In today’s media, you see an overflow of negative commentary in regards to the millennials, often from conservative Republicans who more than likely voted for Donald Trump.
Millennials are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as people being born between the years of 1982 and 2000. We make also make up about a quarter of the nation’s entire population and have overtaken the “baby-boomers” title of the largest generation. We also have the tendency to be deemed lazy, uninvolved in politics and uneducated, at least according to stereotypes.
Now, as a millennial, I am offended by this — which seems to be the one thing we are good at, according to said conservatives.
Since when is being a millennial a bad thing? Personally, I think we are one of the most understanding and open-minded generations our society has ever produced.
So allow me to squash a few mistaken notions about millennials.
They say we want everything handed to us on a silver platter and that we do not want to have to truly work for anything.
Actually, according to Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., millennials make up almost half of the U.S. labor force. On top of that, we also launched a total of about 16,000 start-up companies in 2014 and accounted for one third of the total number of entrepreneurs in this country.
Granted, our jobs tend to be a little bit different than the ones of the generations that came before us. About half of millennials consider themselves to be “content creators,” share content online and are employed by huge internet corporations like Google and YouTube. I know what you are thinking, and, yes, these are real jobs.
We also seem to have more of our generation attending college and getting a good education than older generations. This is basically due to more and more women attending universities, a trend that was not as widespread in the late 1900s as it is today.
As for the allegation that there is a lack of political involvement from the millennial generation, that is not true either. An estimated 24 million young people voted in the latest U.S. election.
At the end of the day, millennials will always be targeted by negativity about our generation. It is when we start to believe that we as a generation of millennials are useless that we start to become that.
We are the new national power, and it is time that we realize we can use that stance to do something extraordinary.
Mikala Turner is a sophomore social work major from Bruce.
