The problem with millennials
We’ve all heard the stereotypes about millennials — “young people” born after 1980. They are lazy, entitled, narcissistic and unreliable. Oh, and they job hop and have, like, no respect for their elders. Nobody seems to have a good thing to say about millennials, and yet they are everywhere, challenging convention and getting things done in their own millennial way. It’s almost as if they don’t care what the other generations think of them.
To find out what millennials think of the stereotypes, we spoke to five people born after 1980. Their responses revealed that they are thoughtful and realistic, and that in many ways, their generation is just misunderstood.
“I think that our generation is much more outspoken about things that bug us – and that’s what might be confused with entitlement,” says Lehlohonolo Mofokeng, coauthor of My First Year of Varsity and a Mandela Rhodes scholar at Wits. “A lot of the things that are called ‘entitled’ are just messages that have been told to us by older generations.”
Who are you calling a millennial?
One of the key things that emerged from our interviews is that very few millennials think of themselves as millennials. This is one of the key factors of being one, according to Sarah Browne, a creative director.
“I think, more than anything, it says that we’re not particularly into being categorised. Other generations like to categorise, but not unlike our tendency to naturally create a pastiche of other periods’ fashion, art, music, whatever, in so much of what we do, we’re just not fazed with boundaries in time or, well, most things,” she says.
Kate Swart, a multimedia designer, believes it’s possible that millennials’ perceived laziness is actually jealousy on the part of the older generation. “They worked really hard and put in the slog work, and now we have way better opportunities. I am sure it feels unfair to them. The working world was so unstructured and inflexible. People’s feelings weren’t really considered and that must have been soul-crushing. So they think we’re lazy, but we’re just different — we don’t fit into the nine-to-five structure of old.”
The privilege problem
Of course, the “problems” with millennials are often related to perceptions of their being privileged — but in South Africa, the majority of young people in the workforce are anything but. For Kgomotso Molapo, an HR assistant, this means that for people in her shoes the stereotypes are way off.
“My granny was a domestic worker and I lived with her. I had to wash my own clothes and make my own bed. She and my mom instilled in me the ethic of hard work.”
She’s the first person in her family to have obtained a university degree. “I knew that if I wanted a professional career, I had to work hard.”
Those 90s millennials
However, as an HR assistant, she gets to see many younger millennials entering the workforce, and she says that there the stereotypes are truer.
“Those 90s kids come in, they want their big salaries, they don’t understand why they have to work their way up from the bottom after having worked so hard at university. “It’s not us, it’s those 90s millennials!” is a refrain often heard. Tamara Oberholster, a who owns a copywriting business, says that when she was lecturing, she felt that the stereotypes applied to many of her students. However, she points out that generalisations aren’t helpful to anyone.
I don’t think you can lump all millennials in a basket together. Yes, there are trends, but stereotypes can be damaging. Yes there are lots of lazy millennials, but I know lots of lazy boomers too. Our microwave culture is making us all lazy.”
Oberholster is right – every generation has its good and bad seeds who have to tackle the challenges of the time in which they live. Millennials are faced with a world changing faster than it ever has before, so it’s little wonder the previous generations are struggling to keep up with how they operate.