Millennials Will Pwn the Future – Part III

by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.

In two earlier posts, here and here, I explored how it almost seemed as if the Millennial generation (born roughly from 1980 to 2000) seemed to be designed for the world we will experience in the future – or vice-versa. I'm going to complete that exploration today.

The re-emergence of autocrats and authoritarians– Partly because of the widening gap between haves and have-nots, and the less secure nature of the workforce, voters have become easy marks for plutocrat populists who promise easy solutions to complicated problems, and say that they are fighting for the “little guy.” 

As a result, we have seen populists arise in many nations around the world. And history teaches us that while populists start by promising free goodies and quick fixes, they end up as autocrats who erode personal freedom, and threaten liberty and personal security, all for their own personal aggrandizement.

But Millennials value authenticity over authority. This can make them easy to dupe at first, as populists come across as more authentic, “willing to speak unpleasant truths, and smash the icons of the elites”. 

Yet, because they value authenticity over authority, they are not impressed by authority, nor are they cowed by it. 

In the workplace, this can come across as insubordination: “You’ll do it my way because I’m the boss!”

“Yeah, but why do it that way, when my way just works better?”

In the long run, when autocrats stop seeming authentic, and start to show their imperiousness, Millennials are better equipped to call them on their bullshit, and resist. Even better, they have both the inclination, and the social media smarts, to create a movement to oppose autocrats. 

For example, while they are on the lower edge of the Millennial generation (they’re actually on the cusp between Millennials & GenZ), the high school students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, had no hesitation in starting a national social movement to oppose the NRA over gun control. And they have shown that they are far better communicators, and much better at PR, than the better funded, but largely Boomer-driven, National Rifle Association.

Fragmented media, fragmented society– When the Boomers were children, there were a small number of media outlets conveying news. As a result, everyone started with more or less the same perception of what was happening in the world, and what it meant. 

That’s no longer the case, as the Internet allows people to live in their own echo chamber, seeing and hearing only opinions that reinforce their own, and ignoring facts and viewpoints that contradict them.[1] This is dangerous, because it eats away at the cohesiveness that society needs so that we can act together. The growing chasm between Republicans and Democrats in America is a textbook case of how this can happen. The consequence is, as Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

But Millennials counter this in many different ways. They consume media differently, jumping from MySpace, to Facebook, to Snapchat, to Instagram, to WeChat, to whatever else is new and useful. They share items quickly and across the world. And they are open to different viewpoints in a way that earlier generations were not. 

Does this guarantee that the growing fragmentation of society will be healed? Probably not, but it does mean that Millennials will deal with it more constructively than Boomers have.

Longer lives, delayed retirement– Millennials are sometimes described as being overage teenagers because many of them live with their parents, haven’t got solid careers, and haven’t started families by the time they’re in their 30s. Most of the reasons for this are economic and financial: they have had fewer job opportunities, are saddled with more student debt, are faced with more expensive housing markets, and hence don’t have the financial ability to move out and enter into the family formation stages of their lives.

But Millennials are making this transition, and successfully, partly with help from their parents, And, ironically, increased life expectancy means that starting work later may not be all that much of a disadvantage. They may well need to work into their 70s (as many Boomers are already doing) – but they may also live well into their 100s, so that’s not such a bad idea, anyway.

The emergence of more assertive minorities, including pan-sexual groups – In a global society, minorities are less and less willing to “sit at the back of the bus”. Earlier generations have seen minorities struggle for equal treatment, often over the objections of the white majority. 

Millennials don’t seem to have that hang-up. They’ve grown up in a much more aware environment, have been exposed to many more races, colors, creeds, sexual orientations, and cultures. They are much more inclined to be egalitarian – and to stand up and fight for those who are oppressed, put down, or disadvantaged. This will eventually lead to a more harmonious society, reducing the edginess and acrimony of the conflict between a majority and minorities.

Does all this mean that the Millennials will lead us to nirvana? Obviously not. They have faults, they are human, and they will make mistakes.

But if you look at what the future is likely to be like, Millennials seem better equipped to take advantage of that future than any of the generations before them.

Tom Brokaw, former national anchor for NBC News, a national news icon, and author of the best-selling book, The Greatest Generation, about the generation that lived through the Great Depression and World War II, likes the Millennials. He calls them the Wary Generation, and says about them that “Their great mantra has been: Challenge convention. Find new and better ways of doing things. … that ethos transcends the wonky people who are inventing new apps and embraces the whole economy”[2]

I think the Millennials will pwn [3] the future. It’s almost as if it were designed for them – or they for it.

[1] I wrote about this in Who Owns Tomorrow?, a book I published in 2003. There I said, “…customized media will further fragment society. We will have less and less in common intellectually or emotionally when the media we experience are tailored to our individual interests…We will no longer be neighbours in a more fundamental sense, and politics and human relations will suffer as a result.” P.86.

[2]“Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation”, Time magazine.

[3] “Pwn is a leetspeak slang term derived from the verb own, meaning to appropriate or to conquer to gain ownership.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn