Millennials get a lot of criticism for being narcissistic, lazy, and entitled, but we think this is a misconception — just like it was when people said the same things about the last generation, and the generation before that, and the one before that. In fact, Socrates had this to say about the young people of his day: “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
Sound familiar? So, here’s a little love for the generation everyone is expecting to fix everything wrong with the world — without the benefit of a job. The millennial unemployment rate is near 13 percent, but it’s not for lack of effort.
1. Autodidacticism
It’s an internet thing. Give a millennial a search engine and they’ll have that skill mastered in a week. With the resources available to them today, a prevailing spirit of independence and can-do attitudes, they tend not to accept the excuse “I don’t know how.”
2. Equality
On the whole, millennials are far more accepting of diversity than older generations, and that’s a big deal for social progress. Even millennial conservatives tend to support marriage equality and LGBTQ rights. Farbeit for us to say that there’s a generational consensus, but from where we’re sitting, there certainly seems to be a shift underway.
3. Workplace Culture
For better or worse, millennials are influencing workplace culture. When your boss puts a kegerator in the employee lounge, decides to offer you unlimited vacation time, or relaxes the policy on tattoos, piercings, and dyed hair, thank the millennial in the next cube — if your office is still using those depressing little partitions. The competitive economic environment and crowded marketplace in which many of them came of age has also led to a landmark shift in the way we think about personal identity, with each individual becoming their own personal brand. OK, so maybe it’s not all good …
4. Community-building
Again, the internet helps here. And while they’re making great strides toward equality, they’re also subdividing endlessly along niche lines in their search for personal identity. In doing so, they’re finding communities of like-minded people, sharing ideas, and collaborating.
5. Creativity
Millennials were told growing up that they’re each special little flowers, just waiting to bloom and change the world. One of the positive consequences of this is that they’re fearlessly creative. From business, to art, to information, to infrastructure; they’re turning eager to turn everything on its head and they’re helping to drive innovation.
