Comments on: The "Millennials" Are Coming
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- I am a so-called 'baby boomer' in my 60s and while some of this is true - much of it is nonsense.
Certainly I don't imagine my kids putting up with some of the crap that I put up with at work but they are as conscientious and hard working as anybody out there. - Reply to this comment
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- let's not forget about how we the Gen xers are paying it forward to the Baby Boomer Geneeration with them having their Social Security benifits which our Generation X will never see. The Baby Boomer Generation can thank us later after living longer from social security (great we'll hear about your generation well into our own retirement years...and the last Baby Boomer of the Bbay Boomer Generation just passed away today at age 150) and while doing so they can make sure that the Millenial Generation of their children are done getting their butts wiped by them at least by what age 45 so they can finally begin to take work serious for our Generation X retirement years. Generation X is not a foot note as one person replied we are the ground work which was laid for the Baby Boomer Generation when the very first PCs came out while we were in 8th grade being tested on them to see how the world would take to them, we were the pupets who woke up and realized we were not going to be used by people but rather pave our own ground work and split from the Baby Boomers clenches therefore resentment kicked by them and we were called "lazy" on the contrary we were not lazy we worked hard to make our own way and have done so by being sandwhiched in between two assanine groups of generations which we fear our retirement years to be a total joke of a loss if we don't work harder now then ever before. We too grew up on Mister Rodgers and were told we were special however we didn't take it so literally and we don't blame Mr. Rodgers for our failures or point the finger at our parents we accept our failurse, learned from them, move on all while knowing that no one and nothing is perfect. Generation X also encountered for the first time many of the devistations that the Millinials have had with 9/11 etc. however the difference between our generation, the Baby Boomer Generation and the Millinial Generation is we'll find the cure, the Baby Boomers will create the disease and the Millinials will whine about how much it hurts until the disease goes away by us the Generation X ers. If the Millinial Generation puts their social life style and family before work we are all in trouble economicly. Who and how do you Millinials think will pay for your social life? Um usually one works to gain money for that fun freedom. Socializing is not a given. It's like putting the cart before the horse however this generation is so use to the me first and getting what they want right away then they are the horse and they put the cart ahead of them. Pulling a cart that way will only cause accidents for them. I have the right to say all of this now because I have older siblings who are the Baby Boomers and yes, they are the WORST GENERATION imaginable. I am raising my own three children all who will fall into the Millinial Generation and believe me they will not be raised to be spoiled little whining brats putting the cart before the horse. They can't because they they don't have Baby Boomers generation parents raising them and they won't use other people as their little pupets. In ending if I can cause an accident before it happens then by God they are lucky to have Generation xer parents to guide them in the right direction !
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- This is a normal cycle and like it or not the different generations need each other. As a GenXer I remember being told I was lazy and incapable of pulling my own weight by the older employees, this while being very successful at a tech start up easily working 90-100 hrs/week. It's human nature to always think the Youth are naive and wouldn't know a rock if it hit them. That's why we have the stereotype of the curmudgeonly old man (turn down that music, get off my lawn, we had to walk 10 miles uphill to school - Muppets anyone?)
The Boomers thought the same of the GenXers and the Greatest Gen thought it about the Boomers and the Millennials will say a variation on this same theme in the not too distant future when the next "to be named" generation is nipping at their heels. I agree all the coddling is a bit over the top. There isn't always a winner, but they will learn, it may take a few rejections at a negotiation table but it will sink in and hopefully they will want to teach their kids that "you win some and you lose some" and that's okay. Every generation had a lesson to learn once they were in charge. There are reasons behind the over protection and coddling, same as their were reasons why our parents pushed us to work and their parents did what they did - the problem isn't parents trying to make the world better for their children (that is what parents are supposed to do to propagate the species) the problem is the extremes in which we collectively let the pendulum swing. We need to find middle ground.
This generation will settle into the work force and some will be successful and some will fail, the same as every generation before them and every generation that will come after them. The interesting part is that many will have varying definitions of success...which definitions will persist when Mommy and Daddy are gone and gold stars don't prove useful in buying the newest "must have" thing. - Reply to this comment
- This story is ridiculous- you really think college kids are scrambling to move back in with their parents after college for fun? This is out of necessity, not comfort!! I am now status post 4 yrs college, 4 yrs med school, 3 yrs residency, and about to start 2 yrs fellowship and it infuriates me that this program concludes that we are taking the easy way out-not so! The government is disabling us from being able to stand alone. So now, with nearly half a milliion dollars in education debt, 80+hr work wks, no holidays, no wkends for yrs on end, and trying to pay back the first time homebuyers tax "credit" that was actually a no interest loan, I'm, at age 30, dependent on my parents for the first time in my life and it's completely sickening to me that I've worked this hard for so long only to go backwards. Don't disqualify us until you know what you're talking about!!!
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- As a genXer, I would like to ask millennials to not lump us with the boomers. Disagree with us if you must, just please dont confuse Xers with Americas "WORST GENERATION".(AKA BOOMERS). There are some things about millenials that concern me, but those of us who are Xers should remember the insults and stereo-types, we had to endure. Also, we should remember that tactic will get us nowhere. Im hoping against hope that they will turn it around with maturity. I will admit that this article scared the crap out of me. If its as bad as it looks according to CBS, this is nothing less than a national security issue.
Thinking about it though, a few things occured to me. The first thing is that the majority of these complaints come from a white collar work setting. Im wondering if someone can tell me if its as bad in the blue collar setting. My experience with millenials comes through the prism of the military. Im career military and I have been in combat alongside many of them. They have accounted themselves very well. Those of us who have faught and died in all wars from ww2 to Afghanistan can rest easy knowing they have not let us down. But, those of us who choose this life are not cut from the same cloth as spoiled upper middle class young adults. Thats why I asked abour blue-collar types.
As far as boomers, they need to shut the hell up! Boomers are probably the most selfish generation. What makes them worse is, they actually believe they changed America for the better. Do you know what we Xers inherited from the boomers? Aids, rampaging drug abuse, multi-trillion dollar debts and a nation bankrupt of ideas and honor. All of that and hypocritical insults against us Xers as slackers. It tunred us into fiercely independent minded cynics with a chip on our shoulders. The result was the tech revolution, tripling the size of the economy. We changed the poltical landscape, by rejecting large government. We aswered the call after 9/11, suffering the majority of the casualties. So, now you know why we dont want to be mentioned in the same breath as the "WORST GENERATION". aka BOOMERS. - Reply to this comment
- The primary problem I see in the perspective of this article is reflected in the divergent nature of the comments people have left over the years. We have older generations calling us younger people "lazy" and rooting for failure to wake us up from our delusion, and citing the selfish Millennial as the cause of an impending doom for America. In turn, young people respond because they are offended (as was I reading some of this stuff). We accuse older generations (Boomers and GenX) of creating us, the technology we love, and the failing economic system we will inherit. Actually I think that neither side is completely wrong or right. There are aspects of truth in both positions. There are plenty of examples of lazy Millenials, as there are hard-working ones, just as there are plenty of examples of selfish Boomers as selfless ones. Generational theory as it stands is to broad to be really accurate or useful. What I see in this is that none of these groups really understand each other. And everyone is so busy accusing and defending that we miss out on the best part of having a multi-generational society: communication between generations. The older generations can say you know what guys, we messed this thing up, but here is some advice on other things we did well. And the younger group can say, well we think this would be more efficient if we did this, but sorry we were late. I mean we are all connected. The younger people will hopefully learn and care for the older ones, and we can all learn a lot if we stop accusing each other of so much.
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- My generation is better educated, more well-rounded, and tech savvy than any generation that has come before. We are less restrained by the tired dogma of yesteryear and better equipped to take a rational approach to fixing the mess left for us. We face challenges that can scarcely be imagined by Gen. X, and we face those challenges with a better grip than our counterculture-idealistic baby boomers. We have a fuller understanding of the value of multiculturalism, family, and education. We value the mind, not the race or gender of that mind. We, unlike generations that have preceded us, have the resources at hand to implement Millennial Ethics - to say, we can look at a problem and apply any number of ethical models to it, instead of trying to create another ethical model that could never be all encompassing. Yet, for all of this we are being portrayed like this. We do not need to be coached, or taken by the hand and guided to work. We understand the work before us, we understand the social, political and economic struggles we face. Struggles inherited from generations of people that would see us alienated and apathetic - clinging to our technologies like comfort blankets... No, our technology doesn't blind us from reality, or cause disunity - quite the opposite really. In our time we have seen race riots, 911, pointless wars, greed, and unemployment. We have seen social inequality, ecological disasters, the failing of our health care, and the rise of the pharmacological horse-blinders. We have full knowledge that industrialism has failed us, that too much cultural knowledge has been lost to return to an agriculture based society. We know that programs such as social security and medicare will not be available for us - though we pay into them regularly. We can see the negative influence of biased media that would polarize our people. We are not spoiled brats as this article suggests - an article no doubt written for the old-guard to replenish their sense of superiority. We are coming, us Millennials - to correct the errors of the past. Yes, we have scaled Mt. Everest and excavated Machu Picchu, but soon we will scale the ranks of Washington Politics and excavate the wealth of applicable human knowledge that has either been ignored or ill-implemented.
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- I think the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans out there are giving us a bad name. The media has created this thing with these stupid celebs like Hilton and Lohan, who are a part of this generation of course, to make millennials out to all be spoiled and stuck up.
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- I feel nothing but pity for the people who agree with this article. Apparently, they're too busy whining about my generation on the internet to go outside and meet a decent young person.
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