Salon.com > millennials

Are millennials delusional?

Thu, 02 May 2013 18:25:00 +0000

Young people coming of age over the past decade or so have been referred to as Millennials, or, in a nod to their individualistic nature, Generation Me.

Newly published research suggests they could also be called the generation with unrealistic expectations.

An analysis of the values and ambitions of American 12th graders finds “a growing discrepancy between the desire for material rewards and the willingness to do the work usually required to earn them.” Psychologists Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and Tim Kasser of Knox College report that, for high school seniors in 2005, 2006, and 2007, materialism remained at historically high levels, even as commitment to hard work declined.

The future of the planet rests on the hunched shoulders of Gen Y

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

On October 29, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, leaving damage strewn across the Caribbean in its wake. With a diameter of 820 miles, Sandy was the largest Atlantic tropical storm to date and caused roughly $50 billion in damage, making it the second most costly disaster after Hurricane Katrina. Hospitals were evacuated, the stock exchange was closed for the first time since 1888, levees broke, the New York City subway flooded, power was cut to 8 million homes and communities were left to cope with property damage and the loss of loved ones. While damage and hardship were widespread, the storm greatly affected the region’s most vulnerable: the poor, the ill and the elderly.

Millennials will save us!

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:00:00 +0000

It’s November 2004 in the nation’s election battleground, the swing state of Ohio. It’s raining hard as voters, many fed up with the Bush administration and looking for a chance to express themselves, are coming out to vote. Lines are particularly long in Gambier, Ohio, a small town of about 2,000 people. Gambier’s major industry is Kenyon College, which sprawls through the heart of town. Like many small liberal-arts colleges, Kenyon was a bastion of youth activism in the 1960s and ’70s. But in 2004, although the Kenyon campus is a beehive of intellectual activity, political and social activism are no longer the hallmarks of the college experience.

Many freshmen and sophomores are thrilled to be voting for the first time, especially in such a hotly contested election. One in particular, then 19-year-old freshman Matt Segal, heads to the polling place at 6 a.m. and votes quickly. He stays to volunteer at the polls, but he soon sees long lines forming, forcing people to wait for hours for their turn in the booth. Those who stick it out will, in some cases, end up waiting for 12 hours or more. That Election Day, the last person finally cast their ballot at 4 a.m. “It was injustice,” Matt tells me years later; I can still hear his outrage. “I was frustrated, but I was also energized. I said, 'We’ve got to do something about this. This isn’t the way democracy was sold to me.'"