Millenials: "Generation Screwed"?

[Darren Dirt]

Personally I think anyone living in a "three" thousand foot home is ridic. I mean unless you hire a maid, how the hell do you keep it all clean? I am happy to know my kids have always lived in apartments or townhomes and have no problem buying the cheap version of stuff at the grocery store, they all LOVE dollarama, and most of their clothes are from VV or GW and that's nothing to embarrassed about (pretty much twice a year they get new-in-the-mall-stores clothing, other than discount new clothes stores like Winners etc.) ... setting up an unrealistic expectation for "happiness" for your kids = a recipe for disappointed kids, and probably your own frustration too. Silly Boomers... what with your over-compensating and whatnot...

I have no qualms with people buying large homes or expensive clothes - if they can afford it, good for them.

What you're saying above sounds more like you think you're better than others because your kids lived in apartments.

ummm... no offense, but imo if you interpreted it that way it might say something about you more than about me. I said that I am happy they do not have un-attain-able or un-sustain-able standards for material stuff to lead to so-called happiness. No morality judgement there, compared to others, in terms of worth (i.e. "better"), just more of a relief that in this current age of cheap-everything-with-very-little-effort my kids are "better off" in terms of accepting the limits of reality, compared to ... heck, even me. Doesn't make them better, just decreases probability of them being suckered into self-directed materialism depression.

imho.

I don't have kids but I think the best course is to give them freedom with structure and ensure when they ask questions about life or how the world works be honest, learn it together. No sugar coating but no gut punches either.

Hippie dippie idealism is just as damaging as totalitarian authority, there's a happy medium in there somewhere I'm sure.

I think I see what you did there.



I think.

[Darren Dirt]

on-topic with the above, Time Magazine's Joel Stein says "Millienials" are the "Me Me Me Generation"... but tbh EVERY generation is just a bunch of narcissists (when young 'uns)

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/me-generation-time/65054/

Basically, it's not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it's that young people are narcissists, and they get over themselves as they get older. It's like doing a study of toddlers and declaring those born since 2010 are Generation Sociopath: Kids These Days Will Pull Your Hair, Pee On Walls, Throw Full Bowls of Cereal Without Even Thinking of the Consequences.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

Spoiler

- attributed to Socrates by Plato

Spoiler

but actually it's from ~ 1907, by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in-ancient-times/

(still, the more things change...)

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[Darren Dirt]

Generation Y doesn't like to work. Why would they? Never before has a nation produced a bigger group of self important individuals. ... Everyone is important. Everyone is a celebrity.

What would you expect from a generation raised in a school system where everyone got a trophy just for participating. Gen Y doesn't believe in winners or losers. Everyone is a winner.

We know that that attitude leads to everyone being a loser.

-from "Gen X...Your Time is NOW!!!!"

Deep Thoughts. (not likely to result in action, but w/e...) (then again, solutions to a "better world" are right now within our collective grasp)

[Thorin]

If I'm a Gen Xer, then my kids must be Gen Yers.  But if you look up when the different generation supposedly happened, they're more like Gen Zers.  But of course no one really agrees on what the cut-off for one generation is, and when the next generation starts.

I can tell you this, though, both my teens work and go to school and my tweener is working hard at school.  Many of the kids that are on my oldest's sports teams work even though they come from families with a comfortable income.  To be honest, it just sounds like another old person complaining about how the young people are up to no good.  I hate age-ism like that; why is it that we still think we can stereotype and pigeonhole young people.  XKCD is on-topic: http://xkcd.com/1227/ (in that it shows older people complaining about the younger people of the day).

[Lazybones]

The jobs available are changing but that also means you need to plan for a relevant career and also plan to learn as you grow older.

There are a lot of people jobs disappearing in industries where computers and robots replace a lot of people however there are new opportunities emerging as we'll.

Kids like to slack off that hasn't eve changed, they mature over time and get it eventually... Well most of them anyway.

[Darren Dirt]

If I'm a Gen Xer, then my kids must be Gen Yers.  But if you look up when the different generation supposedly happened, they're more like Gen Zers.  But of course no one really agrees on what the cut-off for one generation is, and when the next generation starts.

my opinion: if you clearly remember (i.e. were around Junior High or High School age) when MuchMusic (aka "MTV Canadian-ified") launched, or can actually remember when all over the place Sony Walkmans were the norm (pre-DISCman), then you are of the "X" generation.

I can tell you this, though, both my teens work and go to school 

You and me both! But I think it comes from solid parenting expectations, honestly (in my case mostly via my wife's strong example their whole lives, only from me the last 3 or so years  )

I think ANY generation's members can be inspired/motivated to do more than just be a slacker. Just seems the parents of most "Y" members = slackers themselves, or just didn't bother trying too hard to get their kids to get off their collective asses.

[Mr. Analog]

There was a time you didn't even have to finish high school to get a job you could have for most of your life, not so much any more.

Then there's the problem of actually getting full time work...

It's not easy for young people to carve a life for themselves without a lot of help.

[Darren Dirt]

It's not easy for young people to carve a life for themselves without a lot of help.

No wonder they now so rarely take leisurely walks or enjoy a long chat by the fire with their peers. The art of colloquy is dead! 

[Mr. Analog]

It's not easy for young people to carve a life for themselves without a lot of help.

No wonder they now so rarely take leisurely walks or enjoy a long chat by the fire with their peers. The art of colloquy is dead! 

I don't know about the walking part but replace "fire" with "phone"...

[Darren Dirt]

No wonder they now so rarely take leisurely walks or enjoy a long chat by the fire with their peers. The art of colloquy is dead! 

I don't know about the walking part but replace "fire" with "phone"...

"FaceTime" != "Face-to-face time" 

[Mr. Analog]

It's still socializing.

Damn kids today with their jitterbug music and telephones...

[Thorin]

Actually FaceTime and other video chat services are very much like face-to-face time because you can read each others' non-verbal cues.  As opposed to text chat like we engaged in on the BBSes, where there were no non-verbal cues and people often misread the tone of posts.

I dunno about you, Darren, but my kids still spend lots of time face-to-face with their peers at school (32-35 hours a week?), at sports (4-10 hours a week?), and just hanging out (5-20 hours per week?).  They then add 3-40 hours of FaceTiming / VideoStarring / SnapChatting.  And then there's Facebooking, Kikking, and plain text-and-picture messaging.  If anything, I worry about them spending too much time connected with friends and not enough alone time, but then I'm an introvert and I need that alone time (and unlike my wife I could easily spend two weeks in the woods with no one around).

[Thorin]

Kids like to slack off that hasn't eve changed, they mature over time and get it eventually...

EXACTLY!  Now if only the elders would stop complaining about the youngsters while they're maturing.  After all, the elders were once the youngsters and were themselves slackers.

[Lazybones]

Kids like to slack off that hasn't eve changed, they mature over time and get it eventually...

EXACTLY!  Now if only the elders would stop complaining about the youngsters while they're maturing.  After all, the elders were once the youngsters and were themselves slackers.

A proactive kid can still get a job at McDonalds, learn responsibility, progress to manager or move on to a retail job. Progress and move on from retail funding additional education.. It does take determination and those of us fortunate enough to have been boosted from high-school directly into post secondary without all the financial load had it much easier, however at the expense of maturing...

[Darren Dirt]

"How to Write the Worst Possible Column About Millennials"

wow, cynical much? (not saying I disagree with a lot of what's said in the above...)


cliffs: a member of the media calling out the media over-hyping millennial-hating. media-on-media verbal violence (against tripe like this, hey I ain't arguing... I wish there were more Thatcher-like ideas being tossed around i.e. "you are part of a community, do what you can when you can to contribute to it, and take from it when you need to, but don't completely unilaterally bleed it dry!")