Member-only story
Millennials: the Lazy, Entitled, Screen-Obsessed Generation Building a Better World
Millennials Are Criticised for the Very Things that Make them Awesome
“A generation of people who feel that everyone apparently owes them something, instead of getting their asses off of Facebook, going out and earning their way in life, rather than combing their man buns and sucking down Soy Frappachinoes (sic) while also eating Tide Pods.” That is one definition of “Millennial” given on Urban Dictionary, and it isn’t even the nastiest.
Young people have long had a bad rap. “Respect your elders,” they are told, even though they themselves get no respect at all. It is hard to be taken seriously when you are young, and your perceptions and world views are dismissed as “lack of experience”, even on matters which they have more experience than anyone else. Like, say, being young, and what it means in today’s world.
The young have always been the object of mockery and criticism, but perhaps never more than today, because there is such a wide gap between those called “Millennials”, defined as those born between 1982 and 2004, and those who came before. Millennials grew up with technology, with a failing social security net, growing economic precariousness and a planet scheduled for collapse. They grew up in a…
