Unveiling the Millennial Conundrum: Breaking Stereotypes and Understanding Realities

There are great misconceptions and suppositions in the society today that depict millennials as lazy and highly dependent on social media. This is a supposition that is not playing well with their older counterparts who consider these attributes bad and is putting many youths at the risk of not getting employed or having it hard to retain an employment opportunity. Millennials mostly comprise of a group of youths born in the late eighties and the nineties. They are a group that was born directly into technology and at a time where there were great developments in business, transport and most of all communication. Also referred to as the generation Z, they are considered very apathetic and very unaware of the situations that surround them. They are considered to have shortness of attention and have little care about what affects their generation and the rest of the world. They are considered to only focus on aspects of technology and mass media. These are stereotypes that affect every young generation. It is a stage of life whereby the youths focus on more aspects of their [personal life rather than what is around them. Most of these stereotypes are fueled by older generations threatened by the youth’s prowess with technology, ability to multitask and being multi-talented.

One of the characteristics associated with this misconception is over-reliance on technology. Most of the youths are considered to spend a big portion of their lives on social media and using smart devices such as phones tablets and laptops. The over-reliance of technology has limited many youths to physical activity because they spend most of their days indoors watching videos and communicating. They have forced them to develop antisocial behavior whereby it becomes very difficult to get their attention and get them to do anything.

These aspects lead to the development of the stereotype that millennials are lazy. This stereotype can be broken down using the following criteria for which older generations describe them;

•    They are apathetic

•    They are inactive

•    Spend too much time browsing the internet

•    Lack proper social skills

They are considered apathetic because of their lack of interest in anything associated with their generation as well as the world around them. They are perceived as people that do not care and sometimes highly unreliable. They do not contribute to aspects of politics and issues of society and sideline themselves form the world. They are considered to be very inactive because they rather spend their days using their smartphones to communicate and stay indoors rather than spend time outdoors and interact with nature. They spend a huge part of their lives on the internet. They are surrounded by smart devices that range from smartphones, laptops and tablets and these devices control most aspects of their lives. They use them to communicate and take part in commerce especially due to the rise of online business. However, social media has grown to become a very influential aspect of the society, and many live in the digital world of social media. They are also considered to have very minimal social skills because of their over-reliance on the internet and being too apathetic.

The supposition that millennials are lazy has generated great misconceptions that affect their lives. They get marginalized during employment because of negative attitudes towards them from people from older generations. However, are millennials lazy? As one of them, I believe that this is a very wrong misconception and fails to observe the underlying factors surrounding youths. Most millennials are misunderstood, and this has led to the development of a disconnect with the rest of society. Older generations alienate themselves from them because they believe that most of them are narcissistic and apathetic. These negative suppositions affect the lives of many youths especial when it comes to the aspect of employment. One of the aspects is that millennials are not very different from the other generations. Most of them are youths and the only difference between the youths of today and those of the past is background. The youths of today lie in an age of technology and information. There is a great access to technology and information, and all of it is placed on smartphones which are accessible by anyone. They were born with these devices, and they know a lot about handling computer devices and using the internet. Social media and the internet is a great source of information from any part of the world, and it is what informs most of them.

The prowess by youth in using computer technology is, however, taken as a great threat to older individuals especially in workplaces. ICT has become a fundamental aspect of business and organization, and the youths are best suited for the workplace of today. The demands for employment has also gone very high and require highly aggressive individuals. Millennials are considered as very aggressive because of experienced negative aspects of the society such as terrorism; September 11 attacks and the great recession. They are, therefore, molded to be very multitalented and aggressive. When coupled with their great command of computer technologies, they become great threats to people of the previous generation. They are more educated and strive for high levels of success. These aspects have generated great levels of insecurity and have become a major developer of negativity towards millennials.