How many times have you heard some older person say the something along the lines of “the problem with this generation is….”? millennials everywhere are starting to get a bad reputation we are often portrayed as selfish, attention seeking, lazy humans that have very short attention spans. This describes none of the millennials that I have come to know and call my friends.
In May of 2013 Time Magazine called millennials the “me generation” and claimed that we are lazy narcissists. I want to debunk some of the myths that have developed from bad publicity dealing with the millennial generation. The millennial generation is roughly the young adults born between the years of 1980-2000.
Myth 1: Millennials are selfish.
I feel this could not be farther from the truth the University of Tennessee at Martin raised alone $15,000. This was an event that was attended and hosted by the millennial generation. UTMs Relay for Life raised $24000. To say that this generation is selfish would be from a lack of knowledge of the effort and care that went into these two events. A study done in 2012 by the millennial impact found that 80% of college students are looking for jobs that will have an impact on shaping the world around them for the benefit of future generations.
Myth 2: Millennial aren’t interested in marriage
This stems from the idea of “hooking up”, that is young people interacting with one another with no emotional connection, has drained there motivation to seek out lasting relationships.
A study done by Pew research center has found that 70% of unmarried millennials say that they want to settle down and get married someday. Millennials also rank having a successful marriage and being a good parent as the most important things they want to accomplish in their lifetime.
Myth 3: Millennials have the shortest attention span of any generation before them.
This myth derives from the fact that there is so much information being thrown at millennials that there is no way they can stay focused on one thing or another.
There is no proof of that. There has been no study done on older generations attention spans to compare the research gathered on millennials to.
There is some evidence that millennials in there vast ability to multitask could lead to a down fall of attention span but evidence also suggest that multitasking is on the rise in all generations.
