In Defence of Millenials

I spend a lot of time reading blogs and newspapers and recently I feel as if I'm drowning in trend pieces about millenials. Whether it's berating or defending us, it seems to be widely agreed that my generation are a clatter of entitled, work-shy neoliberals who expect our parents to pay the bills while we pursue our dream careers as organic kale farmers/Hannah Horvath-style memoirists/Prancercise trainers. To me, this stereotype is like so many others: not wholly untrue but wholly incomplete.

Our generation is capitalising on creative ventures like none before, carving out careers in areas that just didn't exist twenty years ago. It's simply not possible for many of us to walk into a job fresh out of college and stay there until retirement; the current job market demands that we have a wealth of skills and experiences and can demonstrate not only our capability but our passion. Combine this with the dominant message of our childhood, that if you work hard enough then you will achieve your dreams, and it's not surprising that there are so many fledgling adults with degrees and experiences that may not leave them in a highly employable position. You're telling me that I can't pay the bills with this article I wrote about my juice cleanse?

But for all the entitled twenty-four year olds complaining about the lack of jobs there are bucketfuls of hard-working millenials who have used the internet and social media boom to their advantage. A ridiculous amount of innovative young people are thriving and acting as role models for those of us who are willing to try. There are social media tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg and Tumblr creator David Karp, video bloggers Grace Helbig and Laci Green, entrepreneurs like Shama Kabani and teenage media mogul and all-round queen of my heart Tavi Gevinson.

The stereotype of the lazy millenial also undermines the thousands of young people working hard to pursue careers in more established areas like medicine and law, those who are still competing for far fewer jobs than their Baby Boomer counterparts whilst grappling with much more student debt. In a world where traditional career paths are dwindling and university has become the expected next step after graduation, one where we grew up believing that if we wanted something enough we'd get it, is it surprising that their are people in their twenties who are distraught that their dream job hasn't become a reality yet? No. But to generalise this to the entire generation shits all over the grit of those who are supporting themselves through any means possible, those who are still trying, and those who have, against the odds, succeeded.

I'm off to sell my memoirs,

Phoebe