Ragging on "Millenials"

First off, I hate the term "Millennial." I mean, I understand the term and it's not like I have any other word for it myself at the moment, but I just don't like it. I think part of the reason I don't like the term is that over the last few years it's been associated with bad things. I always hear on the news or read online things about how "Millennials" are so spoiled, or so selfish, or so lazy, or whatever. The only time I hear that word, it seems, is in relation to how terrible we are. As many of you know, I fit into that demographic of people born sometime between the early 80's and the early 2000's, and I'm sick and tired of being beat on by the media all the time.

So, we're lazy? I remember in school kids pushing themselves to get A's and feeling bad if they didn't. I notice my peers in college beating themselves up for a B while also trying to juggle a social life, and often times a job (full-time, mind you, part-time isn't gonna cut it). In the job I'm in now my age group seems to be the hardest workers. But what about the older generations? Congress obviously isn't a great example, every time a budget issue comes up they end up kicking the deadline down the road. I had a coworker in her forties recently chew me out for sitting down for five minutes but she was a half hour late to work. Heck, even the news I see about us "lazy millennials" is littered with overdone and useless stories (I know that car dealerships are gonna try to take all my money, you don't have to tell me every month). So we're lazy?

So we're spoiled? We feel the need to know things at the touch of a button because we were given the ability to do that. Did Gutenberg spoil the masses by giving them access to the Bible and the written word? Did Shakespeare spoil the common folks by throwing in a bawdy joke or two? Did Philo T. Farnsworth spoil people by allowing them to have images and sound brought into their homes? Why is technology that is used considered spoiling? The only reason I finally broke down and stopped using internet at the library is that it is almost impossible to function in today's society without easy access to the world wide web. That's not my fault, I didn't force businesses to go online, I just took advantage of the ones that did. However, for those of my peers that are "spoiled," I feel that goes back to their parents. The parents that got them all the nice things, the parents that treated them like they were the perfect little angel. The parents that did the work for school projects. I understand the desire for a child to succeed, but I feel that my parents gave a better lesson, that sometimes I'm going to fail, and that doesn't make me a failure, it makes me a human. So we're spoiled?

So we're selfish? We live in a world that is run by the internet. Socialization is done online now. We don't talk to our friends only at very specific times, we can get a hold of friends just by tapping on a plastic screen. We live in an age where we can, if we want, make a friend on the other side of the world and have a real-time conversation with them. The internet is now built around social networking, and social networking is built around, essentially, telling your friends what you are doing. I see people posting the same stuff on Facebook that I would have said to my friends in person, but now those friends live hundreds of miles away and have busy lives and busy schedules, so I put that information on the internet so that they can see it. We take pictures of ourselves to show our friends the things we are doing, even if that's just taking pictures of ourselves. More importantly, we live in an age of trolls, people who will latch on to one tiny thing about a comment, or a post, or any piece of content you put on the internet and mock you for it. Could it be that the girl posting selfies and fishing for compliments might be getting torn apart by ruthless internet bullies for her stance on a controversial issue. Could it be that the young man talking about how much he worked out is just trying to fit in with his friends? But let's go back to the people in Congress. I seem to remember the government shutting down for awhile because the people in that generation couldn't give up a few tiny things they wanted, because nobody could accept that other people have different views and opinions and that it won't kill you to hear them. So we're selfish?

I'm not gonna say that this rant is anything special, just the thoughts and feelings of a "Millennial" tired of being labeled as a terrible person who's ruining the world. My point is, to the older generation of millennial haters, we aren't ruing the world, we're just trying to live in the one you gave us.