There's No Such Thing as "The Millennials"

I was recently asked to give a talk on the communication preferences of Millennials to a group of 300 delegates. The organising committee asked if I could provide some insights into the way Millennials behaved in the workplace and how one could circumvent the communication problems associated with this generation. 

I was, at first, perplexed by the request. I wasn’t sure of what they meant by Millennial communication preferences. From a scholarly point-of-view, I don’t remember there being one at all. 

After careful study and consideration, I came to a hard-hitting conclusion: The so-called Millennials are a product of myths, self-perpetuating prejudices and stereotypes.

I am going out on a limb here to say that there’s no such thing as “The Millennials” and I aim to prove this claim in the following sections.

The Idea of a Generation

This idea of “generation” can be traced back to Karl Mannheim and his article titled “The Problem of Generations” (1952). He wanted to find a sociological category that could act as an organising centre for all other sociological work. 

He proposed that there must be a location, a space and time, in which a generation is born and must therefore share similar ideologies. In this he states quite unambiguously: “Individuals who belong to the same generation, who share the same year of birth, are endowed, to that extent, with a common location in the historical dimension of the social process.” What he means by this is that the collective social consciousness of a particular segment of society is influenced by the historical events of their time. 

What is most perplexing about Mannheim’s work is why the historical events and struggles of a particular time seem most poignant only to those born in that specific time? Not only is this vaguely explained but Mannheim’s obsession with the struggles of youth undermined the labour and toil of every other generation from that particular historical event. 

As I was reading Mannheim’s work, I couldn’t help but ask, did the Asian Financial Crisis (1997) affect only the Millennials born at that time? I remember quite clearly how my parents (part of the so-called Baby Boomer generation) were severely affected by the recession. And how I (the so-called Gen-X generation) suffered through the crisis as adolescents. 

There are many other criticisms of Mannheim’s work that I have no space to detail here. Suffice to say, the lessons are not learnt and an outdated conception of generations is continually perpetuated by politicians, the media and advertising industry to create quick demographic bookmarks. 

The problem occurs when this mythical generation is slandered and lumped together as if they were an entirely new species of human beings. The Millennials, as they are called, have many faults to answer for and none of which they own. 

Who are the Millennials? 

There’s no consensus about this but a quick Google will show that they’re people born anywhere between the mid-1980s to early 2000s. In terms of their age, they are anywhere from late teens to their mid 30s. 

The term “Millennials” was popularised by Neil Howe and William Strauss (2000), authors of Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. In their book, they made numerous predictions about how the new generation will challenge politics, society, religion and the economy. In the words of a Newsweek journalist who reviewed the book, “The generational boundaries are plainly arbitrary… And the predictions are facile and reckless.” As entertaining as the book may be, it is, unfortunately, a sociological crystal ball best used with caution. 

Yet this idea that the Millennials behave and speak differently from the other generations persist. What I wish to do now is to hold these claims up against the critical lens of logic and research. In the next section, I will prove that there’s no such thing as “The Millennials” and by extension, there is no ubiquitous generation at all. 

Myth of the Millennials

Let’s review the three most common labels that define the Millennials. 

a) The ME ME ME Generation

If the Baby Boomers were considered narcissistic, the Millennials are three times worse. With selfies proliferating the digital landscape, it seems that the Millennials are guilty of solipsism and vanity. And in the workforce, the Millennials are all about individualism and corporate ambition. 

Not only is such a claim facetious but also factually groundless. In a rigorous research conducted by Wetzel et. al. (2017), the authors made a study of more than 50,000 college students in three cohorts (1990s, 2000s and 2010s). Their results not only contradicted the so-called “me me me generation” but statistically showed a decline in narcissism, leadership, vanity and the sense of entitlement amongst youths.

b) The Lazy Generation

Another hearsay about the generation is that they’re lazy. According to a Forbes article, Millennial employees demand greater flexibility and work-life balance. Millennials do not see the amount of time spent in the office equal to being a productive employee. 

Well that’s no surprise, is it? How many of us, honestly, love working 8-5 in the office and grinding through the day? And how many of us would like to have work-life balance? Is this a demand that is specific only to the Millennials? 

And let us not forget the enabling factor of new technologies. What would take a typewriter half a day to produce is now digitally possible in a few minutes on a mobile phone. Corporate culture advances with technology as does the time and effort of an employee. Thus employees really do have more time on their hands if the work demanded has not evolved. Also, with the ease of wireless technologies, why are we stuck in the office space on an everyday basis? Is this a problem of the Millennials or is this a problem of a backwater corporate structure? 

But if rhetoric isn’t sufficient, then perhaps research will. A cross sectional study by Smola and Sutton (2002) between two age groups (20s-40s / 40s-60s) shows that neither believe that work is an important part of life or that working hard made one a better person. This research gives evidence that the demand for work flexibility isn’t a “special feature” of Millennials but shared cross-generationally. 

c) Trophy Kids

This metaphor came about when it was observed that school children in the late 90s / early 2000s were given excessive amounts of trophies at school for participation at events. According to a BBC article, the young working Millennials are now known as “praise junkies” who gets a “fix” from an e-card, a pat on the back or a verbal thank you for completion of work. 

Allow me to ask a few questions. Exactly who is adverse to praises? Anyone? Is there a person who’s reading this article that is now saying, “I really hate compliments from my managers if I have completed a difficult task given to me”? And what research shows that praises are ill-fitting to corporate communication? There aren’t any as far as I know. 

If we read the BBC article, we might be inclined to think that the 17 appreciation stations set up by the US Bank to be just a tad bit excessive. I don’t disagree. I think it’s a little overboard too. But I can hardly believe that those stations are used only by, or for, Millennials. Again, I open the challenge to prove me wrong. 

As the Trophy Kids grow up, they now make up the bulk of the working demographic. Employers say that they are a “feedback hungry” population that has a paucity of independent work behaviour. But these statements are not backed by research. According to the Gallop poll, the "Millennials" are receiving only 17% of meaningful feedback from their employers. No wonder they have been accused of being “feedback hungry”. I would be too, as would any "Gen X" or "Baby Boomer" when they first started working. 

Any early career employee, in any organisation, starts out inexperienced. To become better at our jobs, we need to know if what we’re doing is right or wrong because errors can cost us our promotion or position. Thus we aim to reduce uncertainty by asking questions and to receive feedback from our employers. And those of us in the practice of communications know this as Uncertainty Reduction Theory which states that the aim of communication is always to reduce ambiguity to facilitate understanding and long-lasting relationships. To achieve this, we would, of course, need feedback. And feedback is, quite frankly, an average modern human need. It is not a Millennial condition. 

Why the Myth Persists

It persists because of something called heuristic. In psychology, a heuristic is a mental shortcut that we use to form judgments about a person or situation. Say, for example, you are hiring for an executive position. The interviewee walks in wearing cut-off jeans, a t-shirt and a pair of sneakers. The first thing that comes to your mind is a negative thought, be it “slob” or “slacker”. You will not hire such a person even though, logically speaking, there is nothing in that individual’s attire that could attest to his/her working abilities. These mental shortcuts help us make instantaneous decisions in our everyday life. However, they also contribute to cognitive bias, prejudice and stereotypes. 

The myth of the Millennials persist because of our ideological framing of youths. If we looked at the heuristic used to define the Millennials, we will also realise that they are the very same stereotypes used to define teens and young adults. For example, youths are lazy / Millennials are lazy; youths are demanding / Millennials are demanding; youths are narcissistic / Millennials are narcissistic. And for my readers who are now around their 40s, I’d like you to reflect back on your own youth. Weren’t these the same statements that the Baby Boomer generation said about you? 

The myth also persists because media and advertising need to create and market to a hedonistic social identity. And this social identity is bought by the youths who wish to define themselves as different from the older generation. This consumerist relationship drives the buying and selling of identity labels to create the illusion of a special generation with unique qualities even though these qualities are part of a fictional narrative. 

There’s No Such Thing as “The Millennials”

I hope by now I have invalidated this special group of people called The Millennials or, by extension, any all-encompassing generation. 

If we communicated to the Millennials, we self-perpetuate a fallacy that defames the youth. This is a HR and communication trap that will, I assure you, demoralise one of the most educated, largest and youngest workforce of our time. 

If we must talk about generations, then we should speak of them contextually and in terms of their age groups. There are a plethora of intergenerational studies, especially in the nursing and medical field, that discusses communication problems and issues between elderly patients and young nurses/doctors. But there is no justifiable research on the Millennials as a special category of people with unique behavioural patterns.

And let us not forget that not all youths are made equal. The statements about the Millennials are usually articulated from a Western, Anglo-centric perspective. The Millennials themselves are either American or European. We must therefore read such information with a certain level of bias and remember to always frame our knowledge to our own culture and society. 

Finally, I kindly ask that you excuse my audacity as I am about to make a prediction, just as Howe and Strauss did, before you go. 

I predict, with a colossal measure of surety, that 15 years later the Millennials will be saying the exact same things about the new generation as the Gen X or Baby Boomers once did to them. As such, the mythic specialness of this generation is nothing more and nothing less than the youthful antics and behaviour of every single generation past, present and future.