I’m pretty averse to the term “millennial.”
For one thing, I think I usually hear it in some sort of critical way. We’ve all read countless magazine features about how we’ve been coddled by our “helicopter parents” so now we’re “boomerang children” who are way too obsessed with trivial matters like “work/life balance.” That generation of reporters that came before me seems to have been very good at turning very broad generalizations into culturally sanctioned buzzwords. And I guess I’m defensive because I have been raised to believe that I am unique and special and brilliant.
Over the summer, I was talking to a co-worker about a news package that discussed how people my age had probably never used a typewriter. I was a little confused on the newsworthiness of the topic. Was I supposed to go out and write a story about how my parents had never used fountain pens? About my grandparents missing out on the chalk-and-slate schoolhouse experience? I realized in that moment that there’s never really been a time when things weren’t in some state of upheaval, and yet people always act like their generation’s norms should be applied to all future generations, no matter what.
Maybe this isn’t such a huge revelation. Maybe I have an inflated sense of its importance because of how special they told me I was in elementary school. But I feel like I need to take one column this quarter to say to my co-millennials that we’re living in an alarmist extravaganza, and that people will calm down eventually. Your parents were totally justified in telling you that you’re great.
I think that typewriter story is a perfect example of a classic early 21st century baseless freak-out. As a journalism student, I’m subjected to a disproportionately high amount of moaning about the future of communications, but I find it difficult to identify a time when communication wasn’t changing. Before the Internet and social media had their revolutions, paper, movable type, the camera, the steamship, the telegraph, the railroad, the radio, the movies, the telephone and the television each had theirs.
People seem to harp on the fact that we’re a generation of multitasking media addicts, always texting one another with our earbuds in, always G-chatting, never interacting with the real world. And yet all that social networking and time spent on Twitter and talking to each other is probably why Bank of America decided to rethink its plan to demand fees for debit card use. It’s why Occupy Wall Street has gotten us to take it seriously and why we have the It Gets Better campaign. Maybe the fact that we spend so much time talking to our friends isn’t such a bad thing after all.
I don’t have any delusions of millennial grandeur. I know the world we inherit will still have a slew of problems and we’ll create even more, even if we all wear flip-flops to work. We’re a generation that embraces change. We are quick to adapt to new ideas and new technology and a lot less likely to weep for our lost typewriters. And like every generation that has lived through some revolutionary change (i.e. pretty much all of them) we’ll probably make it out O.K. So, whatever apocalyptic grumbling may come into fashion and whatever nicknames for us those curmudgeons come up with next, just Tweet about it. Put on some calming Spotify tunes and remember that things will turn out alright and you’re every bit as awesome as your parents said.
Ali Elkin is a Medill senior. She can be reached at [email protected]
