Kids These Days Research Paper
Kids These Days: A Study of the Millennial Generation
“When I was your age…” and “Kids these days!” are the rallying war cries of the independent Baby Boomers and Generation X’s cynics. The world has too many problems today, and, of course, it’s all our fault. We are the Millennials. We come after Generation X, and while many historians have tried to call us Generation Y, we have clearly stepped out of their shadow and made a new name for ourselves. It’s estimated that a Millennial is someone who was born in between 1983-2004. You are part of this group, and it’s unclear if this is a good thing or not. It’s hard to tell everything about a generation until they’re all dead, but there are a few characteristics that Millennials …show more content…
Because of the way we were raised, we believe that we deserve the best, even when we don’t do the best. We were raised on participation trophies and competitions where “everybody wins!” This stemmed from parents’ obsession with making sure their children had proper self-esteem; but self-esteem can’t really be given as a prize. In soccer and baseball leagues, everyone got a trophy—the winner got the biggest trophy, but everyone got some sort of prize. A “good effort” prize. Every post-game meeting of any sports team, the coach starts out with “we did our best,” or “we gave it our all” before going on to gently criticize performances. And it’s just now that it’s really starting to make a difference. A lot of younger Millennials are applying for their first jobs and becoming appalled when they have to apply for five, ten different jobs—why didn’t the first one hire me, huh? The seniors are applying for college, and they’re going to be sorely disappointed when they don’t get into their number one choice. And their parents have not prepared them for that. According to them and the way they raised their children, every single one of the Millennials will have a job—it’s just a matter of how good of a job it will
“When I was your age…” and “Kids these days!” are the rallying war cries of the independent Baby Boomers and Generation X’s cynics. The world has too many problems today, and, of course, it’s all our fault. We are the Millennials. We come after Generation X, and while many historians have tried to call us Generation Y, we have clearly stepped out of their shadow and made a new name for ourselves. It’s estimated that a Millennial is someone who was born in between 1983-2004. You are part of this group, and it’s unclear if this is a good thing or not. It’s hard to tell everything about a generation until they’re all dead, but there are a few characteristics that Millennials …show more content…
Because of the way we were raised, we believe that we deserve the best, even when we don’t do the best. We were raised on participation trophies and competitions where “everybody wins!” This stemmed from parents’ obsession with making sure their children had proper self-esteem; but self-esteem can’t really be given as a prize. In soccer and baseball leagues, everyone got a trophy—the winner got the biggest trophy, but everyone got some sort of prize. A “good effort” prize. Every post-game meeting of any sports team, the coach starts out with “we did our best,” or “we gave it our all” before going on to gently criticize performances. And it’s just now that it’s really starting to make a difference. A lot of younger Millennials are applying for their first jobs and becoming appalled when they have to apply for five, ten different jobs—why didn’t the first one hire me, huh? The seniors are applying for college, and they’re going to be sorely disappointed when they don’t get into their number one choice. And their parents have not prepared them for that. According to them and the way they raised their children, every single one of the Millennials will have a job—it’s just a matter of how good of a job it will