This past weekend I attended the Austin Breakfast Club, an informal gathering of people between the age of 20 and 40 who go to a place and eat breakfast. When I was trying to explain what I blog about, I started to talk about Millennials. A few people looked at me puzzled. I then explained exactly what a Millennial is, and a person at the table said “oh, I guess I am a Millennial.” Um, YES, you are a Millennial!
This conversation led me to a very informal, yet important, discovery. Millennials don’t even know they are Millennials. They know they are different, they know they prefer team work, they know they advocate for work/life balance, but they don’t even know what they are called!
FACT OR FICTION: Do Millennials even know they are Millennials?
My guess is that the response I receive to this question will be biased. I assume that most people who read my blog and use Twitter know about Millennials. But what about the millions of other Millennials? Do they know they are Millennials and what that means for them?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I have to admit that I agree with this because until the last year and a half or so I had NO idea what a millenial was OR that I was one. I still have trouble sometimes identifying myself as a Millenial. I sometimes find myself coloring outside the lines of Millenialism but I am still in the coloring book! Silly analogy BUT I understand those who don’t quite get it yet. I’m still working on it!
I agree! You introduced me to what a millennial was. Keep spreading the word and the spirit of the Millennial.
I know I am not a millenial. Wait … am I? Oh wait, I am.
This makes me laugh as a fellow Millennial blogger. I find the same thing sometimes when I tell people what I blog about. Because I’m surrounded by a community of Millennial bloggers (such as yourself), I feel downright cliche sometimes blogging about Millennials, but guess what? To most of my friends and family who have found my blog, I’m the authority voice about the topic. I bet you feel the same way!
Not everyone cares/knows about what generation they are in and how it affects them, I suppose. But that’s OK, it makes what you have to say all the more fascinating!
I didn’t know I was a Millennial until college when I was a guest on a radio talk show that did a live remote broadcast from our campus. The topic? The Millennial Generation!
I second Elissa’s comment. I learned I was a millennial through you.
Does it even matter what they know? I think Millennials are over hyped. We’re the first generation to be highly-educated and grew up with technology. We’re also the first generation where the old rules didn’t apply. Things like getting a job were a given if you had a college degree. Where you stayed with the same company for 30 years.
I think Millennials as a whole are over hyped, in another 5-7 years most of the work force will be just as technologically proficient as we are. Yes, our experiences shaped us, but this is true of all generations. The only thing is that unlike the great depression, WWII, and the Vietnam era that defined generations before us other generations can experience what we experienced.
Technology and team building activities are readily available in the corporate and private world and while habits don’t change over night, our defining experience will be eroded as other generations engage in the same types of things we did. They won’t be molded like we were into perfect millenials, but they’ll start to share our technological understanding and our understanding of team work.
Hey Noah,
Thanks for another great comment on my post! I agree that it will be a very interesting shift when Millennials are no longer the most technologically proficient people at work. Will our generation cease to be as important as we are right now? Should be an interesting shift.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hey,
You’re welcome. I’m always willing to share my not-always so humble opinion.
I have a few non-millineal related questions:
1. Have you ever thought about writing an e-book about millineals and/or millineals in the work place?
2. Do your wordpress stats update in real time? I have yet to have a single visitor to my wordpress blog, which is surprising because I would think that someone would click through on either my name or my most recent post.
So, I am actually am the subject of this post as the uncultured rube who had no idea what a millennial was. However, I think this is a crummy term to describe the late 70s-early 90 demographic.
Why is it a crummy term? It doesn’t make sense. We are millennials because we came of age in the Millennium? Boomers were called boomers because they were part of the baby boom after the soldiers came back from WW2. It had nothing to do with when they came of age. Following the boomer convention, why aren’t kids born in 2001-2009, the millennials? Gen X is a stupid name for groups as well.
Also millennial redirects to Generation Y on Wikipedia, which implies Gen Y is the more prevalent term. I’m guessing if you took a survey of the “millennial” demographic, 90+% would have no idea that they were millennial. It’s not a logical choice for our demographic. Obviously, Blake you’ve got a different opinion because you named your blog “Perennial Millennial”. But I’d proud to say that prior to our conversation, I had no idea what a millennial was. It’s a non-intuitive phrase and I don’t like it.
Hey David,
Thanks for your comment. I hope you weren’t offended that I decided to write about you, and I’m glad you found my blog!
You are probably right that Gen-Y is the more accepted term for our generation. The reason that I chose to use the world “millennial” instead of “Gen-Y’ is because to me “Gen-Y” doesn’t mean anything other than “the generation that came after Gen-X.” I think people are starting to use the word Millennial more often, and that we will soon see a shift from one to the other.
While my most recent post did focus mainly on the terminology used to describe our generation, I think my entire blog spends a great deal of time focusing more on the characteristics, struggles and accomplishments of our generation. All of these things are obviously more important that the actual name we go by, and I’ll try and focus more on those in the future.
Thanks for stopping by!
Blake,
Love the blog! David, clearly you’ve been misinformed about the importance of the term millennial. The fact is that this particular generation marks a turning point in human socialization. With so many forms of social media available now, even this blog! lol….. I think what Blake is getting at is if there is any generation worth studying it is certainly this one. And I’m shocked so many people aren’t aware of this! Keep doin what youre doin girl and I’ll be sure to check in often!