THE MINDSET LIST OF MILLENNIAL MATURITY: Respect Is Overdue!

THE MINDSET LIST OF MILLENNIAL MATURITY”

Respect Is Overdue! 

Perhaps you’ve been watching TV lately and heard a recent college graduate say that he will not take any job with any organization that does not “value” him, and maybe you thought to yourself, “those selfish Millennials are at it again.” But you’d be wrong. Even the youngest Millennial has been out of college for several years now, and the oldest are turning 40. The Millennials were the first generation of digital natives. They grew up with the World Wide Web and social media and selfies. They were almost instantly branded as a discontinuous generation, the first gang of disrupters, with self-centered entitlement and an inordinate love of avocado toast. But what gives when (even) Millennials start to grow up? The following list will tell you. The generation that older Americans loved to dislike is very different now. 

1 Over 1 in 5 Americans are Millennials. 

2 Depending on the demographic, Millennial births range from 1978 to 2000 or 1982 to 1996. 

3 Some Millennials were in college on 9/11 while others were in kindergarten. 

4 Some Millennials were looking for a job during the Great Recession while others were starting to learn algebra. 

5 Millennials were the first generation to be examined under a social media microscope, and they emerged as self-centered, multi-tasking, and in love with avocado toast and lattes that took longer than a milkshake to make.

6 Now that some Millennials are early middle-aged, they take more selfies of their babies and long ago left their parents’ basements.

7 Because they have married late, many Millennials are now squeezed between challenging jobs, aging parents, and demanding young children.  

8 Millennial self-absorption has yielded to the reality of aging and kids. 

9 Tough starting later, Millennials appear to be having about as many children as other generational cohorts of the late 20^th century have had. 

10 They are now entering for the first time the zone of starting to worry about cholesterol and hypertension. 

11 An alarming and mysterious rise in the incidence of colorectal cancer has started to bedevil late Millennials. 

12 Some demographers think the difference between older and younger Millennials is so great that the latter should get their own category—perhaps the Geriatric Millennials. 

13 Older Millennials can remember walking into a computer lab with rows of Apple 2Ls, complete with starter screens of the Oregon Trail—hence the label “Oregon Trail Generation.” 

14 They can recall when household computers were enigmatic and rare. 

15 The term “Millennials” is now 32 years old. 

16 They used to be called Gen Y, until “Millennial” became the dominant meme.

17 They wish they’d bought a house earlier; now they have children and daunting prices and/or mortgage rates. 

18 Once renting for “flexibility,” they are now the largest percentage of those in the housing market and have been for the past eight years. 

19 A Millennial version of the Monopoly board game has turned a house into the “new” New York Central Railroad. 

20 No generation in history has been this old without owning a house. 

21 Older Millennials find that their parents die the same year when they themselves become parents. 

22 To be complete and fair, many Millennials DO like avocado toast., 

23 Geriatric Millennials can vividly remember the sweet sounds of dial-up computer connections, 

24 Millennials in general span lifetimes between Reagan’s first term and Clinton’s second. 

25 Older Millennials are discovering that it’s really, really hard to buy a house if you haven’t previously owned one. 

26 They may well be the first generation to be worse off than their parents., 

27 Once famed for job-hopping, they are increasingly staying put, though it’s too soon to predict gold retirement watches. 

28 Once thought of as revolutionary new workers who wanted flex time, multi-tasking, and working from home, their work habits have become increasingly normal. 

29 They tend to vote Democratic; that doesn’t mean they’re Democrats. 

30 Younger Millennials go to loud bars; older ones go to quiet restaurants. 

31 Once disruptors, they now might become grandparents for the first time when they are near 80. 

32 Famous Geriatric Millennials include Dwayne Wade, Kristen Durst, LeeAnn Rimes, Ray J, and Carrie Underwood. 

33 When the oldest Millennials were born, Charles and Diana were still getting along, Margaret Thatcher was plotting to invade Argentina, and President Reagan was still recovering from a gunshot wound. 

34 When the youngest Millennials were born, Bill Clinton had just met an aide named Monica, the Unabomber was arrested in his Montana shack, and Barack Obama was a senator—in Illinois. 

35 The Oregon Trail Millennials are so old they even remember, albeit dimly, the Cold War.