The Millennial Industrial Complex pt. 2

This is a continuation of the analysis of the HUGE piece that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week. The article talks about how SO many people have made money off of BSing companies on how to "deal" with young people. All these OLD aging Baby Boomers that can't seem to get to know their own children enough to know how to manage them. So corporations call these people in to help them understand their new hires because we're so foreign. See Part 1 here.

Part 3 of the article deals very specifically with the impact of 9-11 on our generation. For those in high schools and colleges around the country who woke up to planes crashing into the Twin Towers and dealt with the fallout of a fearful citizenry and a trigger happy government.

"Soon Newsweek published a cover story called "Generation 9-11," which described the unprecedented attacks as a "defining moment" for high-school and college students. . .
"Whenever there's a change in social mood," he says, "it makes thinking about generations clearer."

Part 4 talks about the book Millennial Rising:

"...Mr. Muntz confronted a fact: To accept generational thinking, one must find a way to swallow two large assumptions. That tens of millions of people, born over about 20 years, are fundamentally different from people of other age groups—and that those tens of millions of people are similar to each other in meaningful ways. This idea is the underpinning of Mr. Howe's conclusion that each generation turns a historical corner, breaking sharply with the previous generation's traits and values."

This is the the standalone flaw with "generational thinking" because you ultimately end up painting everyone with a pretty broad brush. One of the certainties in our generation is that we are the most diverse generation in history. With such diversity comes a lot of different characteristics, traits, opinions, and backgrounds, so "generational thinking" tends to focus instead on what we have in common and that's the picture of our generation. Muntz noticed this wasn't exactly the best way to understand us

"You can't just take one stamp and put it on this generation," says Mr. Muntz. "But it sure was nice when I thought I could."

Part 15 ... er somethin... introduces us to our favorite fraud and foe: Jean M. Twenge author of "Generation Me" all about why we suck. Twenge is the assistant professor of technology? no... marketing? no, not that either, psychology. Twenge identifies people by psychological profiles not realities. The same psychology that use to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder, they use to say children whose mothers worked outside of the home were psychologically damaged, and the group that doped our generation to the gills with Ritalin. So, maybe Twenge isn't the most trusted person to write an analysis of our generation based solely on a psychological profile. Avoid her book, it'll just annoy you. We'll skip the portion about her book and instead include the rebuttal which follows in the article...

"Over the last decade, commentators have tended to slap the Millennial label on white, affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying to super-selective colleges, and who multitask with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them. The label tends not to appear in renderings of teenagers who happen to be minorities, or poor, or who have never won a spelling bee. Nor does the term often refer to students from big cities and small towns that are nothing like Fairfax County, Va. Or who lack technological know-how. Or who struggle to complete high school. Or who never even consider college. Or who commit crimes. Or who suffer from too little parental support. Or who drop out of college. Aren't they Millennials, too?"

And oh so overlooked. Great to boil our entire generation down to one very small suburban subset. They quote Fred A. Bonner II. who teaches at Texas A&M and wrote "Diverse Millennials in College" a book that takes a broader look at the most diverse generation in history. Turns out not everyone lives in the burbs and plays little league. who knew?

"Such descriptions are reminders that most renderings of Millennials are done by older people, looking through the windows of their own experiences. So in any discussion of generations, it's only fair to give a Millennial the last word. This is tricky exercise, however. After all, it's easy to find one who agrees—or disagrees—with the idea that students are team-oriented, or narcissistic, or anything. And many have given generational labels no more consideration than the ingredients of their breakfast cereal.

Susanna Wolff, however, has thought a lot about the differences between younger and older people, at least in terms of their mastery of technology, a theme she mines for laughs. Ms. Wolff, a senior at Columbia University, compiles a weekly feature called "Parents Just Don't Understand," for collegehumor.com, a popular Web site. Submissions come from all over the country, about mothers who don't understand how e-mail works and fathers who ask about joining "MyFace."

Besides technology, however, Ms. Wolff believes that people her age have few common experiences to bind them together the way Millennial theories describe. When she hears the term "Millennial," she thinks of marketing executives huddled around tables, looking at pie charts and figuring out how to sell stuff. "When every commercial is marketed to you," she says, "it feeds the idea that everything revolves around you."