there was only one TV. Children looked and acted like children for longer in the 80s, I feel anyway.

But I imagine there are people in the preceeding generation who feel that way too, it's not unique to millennials. And maybe we all just miss our childhood and feel it was a simpler time, whenever that childhood was.

Perhaps take a break from social media.

Your “stance” is no different than what is said about others moaning about a specific generation on social media.

There are plenty of millennials that do not feel the same way as the person you decided to use as a generalisations for all millennials.

This is not much different from some men who spout out women only want men that are 6ft tall, make six figures because they heard it on social media instead of actually considering their own reality and even factual data outside of social media.

Not even most Americans millennials are like what you’ve chosen to choose as an example. Most are more concentrated like many generations and people (of other countries and cultures) on their own sh-t going on than who has it worse.

First 3 posts nail it 😆

It’s not their fault in many ways.

Also I don’t even think it’s a majority of them that are like that.

We keep telling entire generations that they are victims because they can’t afford to buy a house or they missed some school in lockdown etc and then wonder why they have little resilience.

I wouldn’t recommend the 70s/80s childhood in many ways but by the time we went to work, we were ready to navigate the bad things in life a lot better. We didn’t wang on about ‘healing’.

The silent generation lived in a time of world wars, genuine deprivation etc, as did the baby boomers.

GenX grew up genuinely convinced that they wouldn’t survive their teens due to either HIV or nuclear attack. Oh and neurodivergence not being recognised or supported.

So not being able to buy a house or whatever is fairly mild in comparison.

You don’t have to go around giving them silly names.
If you want to talk about a decade and what happened in it , to the people in it you talk about it by saying ‘ the 30’s. The 60’s, The 90’s. And so on. You don’t give a bunch of people a silly label in order to do so.

I’m a millennial and I don’t recognise myself in this at all. There are, however neurotic, self-centred people in every generation.

Must be an American thing rather than millennials, as I also have never heard this.

Yeah, confused about this too as a fellow Gen Xer. I had a whole childhood without social media or a mobile phone or computer - all entered by life in my early 20s. Also lived through 9/11, Covid, the recession Millennials talk about too - and others - plus the AIDs crisis, Northern Ireland troubles (I remember being shut in my office all evening on my first job in Central London due to a bomb scare), us Brits had the tube (and bus) attacks too after 9/11 (which I was also in London during) and I don't feel like I've had a terrible run of events happen in my life - I just think this is life (for everyone).

No, you don't get to push this on Americans now that people have disagreed with your take on millennials. American millennials aren't all like this either.

I can't stand the way everyone is talked about with these daft age categories now. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.

Ah well. Makes a welcome change from boomer bashing I supose

I think maybe someone should explain to your friend that 9/11 changed the world and affected us all.

I do agree with this and prefer to do this myself, but for the sake of argument/explanation, I think the divisions are to account for the fact that historical events and eras of economic or social development don't always fall neatly into decades. So when discussing how certain historical factors have affected society, it can be a bit more tailored to take account of those factors.

Give it time, it’ll come - there’s 35 pages to go yet !!

Umm....I put in my original post that it might be an American thing. I don't care if people disagree or not, its something I've noticed and I was generally interested in people's take on why this is.

Nope, not something I come across either. I think it's down to individual people.

How many millennials do you think there are on this earth? Do you really suppose that's the mindset of all of us? If we're all fluffly and crave healing, does that mean there is no crime commited by millenials? Being a Gen Xer, I would have expected more wisdom to be honest, but you know - people are people, not some made up generational band, so you can't generalise.

I am a millennial and I'm definitely not saying my generation have had it worst, as PP have said, each generation has its own difficulties.

For me though as another PP mentioned it is the yawning gap between what I expected my life to be like compared to my parents, and how it has turned out. My mum bought our family home in 1985 for £22k on a mortgage that was easily affordable with her wage. My dad left and she still continued to pay it solo, with no difficulty and was then mortgage free by her mid 50s.

I then bought THAT SAME HOUSE from her with my husband in 2015 and we paid a shocking £240k for it. That's a ridiculous increase in 30 years, and I can tell you, despite both working in good jobs, our combined wages haven't increased to the same scale.

I graduated in 2008 after 3 years of hard work, having been told all through high school 'work hard, get a degree, you'll get a good job' only for all of those 'good jobs' to disappear overnight.

I'm 40 now and am no way as financially secure as my mum was at 40, despite the fact she was a single parent and we have two wages coming in. The world has changed, and we as a generation have been/are being squeezed.

I also dislike how difficult it is to afford childcare etc- back in the day it was common/not unexpected for one parent to stay at home while the kids were little - that is out of reach for many families now and I feel I'm missing out on their childhood.

This is kind of my point though, I see us all as one group of humans living in this world at the same time. Cultural and historical events - unless they specifically happen in a particular era relevant to a particular generation - are for everyone. I don't get how the World Cup is healing for Millennials (as an example). It's lovely to see the football fans across different countries/cultures all get on for everyone. It's a human experience.

You don't though. You've generalised all millennials

Yeah, I don't get it either. My Gen X friends who lived in NYC when it happened would've been in their early 20s and they're still traumatised by it, as Boomers would've been too.