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Things aren’t looking good for millennials in the battle of generational worth to humanity. At least not from a public relations standpoint.
From the cries of being useless without their smartphones to ridiculous pictures of them ending up on the internet, millennials are the first generation to truly embrace the open culture that is the technology age. This has left them open to criticism from prior generations that these tools have made them soft, antisocial, and generally inept to the advancement of human kind. They are the stupid generation.
Unless of course you look deeper into it.
Over the last ten years there’s been an explosion of young entrepreneurs using technology to better the world. Today’s youth have seen 15yr old Jack Andraka invent an early pancreatic cancer detection device, 17yr old Param Jaggi develop a car exhaust that converts CO2 to oxygen, and a 19yr old Boyan Slat develop a solution to removing mass amounts of pollution from the oceans. The coolest thing your dad learned in high school was how to make a bong out of an apple.
We live in the age of long range electric and soon to be autopilot cars with advanced devices that make driving safer than any time in history. Previous generations still haven’t figured out how to make an ironing board that doesn’t scream murder when you open it.
So how did millennials get labelled the stupid generation? It’s actually quite simple.
Have you ever played video games with a 9 yr old and thought “I’m gonna destroy this kid”, then died 100 times in 5 min? Most people will quit and simply proclaim the game as stupid. Millennials are that 9yr old.
In the mid 90’s personal computers became widely accessible and society as a whole turned to everyone who’d completed school before then and said, “sorry, your f***’d”. Given the option to adapt or die, many took to opportunity to see computers as a game they could easily win if they felt like it. One pop-up ad virus later, this new technology was stupid.
It’s been a rough transition. “Stupid photos of millennials litter the internet” even though its mainly 40+yr old politicians being caught for indecent photo’s online(Snapchat bro!). “Millennials make poor decisions” even though thousands of people went bankrupt waiting for their million dollar cheque from the Nigerian prince they met online, not to mention the golden age of the lazy murderer experienced upon the invention of Craigslist personal encounters section.
“Sexy 18 yr old who only wants to sleep with divorced single dads over 45. Must be willing to meet at undisclosed location” How was that not obviously a trap?
Stupidity has not become more abundant, the bar for intelligence has merely been raised and its affecting the grade curve. What was once head of the class is now average, and what was once average is barely passable. University/college enrollment, innovation, and advances in medical science are at all time highs. Anyone who tells you this is the stupid generation merely does not understand the game being played.
—Frank Russo
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2015.
“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
― George Orwell
Wow. You forgot to mention how self righteous the Millennials are, or the superiority complex they have developed, or how the self entitlement to a six figure job straight out of univ even though you applied for it with a resume containing internet shorthand and emojis. As for your Millennial young accomplishments: Beethoven’s first public performance was at age 7 in 1777, Mozart wrote his first symphony at age 8 in 1764, Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize for Physics at 25 yrs old in 1915. While there have been some great advancement by your generation, it is ignorant to think this is unique. Every generation has achievements for which to be proud, improving life for the next generation. What generation created the internet to which you now rely so heavily on?
The King summed it up well by posting the George Orwell quote.
The two previous posts are excellent. There is a distribution of achievement in each generation. Average achievement might improve, but this could just as easily be a result of the technological environment that was put in place by a previous generation. For example, that “early pancreatic cancer” detector may not have been designed were it not for the personal computer and the internet. Many of these innovations have been attributed to Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers.
They seem to have forgotten who developed them…
Dear Mr. Russo.
If you can see more, and things that are farther, it is not because your sight is superior or because you are taller, but because you stand on the shoulders of giants and it is they who raise you up, and by their great stature add to ours.