Essays & Design by Cesar Torres » Debunking The Millennial Myth

I think it’s about time to lay to rest a major fallacy present in today’s society regarding my generation.

In the most unscientific study one can conduct (a Google search for the phrases “millennial sense of entitlement”), articles aggrandizing this theoretical high horse twentysomethings ride run rampant in major publications like the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and others. Maybe I’m a black swan in what feels like a controversy against my demographic, but today I’m taking a stand against this oppression and am ready to prove the naysayers wrong. There’s nothing that gets me more motivated than established institutions saying I “can’t” do something—is this entitlement rearing it’s ugly head? I’ll argue that it’s instead fuel for motivation and should be viewed differently if we expect progress as a modern society.

I recognize I’m potentially drawing a pretty deep line in the proverbial sand here, but I’m not trying to make a delineation between “us” and “them” or “us” and “you.” Rather, I’ve met handfuls of people my age who feel this external pressure and who are more than determined to set an example to the contrary. If you’ll indulge me, I’m going to take a step out of the echo chamber of my youth for a moment and for once not talk about me me me. The adults (because I’m still just a kid, right?) who I’ve met and who I consider close colleagues and friends—the ones I resonate and connect with the most—tend to be the intellectually curious adults who are interested in what I’m doing and the way that I think about the world. Not because it’s necessarily correct or because they’re going through a quarterlife crisis on the brink of their fifties either. Sure, conversations at times center around questions on how to more efficiently navigate their iPhones or to give them insights as to who’s running the newest hot web startup. I should note, however, that it’s never a question of what the hell Twitter is used for; instead it’s how to connect their blog’s RSS feed to autopost to their Twitter accounts.

These adults are the adults that I respect the most. Despite what a misguided psychologist might have you believe, I don’t feel better than them for knowing more about the latest internet meme or a cool iPad application; the content of the conversations are irrelevant—it’s the fact that they take time to have conversations with me. I respect the hell out of them for being continually curious and for having the confidence to ask someone half their age about questions they could easily be ashamed about. More importantly, I’m largely motivated by someone taking my opinions into consideration—especially when that person (or institution) is one I respect.

Many of the best conversations I have with my peers and closest friends around my age that center around our aspirations for the next decade deal with the need for motivation from outside forces, namely from the government, investment groups or from our bosses and superiors. I will note that I run in a circle of young entrepreneurs (French for “neurotic psychopaths”) and of course that echo chamber is hard to escape, but I try to be as skeptical as I can without being pessimistic. I feel that millennials will continue to do what we innately feel is right, but I offer a challenge to those who look at my generation as the leaders of tomorrow: help us help you. Don’t be afraid of the way that we look at the world. As the generations before us after all, you helped shape it, and for that, we really are truly grateful. We really do respect you, but in the end, we’re obsessed with technology and the Internet. We love our iPhones, Blackberries and it’s not a personal jab to you when we wear those white earbuds everywhere. Our music is weird, our fashion will always be jarring, our slang is abysmal and our pop cultural references are all over the map (not to mention on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr). We use acronyms and drop vowels to get our communications across faster. We have thousands of “friends” and we like to play hard, but we love to work hard too.

Ultimately, we look at things way differently, but don’t forget that we’re only here (physically and mentally) because of everything that came before. You always told us that we could gain your respect when we respected you. Could it be that we were actually listening?

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I would love your thoughts on this potentially polarizing diatribe. Am I completely off base here? Am I unknowingly subject to the criticisms of my generation? Let me know in the comments or as always, via  my Twitter account.

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