More 'Millennial' madness

Had enough of mindless Millennial drivel? Too late, I've got more... and the bottom line is that "we", the non-Millennials, "should" know and identify these Millennials, and somehow expect them to be different from other humans. And of course they somehow deserve 'different' treatment because of that. Heck, they may not even be human!

So take a read of this, from BNET: "The teens entering college over the next few weeks were probably born around 1990. Here are five observations that jumped out at me from the “mindset list”:

1. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available
2. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib
3. Caller ID has always been available on phones
4. Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born
5. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

According to Benoit, 'The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are ‘wired’ and equipped with the latest hardware. These students will hardly recognize the availability of telephones in their rooms since they have seldom utilized landlines during their adolescence. They will continue to live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world.'"

OK there's good stuff here. The ever-decreasing size of Western 'family units' will show up in a larger proportion of kids who have never shared a room with a sibling. It may shape some attitudes about sharing, although I have seen no research on that. And there are also more blended families, so what does that mean with regard to attitudes? And although they may be living somewhat different lives from people born 10, 20 or 50 years ago, what evidence is there that it actually makes a difference?

As for the rest of it, whether you are familiar with computers, cell phones and whatnot all of your life or whether you have adapted to it as it has evolved is of little concern, surely? We all live in the same world and have embraced gizmos to greater or lesser extents, irrespective of age. Yes, to be older (on average) affects our uptake of new stuff. So does relative wealth, culture and religion, amongst many other things. It's a continuum, a sliding scale of influence and uptake - not the black and white of the dime-store demographers. Plenty of Millennials actually don't care for the latest and greatest stuff, and plenty of so-called Boomers do. 

Now we can try to analyse it to death, but people are people, and should not be labelled just for the heck of it. But humans love to label, and having labelled them we should not try to second-guess how we should treat them, or ascribe values based on untested theory. It's so easy to say that young people 'these days' prefer part time work, shifting careers and lower levels of loyalty when we have brought them into a world that has created exactly that environment. There are fewer full-time jobs, more service-oriented jobs and entirely new careers that didn't exist even 5 years ago.

On the one hand we say 'they want this stuff' but on the other we didn't give them a choice - it's how it is!