(Looking at Zoomers, Millennials, GenXers, and Boomers in four posts.)
What are your perceptions of America’s Millennial Generation? In his July book The Fourth Turning Is Here, Neil Howe, arguably the world’s leading generational expert, makes many intriguing observations about Millennials. What do you think?
Howe sees Millennials as people being born from 1982 to (his best guess at this point) 2005. As Howe points out, we can’t yet clarify the dividing birthyears between Millennials and Zoomers. Time will tell. But the best guesses at the moment are 2005 as the last birthyear of the Millennials and 2006 as the first birthyear of the Zoomers.
Let’s assume for the moment that these birthyears bear out over time. In 2023, 102 million Americans are Millennials age 18 to 41. In 2033, there will be 113 million age 28 to 51. And in 2056, there will be 107 million age 51 to 74.
Boomers didn’t want another generation like us Xers, so beginning around 1983 Boomer parents kicked off sweeping changes with their “Baby on Board” signs in back car windows.
It’s been pretty much the same improved treatment for Millennials ever since. Rubber-padded playgrounds, Amber alerts, Megan laws, zero tolerance for crime and drugs and bullying and bad behavior at school, and much higher academic standards and expectations.
Writes Howe, “No youth generation in American history has willingly subjected itself to so many tests and exams – nor has any trusted in the ethic of meritocracy so utterly. Millennial high school students by the mid-2010s were bearing roughly twice the average daily homework load as late-wave Xers were in the 1990s.”
Millennials have a propensity for community and volunteering, and they’ve flocked to social media where everyone keeps track of everyone in real time. Their culture has been surprisingly wholesome. They are the children of The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Barney & Friends, Blue’s Clues, and Dora the Explorer. They are the youth of poppy choreographed boy bands followed by Taylor Swift, Drake, Ariana Grande, and Bruno Mars.
But then, after they followed the rules, remained friendly and upbeat, and got their credentials to be “career ready”, there came the Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession. And they just began to financially recover from that for about three years in the late 2010s when the pandemic struck.
Amazingly, Millennials blame themselves more than the twists of fate in our national and global economic history. About 55 percent of Millennials say they’re ashamed of their personal financial situation. So they are doubling down, working even harder, making even more of an effort to achieve the American Dream.
Half of twentysomethings live with their parents and most of the rest rent, often in “group living” situations with friends. Home ownership (other than what are called “tiny houses”) seems out of reach.
Millennials are burning out from hard work and suffering from perfectionist-based anxiety. All while hearing us older folks stereotype them as “snowflakes”.
Millennials are strongly pro-marriage and pro-family, but, as Howe puts it, “a record share of them continue to avoid marriage because they feel they aren’t prepared for it, can’t afford it, don’t dare risk it, can’t find a reliable partner – or all of the above.”
No wonder Millennials think our current system is broken – fundamentally – and needs to be overhauled or even replaced. Even as they strive to fit in socially with their honest, friendly, orderly, and competent cooperation-and-team approach to daily life and relationships.
Millennials and the Future
Millennials will keep up their wholesome culture, their sociable and cooperative behavior, and their hard work and perfectionism. More practical than Boomers, more disciplined than Xers, Millennials will confidently build up a functional new system that benefits as many of them as possible.
After struggling financially for two decades, they’ll begin to propel society forward by doing big things. They’ll be ready to build and rebuild our neighborhoods, to generate real and widespread home ownership for themselves, and (for those for whom it’s not late) to finally settle down, marry, and have children.
Howe envisions Millennials leading America and the world through an era of planning and building. Enough Millennials played the videogames SimCity, Civilization, and Age of Empires that they’ll be ready to revitalize our cities by building parks, malls, and civic centers.
Howe goes much further, and imagines America’s 2030s mayors hiring, say, 15 million Millennials to manage multi-billion-dollar projects “from smart highways, transit loops, and universal IoT Wi-Fi to urban reconstruction, modular housing, and solar and geothermal power farms.” Millennials will hold stable jobs while building it, they’ll live in it, and they’ll love being able to “contribute (at last) to something that benefits everyone”.
All along the way, cohesive Millennial work teams will take on Promethean challenges with energy and optimism. They’ll be rational but grandly ambitious and their collective achievements will be stunning.
With their team-and-consensus-building skills, their belief in the wonders of technology and social organization, and their commitment to outer-world progress – at scale – Millennials by 2050, Howe writes, will have forged the “networked tubes, towers, and terraces that will define 21st Century civilization”. And when history calls on them to do so, they will not only mobilize our civic life but build up old and new institutions, re-establish our Republic, and strengthen global civilization.
Out there in the 2050s, as seventyish Millennials begin departing this world, it may feel like they are going out as one large force. Like those wholesome, cheerful, confident Power Rangers of their youth, they’ll be remembered for transforming themselves, when summoned, to succeed in the face of great odds. And while each gets his or her own epitaph, we can visualize Millennials making their exit with one large, shared, collective epitaph – the motto of the Power Rangers: “The Power of Teamwork Overcomes All”.
What do you think? What have you observed about the Millennials you know?
I liked it as much as the other millennials as a kid, but I don't feel like a Power Ranger. :P But the rest of my generation is pretty heavily indoctrinated. The heavy workload makes sense: the more you work, the less likely you are to think too heavily. Then again, what else can people do except just move on somehow?
I think Howe is right to varying degrees about everything he brings up here, except the building malls stuff as I mentioned in your previous post. And things are somewhat better than after 2008. But I think my generation is an unhappy one, and success won't change that. There's a difference between seizing that first, beautiful moment and reaping a later reward. Materially it is what it is; emotionally, not as much.