Not Quite a Millennial

I hate the word millennial.

“Millennial” is really not a word we 18-34 year olds use to describe ourselves, anyway. It’s usually used as a cop-out for people over 35 to blanket the self-entitlement and liberal narcissism of young people. We young people say the same things about Baby Boomers, of course, and I won’t pretend that we don’t. But understanding each other is much more complex than our complaints on Facebook. Time goes too fast in the information age to group people in 25-year increments, and America isn’t homogenous enough anymore to make generalizations about entire generations.

Technically, I’m not even a millennial but a Generation Z (sometimes called the Post-Millennials or the iGeneration), which is anyone born after the mid-1990s, according to some articles. In many ways, the current college-aged population like myself does differ from the older, late 20s/early 30s “true” millennials. Sometimes I feel like my age group is the awkward middle child, not quite relatable to the current workforce starting families, but also not the same as the Zs who have iPhones in elementary school. We did grow up with more technology from the outset than millennials, but we barely remember the 90s, and our parents are more likely to be Generation X (the ultimate awkward middle child generation) than Baby Boomers.

For clarity’s sake, and because many Generation Zs are still too young to really be put in a box yet (aka my brother, who was born in 2008 and is definitely growing up in a different world than I did), I’ll call myself a “young” millennial.

The fact of the matter is, millennials are one of the most diverse generations ever, and we have a much different view of the world and are dealing with highly complex, global problems. I’ll have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt before I’ve started my first job. I’ve watched my country grow increasingly iconoclastic and jingoistic in the last two decades. Climate change and globalization make every consumer habit a matter of ethics. Consequently, millennials have created a knowledge economy where short-term self-fulfillment is more important than long-term self-preservation. If that makes us entitled, then so be it.

Another frustration is that millennials didn’t name themselves. Generation X named themselves Generation X, but Baby Boomers named millennials millennials; now the name mostly describes what’s wrong with us. I’m reminded of a quote by vlogger Hank Green (I acknowledge the irony of reinforcing stereotypes by quoting a vlogger), who says, “One of the chief complaints of older generations, who worked so hard to make life easier for their kids, is that young people these days have it too easy. Especially when it’s increasingly clear that they don’t.” And as much as I do love categorizing information (as a true J on the Myers-Briggs test), I’m frequently frustrated by the demographic trends that are supposed to describe my life trajectory.

I’m supposedly inattentive, anxious, pragmatic, and entitled, while simultaneously empathetic, hopeful, and self-sacrificing. I’m expected to be cynical for growing up in the post-9/11 generation while also optimistic to “change the world.” That’s a lot of pressure, exacerbated by the perfection of social media that makes this juxtaposition seem like everyone has it all figured out. The older, 30-something millennials have–supposedly–already set these standards, so I’m just trying to navigate where exactly I fit into all this. Being everything all at once is exhausting. Knowing how your attributes affect the future is harder to grasp than recognizing your behavior after you’ve already lived it. And portraying millennials’ collective behaviors as a choice ignores the generational nuances of much larger economic and social factors.

I’ve also noticed an irritating trend, at least in my own life, of older people praising their children or their grandchildren for being “different” than the rest of their generation, as if they are separate from it. Not every older person does this, of course, because then I’d stereotyping their generation as well. But from my own experience, this happens to me frequently. For example, I work with several Baby Boomer women at my summer job at home, and they’re constantly telling me how “respectful,” “different,” and “self-aware” I am. Then they’ll criticize other “young people” in the same conversation. But I see these same respectable qualities every day from my friends and others in my generation. I’m not exceptional. We can’t be praised as individuals then criticized as a collective.

My point–which, I’m aware, reinforces typical millennial behavior of rejecting group identity–is that generational timelines are just made-up attempts for the current or previous “group” to make sense of their place in history. That realization is freeing to me. I hope the pressure put on young millennials and their resulting stresses will dissipate as we find a more comfortable place in the world. I’m also looking forward to becoming a crotchety old person so I, too, can complain about tomorrow’s Kids These Days.

So for now, dear friends, go be free. Try not to try too hard. We don’t fit neatly in this millennium age anyway.