Are millennials really just me, me, me?

Millennials – those born in the Eighties and Nineties, and who entered adulthood in the midst of the global financial crisis – receive a bad press. Also known as the “me generation”, many consider them to be demanding and attentionseeking, assuming a sense of privilege and entitlement. Some have gone even further: Dr Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and broadcaster in America, commented that we’ve raised a generation of “deluded narcissists”. What’s the truth?

It’s definitely an overstatement to suggest that all, or even a fair number of millennials, are worthy of psychiatric labels – not least because the numbers don’t add up.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the lifetime prevalence of “delusional disorder” and “narcissistic personality disorder” are just 0.2 per cent and 6.2 per cent respectively, and millennials account for around a fifth of the British population.

But what about the more common allegation against millennials – their sense of entitlement? Jean Twenge at San Diego State University and Tim Kasser at Knox College compared the attitudes of more than 355,000 students aged 17 and 18 between 1976 and 2007. They found that a desire for material gain has been increasing steadily, while at the same time a commitment to hard work has been decreasing. There is, they conclude, a growing discrepancy between “the desire for material rewards and the willingness to do the work usually required to earn them”.

Meanwhile, the Higher Education Research Institute in California concludes that the number of individuals who describe themselves as “exceptional” compared to their peers is also growing steadily.

However, before condemning millennials, let’s take a step back.

Michael Lee at the University of Auckland noted in an article for the Huffington Post that compared to previous generations, millennials have enjoyed a relatively sheltered upbringing and may have had little if any experience of the “real world” when they leave home.

Another suggestion comes from Jared Lessard and colleagues at Saddleback College in California, who propose two types of entitlement – exploitative and non-exploitative.

Those with the former expect special treatment, show lower levels of work orientation and tend to treat others unfairly to gain personal advantage.

However, those whose sense of entitlement is nonexploitative have high levels of self-worth and exhibit a sense of fairness towards everyone – values surely to be encouraged.

How, can parents foster this healthier type of entitlement? Carole Dweck at Columbia University gave us the answer nearly 20 years ago when she suggested that when praising our children, we should always praise what they achieve through effort – the work they put in – rather than more fixed attributes such as intelligence.