The Millennial Question

[GoldenRivet]

In the video, he breaks the "Millennial problem" down into four basic elements, they are; Parenting, Technology, Impatience and environment
He's absolutely right

From the Parenting Standpoint, for most of their lives, millennials have been lead to believe that they are special and unique and if they want something bad enough they can get it and received rewards simply for showing up (everyone gets a trophy). and when you take these people and put them into the real world they discover that they are in fact NOT special, and you are NOT rewarded just for showing up.

As for Technology, this one made the biggest impression on me.

I was born in 1979, and i have very early memories of 1982, 83, 84 having video games like atari and intellivision, but video game baseball and football etc sucked just enough to make you want to go outside and ride bikes or foot it from door to door throughout the neighborhood trying to get enough kids together so you could go outside and play actual sports.

and, as you know, we didn't have social media, we didn't have home electronics. If you asked a kid in 1984 to name off some home electronics in the house they likely would have thought ... washer, dryer, phone, tv and that would have been about it.

Kids now... hooked... always on Ipad, tablet, xbox one, Playstation, PC, iphone, Ipod, virtually every single toy on the shelf at toys r us... electronic in some way (hatchimals for example) but millennials who found themselves as young people in the late 80s and early 90s when technology was exploding, these are people who had it bad, and kids now have it even worse.

My stepdaughter, she gets in the car for a 25 minute drive to her grandmothers house and immediately upon buckling her seatbelt says "Mommy, can i play on your phone." and we aren't even out of the driveway yet! she takes her tablet with her to dinner whenever we go out to eat 95% of the time no matter where we go. Children in her age group are so self absorbed and so dismissive of everything that doesn't have an immediate impact on them. Today for example... she is on winter break. Her day, wake up, feed the cat, turn on the xbox and vegetate. I know personally that she has been up since 7:30am and has come out of her room to eat breakfast, get a snack, and eat lunch. If it weren't for her basic physiological needs... i could have easily been fooled into thinking i was home alone all day.

and its not just children, as a bit of an experiment, every time i went to get a haircut for about a 45 day period, i would people watch. everyone, every single person young, middle aged, old, retirement age across the board everyone sat in silence on their cell phones until their name was called to get a haircut.

and hes right about when people get lonely or down and out they bulk text message their friends just for the sake of striking up a conversation or getting a response. I'm guilty of it. I work out of town 200 days a year, sometimes straight through. When i find myself cooking dinner for the 50th time, and having a cold beer and thinking of how alone i am.. i will bulk text 4 or 5 friends - almost as if i am "fishing" just to get a nibble

When i was a kid, entertainment on a long drive was following an atlas trying to figure out where we are, how to get from there to where we needed to be. counting license plates that were not from the state we were in, playing "slug bug" or similar games. We built valuable relationships with our peers. i have friends in my life that have been there for me through thick and thin since 1988 for crying out loud, now days... kids move 10 minutes down the road from their good friend and never speak to them again.

a lot of the millennial problem has to do with this electronic device addiction and the dopamine released into the body by interacting with such devices.

Which brings us to impatience. why are Millennials so impatient? I was not familiar with the concept of "instant gratification" until i was 13 or 14 years old. the only means of instant gratification i had prior to that period of my life might have been the 90 seconds it took to make chicken nuggets in the microwave i guess?

Impatience comes to millennials so easily because - mostly - of the technology around them. overnight shipping, binge watching instantly available TV series that you dont have to wait a week for the next episode. instant gratification is such a real issue for millennials that they come to expect it with all aspects of life. patience eludes them and they focus more on the immediate, the short term and are often unable to see the big picture and focus on the long term.

Finally, the environment in which millennials live is counter to everything they have grown up expecting. the companies they work for, as companies always have been, are driven by a bottom line, goals, statistics, sales data, number crunching, technology further inhibits this because everyone is so engrossed in the social media, digital life, cell phones, texting etc that the little moments that inspire and innovate are essentially removed from the equation.