Millennials
Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with the generation typically being defined as people born from 1981 to 1996.[1][2] Most Millennials are the children of Baby Boomers and older Generation X.[3] In turn Millennials are often the parents of Generation Alpha.[4]
For other uses, see Millennials (disambiguation).
As the first generation to grow up with the Internet, Millennials have been described as the first global generation.[5] The generation is generally marked by elevated usage of and familiarity with the Internet, mobile devices, social media, and technology in general.[6] The term "digital natives", which is now also applied to successive generations, was originally coined to describe this generation.[7] Between the 1990s and 2010s, people from developing countries became increasingly well-educated, a factor that boosted economic growth in these countries.[8] In contrast, Millennials across the world have suffered significant economic disruption since starting their working lives, with many facing high levels of youth unemployment in the wake of the Great Recession and the COVID-19 recession.[9][10]
Millennials have been called the "Unluckiest Generation" as the average Millennial has experienced slower economic growth and more recessions since entering the workforce than any other generation in history.[11] They have also been weighed down by student debt and childcare costs.[12] Across the globe, Millenials and subsequent generations have postponed marriage or living together as a couple.[13] Millennials were born at a time of declining fertility rates around the world,[14] and continue to have fewer children than their predecessors.[15][16][17][18] Those in developing countries will continue to constitute the bulk of global population growth.[19] In developed countries, young people of the 2010s were less inclined to have sex compared to their predecessors when they were the same age.[20] Millennials in the West are less likely to be religious than their predecessors, but may identify as spiritual.[14][21]
Terminology and etymology
Members of this demographic cohort are known as Millennials because the oldest became adults around the turn of the millennium.[22] Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, known for creating the Strauss–Howe generational theory, are widely credited with naming the Millennials.[23] They coined the term in 1987, around the time children born in 1982 were entering kindergarten, and the media were first identifying their prospective link to the impending new millennium as the high school graduating class of 2000.[24] They wrote about the cohort in their books Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (1991)[25] and Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (2000).[24]
In August 1993, an Advertising Age editorial coined the phrase Generation Y to describe teenagers of the day, then aged 13–19 (born 1974–1980), who were at the time defined as different from Generation X.[26] However, the 1974–1980 cohort was later re-identified by most media sources as the last wave of Generation X,[27] and by 2003 Ad Age had moved their Generation Y starting year up to 1982.[28] According to journalist Bruce Horovitz, in 2012, Ad Age "threw in the towel by conceding that Millennials is a better name than Gen Y,"[23] and by 2014, a past director of data strategy at Ad Age said to NPR "the Generation Y label was a placeholder until we found out more about them."[29]
Millennials are sometimes called Echo Boomers, due to them often being the offspring of the Baby Boomers, the significant increase in birth rates from the early 1980s to mid-1990s, and their generation's large size relative to that of Boomers.[30][31][32][33] In the United States, the echo boom's birth rates peaked in August 1990[34][30] and a twentieth-century trend toward smaller families in developed countries continued.[35][36] Psychologist Jean Twenge described Millennials as "Generation Me" in her 2006 book Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before,[37][38] while in 2013, Time magazine ran a cover story titled Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation.[39] Alternative names for this group proposed include the Net Generation,[40] Generation 9/11,[41] Generation Next,[42] and The Burnout Generation.[43]
Date and age range definitions
Oxford Living Dictionaries describes a Millennial as a person "born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s."[44] Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Millennial as "a person born in the 1980s or 1990s".[45] More detailed definitions in use are as follows:
Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote for The Economist in 2018 that "generations are squishy concepts", but the 1981 to 1996 birth cohort is a "widely accepted" definition for Millennials.[46] Reuters also state that the "widely accepted definition" is 1981–1996.[47]
The Pew Research Center defines Millennials as the people born from 1981 to 1996, choosing these dates for "key political, economic and social factors", including the 11 September terrorist attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Great Recession, and Internet explosion.[48][49] The United States Library of Congress explains that date ranges are 'subjective' and the traits of each cohort are generalized based around common economic, social, or political factors that happened during formative years. They acknowledge disagreements, complaints over date ranges, generation names, and the overgeneralized "personality" of each generation. They suggest that marketers and journalists use the different groupings to target their marketing to particular age groups. However, they cite Pew's 1981–1996 definition to define Millennials.[50] Various media outlets and statistical organizations have cited Pew's definition including Time magazine,[51] BBC News,[52] The New York Times,[53] The Guardian,[54] the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics,[55] and Statistics Canada.[56]
The Brookings Institution defines the Millennial generation as people born from 1981 to 1996,[57] as does Gallup,[58] Federal Reserve Board,[59] and the American Psychological Association.[60] Encyclopædia Britannica defines Millennials as "the term used to describe a person born between 1981 and 1996, though different sources can vary by a year or two."[61] Although the United States Census Bureau have said that "there is no official start and end date for when Millennials were born"[62] and they do not officially define Millennials,[63] a U.S. Census publication in 2022 noted that Millennials are "colloquially defined as the cohort born from 1981 to 1996", using this definition in a breakdown of Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data.[64]
The Australian Bureau of Statistics uses the years 1981 to 1995 to define Millennials in a 2021 Census report.[65] A report by Ipsos MORI describes the term 'Millennials' as a working title for the circa 15-year birth cohort born around 1980 to 1995, which has 'unique, defining traits'.[66] Governmental institutions such as the UK Department of Health and Social Care have also used 1980 to 1995.[67] Psychologist Jean Twenge defines millennials as those born from 1980 to 1994.[68] Likewise, Australia's McCrindle Research uses the years 1980 to 1994 as Generation Y (millennial) birth years.[69]
A 2023 report by the Population Reference Bureau defines Millennials as those born from 1981 to 1999.[70][71] CNN reports that studies sometimes define Millennials as born between 1980 and 2000.[72] A 2017 BBC report has also referred to this age range in reference to that used by National Records of Scotland.[73] In the UK, the Resolution Foundation uses 1981–2000.[74] The U.S. Government Accountability Office defines Millennials as those born between 1982 and 2000.[75] Sociologist Elwood Carlson, who calls the generation "New Boomers", identified the birth years of 1983–2001, based on the upswing in births after 1983 and finishing with the "political and social challenges" that occurred after the 11 September terrorist acts.[76] Author Neil Howe, co-creator of the Strauss–Howe generational theory, defines Millennials as being born from 1982 to 2004.[23]
The cohorts born during the cusp years before and after Millennials have been identified as "microgenerations" with characteristics of both generations. Names given to these cuspers include Xennials,[77] Generation Catalano,[78] the Oregon Trail Generation;[79] Zennials[80] and Zillennials,[81] respectively. The term Geriatric Millennial gained popularity in 2021 to describe those born in the beginning half of the 1980s between 1980 and 1985. The term has since been used and discussed by various media outlets including Today,[82] CTV News,[83] HuffPost,[84] news.com.au,[85] The Irish Times,[86] and Business Insider.[87]
Psychology
Psychologist Jean Twenge, the author of the 2006 book Generation Me, considers millennials, along with younger members of Generation X, to be part of what she calls "Generation Me".[88] Twenge attributes millennials with the traits of confidence and tolerance, but also describes a sense of entitlement and narcissism, based on NPI surveys showing increased narcissism among millennials compared to preceding generations when they were teens and in their twenties.[89][90] Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett of Clark University, Worcester has criticized Twenge's research on narcissism among millennials, stating "I think she is vastly misinterpreting or over-interpreting the data, and I think it's destructive".[91] He doubts that the Narcissistic Personality Inventory really measures narcissism at all. Arnett says that not only are millennials less narcissistic, they're "an exceptionally generous generation that holds great promise for improving the world".[92] A study published in 2017 in the journal Psychological Science found a small decline in narcissism among young people since the 1990s.[93][94]
Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe argue that each generation has common characteristics that give it a specific character with four basic generational archetypes, repeating in a cycle. According to their hypothesis, they predicted millennials would become more like the "civic-minded" G.I. Generation with a strong sense of community both local and global.[24] Strauss and Howe ascribe seven basic traits to the millennial cohort: special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving. However, Arthur E. Levine, author of When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today's College Student, dismissed these generational images as "stereotypes".[95] In addition, psychologist Jean Twenge says Strauss and Howe's assertions are overly deterministic, non-falsifiable, and unsupported by rigorous evidence.[88]
Polling agency Ipsos-MORI warned that the word "millennials" is "misused to the point where it's often mistaken for just another meaningless buzzword" because "many of the claims made about millennial characteristics are simplified, misinterpreted or just plain wrong, which can mean real differences get lost" and that "[e]qually important are the similarities between other generations—the attitudes and behaviors that are staying the same are sometimes just as important and surprising."[96]
Though it is often said that millennials ignore conventional advertising, they are in fact heavily influenced by it. They are particularly sensitive to appeals to transparency, to experiences rather than things, and flexibility.[97]
A 2015 study by Microsoft found that 77% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said yes to the statement, "When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone," compared to just 10% for those aged 65 and over.[98]
The term ikizurasa (生きづらさ, "pain of living") has been used to denote anxiety experienced by many Japanese Millennials struggling with a sense of disconnectedness and self-blaming, caused by a vast array of issues from unemployment, poverty, family problems, bullying, social withdrawal and mental ill-health.[99]
Cognitive abilities
Intelligence researcher James R. Flynn discovered that back in the 1950s, the gap between the vocabulary levels of adults and children was much smaller than it is in the early twenty-first century. Between 1953 and 2006, adult gains on the vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler IQ test were 17.4 points whereas the corresponding gains for children were only 4. He asserted that some of the reasons for this are the surge in interest in higher education and cultural changes. The number of Americans pursuing tertiary qualifications and cognitively demanding jobs has risen significantly since the 1950s. This boosted the level of vocabulary among adults. Back in the 1950s, children generally imitated their parents and adopted their vocabulary. This was no longer the case in the 2000s, when teenagers often developed their own subculture and as such were less likely to use adult-level vocabulary on their essays.[100]
In a 2009 report, Flynn analyzed the results of the Raven's Progressive Matrices test for British fourteen-year-olds from 1980 to 2008. He discovered that their average IQ had dropped by more than two points during that time period. Among those in the higher half of the intelligence distribution, the decline was even more significant, six points. This is a clear case of the reversal of the Flynn effect, the apparent rise in IQ scores observed during the twentieth century. Flynn suspected that this was due to changes in British youth culture. He further noted that in the past, IQ gains had been correlated with socioeconomic class, but this was no longer true.[101]
Psychologists Jean Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Ryne A. Sherman analyzed vocabulary test scores on the U.S. General Social Survey () and found that after correcting for education, the use of sophisticated vocabulary has declined between the mid-1970s and the mid-2010s across all levels of education, from below high school to graduate school. Those with at least a bachelor's degree saw the steepest decline. Hence, the gap between people who never received a high-school diploma and a university graduate has shrunk from an average of 3.4 correct answers in the mid- to late-1970s to 2.9 in the early- to mid-2010s. Higher education offers little to no benefits to verbal ability. Because those with only a moderate level of vocabulary were more likely to be admitted to university than in the past, the average for degree holders declined. There are various explanations for this. Accepting high levels of immigrants, many of whom not particularly proficient in the English language, could lower the national adult average. Young people nowadays are much less likely to read for pleasure, thus reducing their levels of vocabulary. On the other hand, while the College Board has reported that SAT verbal scores were on the decline, these scores are an imperfect measure of the vocabulary level of the nation as a whole because the test-taking demographic has changed and because more students take the SAT in the 2010s than in the 1970s, which means there are more with limited ability who took it. Population aging is unconvincing because the effect is too weak.[102]
Education
Global trends
From the late 1990s to the late 2010s, education transformed the economic realities of countries worldwide. As the people from developing nations became better educated, they close the gap between them and the developed world. Hence Westerners lost their relative advantage in education, as the world saw more people with high-school diplomas than ever before. The number of people with Bachelor's degree and advanced degrees grew significantly as well. Westerners who only passed secondary school had their income cut in real terms during that same period while those with university degrees had incomes that barely increased on average. The fact that many jobs are suitable for remote work due to modern technology further eroded the relative advantage of education in the Western world, resulting in a backlash against immigration and globalization.[8]
As more and more women became educated in the developing world, more leave the rural areas for the cities, enter the work force and compete with men, sparking resentment among men in those countries.[8]
For information on public support for higher education (for domestic students) in the OECD in 2011, see chart below.