Options and opportunities
How the millennial generation battles for what there is and what should be. Bound irremovably, it seems, to the words lazy, self-absorbed and entitled, the millennial generation has more years of discrimination ahead.
To put it simply, millennials are those born in the blitzkrieg of the digital age; between the 1980s to the mid-1990s. Millennials grew around the digital age pioneers’ dreams of taking the world to the web. By 1990, this dream culminated to form what is now known as the Internet. The audience? Millennials, by this time teenagers and young adults.
The recognition of the Internet, the innovation of the personal computer, or the convenience of the e-mail came with it a Grand Canyon-sized generational gap, none so gaping than in the Philippines.
Only in the late 1960s did computers find their way to our shores, and even then they were massive contraptions – too big and too expensive for anyone without billions in a bank account. The Internet only made itself known in 1994. It has only been fully attached to the use of personal computers by the early 2000s and, therefore, was only used and utilized by the generation that served as the catchbasin in the zenith of the digital revolution.
Philippine millennials then are those whose ages range from the young adults to those in their late 20s and early 30s. The generation in which every achievement the digital pioneers championed climaxed into one massive information superhighway, easily accessible for all.
With the world connected more than ever before, the generational shift becomes global, in the boldest sense. News from all over the world became accessible on the latest smartphone model, discussed on social media like it all happened just one town over, debated over, and thought of together, supported, or opposed.
There is a wide webscape to explore. In a space like this, it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by options. The problem for millennials today is exactly that: their inclination to look for what else is out there to read, to notice, to understand. This is a worthy endeavor, some may say, but with the paradox of choice, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with options that never existed before.
The reason we are called lazy is ironically because we process information way too fast. We do not stay long enough to understand. That is what we are – a generation bombarded with a slew of options, that concentration is difficult and calm analysis is hard to come by.
The problem we are facing now is not what the society thinks of us. The problem is what they don’t. Millennials are looking for what there is out there for them just as much as their forerunners. Yhe only difference is, this time, we are a generation preoccupied with both our options and the promise of a purposeful life that it’s difficult to know what we should be.
Katherine Cellona is a senior journalism student at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines - Manila. She is a proud millennial and believes that one lipstick can change the world.