So this morning in my Facebook feed I viewed the video of a young Millennial woman ranting about how awful Millennials are. I see these articles and posts frequently about these awful Millennials. In fact, if you do a Google search for the phrase “What’s wrong with Millennials” you get 14 million returned results. 14 million!
Here are just a few headlines:
“Millennials- What’s wrong with this generation”
“Where Millennials Went Wrong and How They’re Paying the Price”
“Popular Author Just Summed Up What’s Wrong with Millennials”
“7 Reasons Why Millennials are the Worst Generation”
“What’s Wrong with Millennials? 50 Things You Need to Know”
Seriously????
So what’s wrong with Millennials, according to some of these articles? Here are just a few of the unflattering labels:
Entitled
Narcissistic
Self-interested
Lazy
Take those headlines and replace the words “Millennials” with any other group of people. Lutherans, gays, African-Americans, working women, stay-at-home moms, senior citizens. Go ahead, try it. Now post that headline on your Facebook page. Get ready to change your phone number and go into hiding. You would have people firebombing your house and scheduling round-the-clock protests targeted at your hateful attitude.
Why do I care? Because I happen to be raising two of these “terrible, awful, the-worst” people. Two young women who are being slapped with nasty labels based solely on the randomness of the timing of their birth. Based on the headlines, if you know someone who was born between 1992-2002, you should probably disassociate immediately. After all, they’re Millennials. And they are horrible, worthless, useless people.
Except the ones I know – aren’t. And I’m guessing maybe you know some Millennials who aren’t. Maybe even lots of them!
The Millennials I know are smarter than I could ever hope to be.
They have solid, smart plans for successful futures, and they’re doing what it takes right now to achieve those goals.
They’re kind people, good to their friends, loving, and honest.
They’re smart with their money. They have good jobs that earn them good money which they spend wisely and save.
And as much as I would like to believe that my kids are exceptional people, I know they are not. I could walk into any high school in America and find kids just like them. Lots of them. Kids with big plans for bright futures. And if I were them, I would be so discouraged every time I saw a headline about how awful they are. So maybe we could stop talking about what’s wrong with Millennials and start sharing stories about what’s right with them.
Amen?
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