Why Millennials Will Save Us All
Every generation likes to look to the old fogeys ahead of them and the young whippersnappers behind them and proclaim that everyone else must be nuts. In a way, every generation is probably right. None of us can look back objectively over the years, because we see the world through the lenses of time and experience.
Millennials get a bad rap for being whiners, but they are a group of young people who have never known a world without war and economic crises. Most of them don’t remember America before September 11, and 99% of them have never even seen a floppy disc or a rotary phone outside of a museum or a history text. They’re called snowflake crybabies, but is that really a fair assessment if they aren’t yet in power? They’re living in the world run by retiring Baby Boomers and a growing number of Generation Xers. Despite the numerous criticisms we throw on these young folks, here are five reasons why they might just save us all.
1. Creative Entrepreneurs
StampyCat and DanTDM aren’t problems that require a Veterinarian. They’re Millennial entrepreneurs who are breaking new ground in the entertainment industry. What do they do? They play video games and record it on YouTube. I have to hand it to them, it sure as hell beats sitting in a cubicle for 9 hours a day, every weekday of your life, for forty years. StampyCat has nearly 8 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, and he’s been seen almost 5.5 billion times. DanTDM has 12.5 million subscribers and 8.2 billion views. To compare, note that Hulu.com, an up and coming television streaming service, had only 9 million subscribers last year. Millennials start businesses earlier, they do it more often, and they have a higher tolerance for failure than any of the rest of us in the older generations. In an era where traditional jobs, pensions, and the corporate ladder are fast becoming a thing of the past, we need people who can find new and innovative paths to success.
2. Forged in the Great Recession
Remember when everyone was going to create a million-dollar website and retire to the beach at 50? Well, Millennials don’t. That’s just not their reality. Since the Great Recession of the aughts and teens, it’s been a cold hard fact that people in their 20s who used to venture out on their own are now living with their parents at record levels. This isn’t necessarily a condition of a coddled generation. The economy sucks today, compared to 20 years ago. I remember my great-grandparents (born in 1911) using Ziplock bags for everything after a large family get together. They wasted not a single crumb. Because they raised my grandparents during the Great Depression in the 1930s, it came natural to them to follow Benjamin Franklin’s wise words to “waste not, want not.” Millennials have already known hard times, and it will prepare them even more for challenges they’ll face when they are actually running things.
3. Revolutionaries at heart
Not since the hippies danced in the mud, traveling in VW vans, all across the country has America seen a group of young people so hell-bent on dramatic changes in the way we do everything from watching T.V. to running our federal government. Are you locked into an old school television contract for 2 years at a time? Do you have a “landline” that you pay $50 a month for, and don’t even use? Millennials laugh at us for things like that as they stream what they need, when they need it, and they pay a lot less than we do for their entertainment and communications needs. Einstein is often credited as having said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” As we watch Republicans and Democrats continually take turns steering the country right for a cliff, older generations, like us, seem happy to pick sides and see who gets the blame when it all comes tumbling down. Millennials are far more likely than other groups to consider third parties or even new ways of doing things altogether.
4. They’re educated
Millennials enroll in college programs far more than any preceding generation, despite the fact that the cost of a bachelor’s degree has risen 146% since 1986. With incredible advancements in technology, it’s a given that kids in high school today (the youngest Millennials) will be taking college classes that don’t exist yet, for jobs that are unimaginable today, but that will be critical tomorrow. They will need to be educated to respond to the complex issues that will be kicked down the road for them to handle. It’s not little conveniences or small apps for our smartphones that we’ll need in the future. We’re going to need an energy source beyond fossil fuels, a way to handle an exponential population growth, the wisdom to work in a more globally-connected and smaller world, and new breakthroughs beyond antibiotics, just to name a few. Often called the “smartest generation,” the Millennials will need to know deal with issues that have an impact on the entire planet.
5. Changing the World
These young folks care about everything. We recycled, but these kids are into eco-friendly, sustainable, organic, non-GMO foods, fair trade products, and electric automobiles, just for starters. They won’t stop until entire cities run on a combination of sunlight, wind, and unicorn flatulence. Millennials aren’t content with slowing the rate at which we harm the world around us. They’re dedicated to reversing what they perceive as past wrongs. Over 84% of Millennials donate to charity, and 70% of them spend real time volunteering to help their community. Although the selfie-generation is justly criticized for being overly narcissistic, they are also pros at social networking, and therefore, at bringing community involvement to a new level. My oldest daughter, the last demographic age group of Millennials, teamed up with a friend to start a non-profit animal rescue in our hometown where they were featured on the local news. These types of actions are just part of the norm as far as they’re concerned.
With constant threats facing us today, and a growing sense of unease about the direction our world is going, we need to move past the warrior mentality of the Greatest Generation, the big spending habits of the Baby Boomers, and the apathetic dismissiveness of my fellow Generation Xers. Maybe the tech savvy, caring, selfie-loving nerds of the Millennial generation is just what this planet needs.