A millenial’s opinion: Millenials are the best

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Team working at a start up

Monica Sanchez, Writer

Philip Bump, a writer from the Atlantic, blatantly stated, “We can all agree that millennials are the worst.” Well, I strongly disagree Philip.

Before we dive into an argument, what is a millennial? Let’s turn to Bump’s article to answer that. He says, “In October 2004, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss called Millennials ‘the next great generation,’ which is funny. They define the group ‘as those born in 1982 and approximately the 20 years thereafter.’ In 2012, they affixed the end point as 2004.” Let’s ignore the fact that Philip completely bashed millennials in saying that the fact that someone called them “the next great generation” is funny. What we can take out of the excerpt from his completely biased article is that if you were born in 2004 or before that, you are considered a millennial.

Other generations always rant and whine about how millennials always take selfies, they don’t contribute to society, they’re lazy and cynical, or that they’re the dumbest generation to exist.

First and foremost, why we are regarded as the dumbest generation to exist is beyond me. The baby boomer generation can rant all they want, but school was nowhere near as difficult for them as it is now. Today we face AP everything to make us seem more appealing to colleges. We have to work hard to even be recognized, let alone succeed in this broken economy that we have inherited. Being a little lazy sometimes doesn’t mean we don’t contribute to society. This is a generation of “activist doers” (Natalie). Millennials care about the world.

It is also highly hypocritical to rant at us for being on social media and using selfie sticks, when 40-60 year old have taken over both more so than millennials now.  It’s naive to believe that millennials are the only tech savvy generation. And anyways, selfies are pretty harmless compared to what other generations have contributed to society, like war and pollution for example.

Millennials have a right to be cynical. Once we get out of college, what is waiting for us? It is almost a promise that we won’t be receiving any social security benefits; millennials have no safety net. How is it possible to be positive in the light of that knowledge?

To summarize, millennials aren’t the worst. And it’s wise to not generalize an entire generation based on your personal opinion of a select few.