Millennials Unveiled: Navigating a Dynamic Era of Change
People love blaming millennials for everything, we often read articles about “Millennials are the cause for our crashing economy”, “How millennials are crashing the real estate market”, “How millennials are killing the printing business”, “How millennials are killing the diamond industry” so on and so forth. Articles on millennials would make it seems like we’re the root cause of the end of several industries across the globe.
The other trend in conversations about millennials on the internet is, they’re entitled, privileged, know it all, who wouldn’t survive in the “real world” for one day.
But is that really the truth? Have Millennials knowingly or unknowingly become the most entitled?
Millennials and Economy
The fact is that the world has changed drastically in the past 20 odd years. The number of educated individuals has gone up considerably yet the rate of generation of employment hasn’t gone up. The economy isn’t where it used to be, it’s no longer easy for international conglomerates to set up in India, and the initial boom from the growth of the internet has also found itself saturated.
Millennials and Jobs
Gone are the days of having a regular 9-5 job, most of us are working more than 10 hours a day, if not more. A lot of my peers have taken up freelance work that they do after regular work hours. This heavily eats into the little time one may have for their personal growth and development or even some downtime. Work Play balance is at the lowest today that it’s been in a long while,
People with master’s degrees and years of experience aren’t able to find gainful employment. Cost of goods is constantly raising yet the salaries being awarded to employees hasn’t really changed in over 30 years. With an increase in education, one would have expected an increase in employment as well. However, that isn’t the case, unfortunately.
Unmasking Double Standards: Exploring Hypocrisy in India’s Societal Fabric
Unemployment or poor salaries at the very least with long work hours has led to millennials not being able to afford housing, or diamonds and all those other wonderful commodities that our parents enjoyed being able to afford. It’s not that we don’t want those luxuries; it’s just that we don’t have enough cash flow for it.
Millennial Lifestyle
Millennials have decided to live their life a little differently than our parents or grandparents. We grew up watching our parents believe in the idea of working today for a better tomorrow but we never saw that better tomorrow coming about for our parents. The ideas of a healthy lifestyle, physically, emotionally and spiritually have come to the forefront. Living a wholesome life has become more important.
It’s true that we are the generation of instant gratification; we have all the information in the world, multiple sources of entertainment and even banking at the tip of our fingers. The very people who worked throughout their lives to make this world that we live in a reality, now turn around and complain about how millennials behave, consume and purchase, really??
Millennials and Luxuries
It’s painful for us to not be able to live that luxurious lifestyle, to afford healthcare both physical and mental, to buy ourselves a house, to buy diamonds and other things but that’s not where our economy is today.
If and when we do have enough money to spend on the bigger things, we tend to choose experiences over products. Buying a house is great but a trip to Bali is better! It gives us a lot more than a place to live it, it gives us exposure to a new culture, it gives us several new experiences, and it gives us wholesome knowledge of not only ourselves but also of the world.
Politics of Millennials
There’s a quiet rumbling that’s been garnering more momentum, the rumblings of a long overdue change. It seems like the millennials realize the false promises of capitalism and the existing political structure. The on-ground demand for socialism is at an all-time high, and millennials are leading the charge against long-standing misuse of authority on all accounts whether it be men against women or seniors against juniors or any individual who carries a certain amount of authority over another. We are fighting for equality and equity in our homes, on the streets and in the workplace.
The Millennial Society
While we are fighting for a change in politics we’re also trying to bring about a change in our own social circles. We hold our peers accountable for their actions that go against our socially accepted standards. We make an active effort to educate our peers and even our family of where they may be going wrong and why. Some of us have even been able to change our parent’s ideas about society and politics with years of efforts.
Higher Expectations of Entertainment
A lot of millennials have become more self-aware and thus have become picky about the content that they consume. They expect a higher quality of content may it be written or video content. It could be from a small company or a large conglomerate but the expectation is that there should be something one can learn from the said content or grow using said content.
Memes as a Means of Awareness
The definition of a meme according to the Oxford dictionary is; “An image, video, piece of text etc, which is typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations. Memes have become an essential part of the sociopolitical discourse in our generation. We feel cheated by the news conglomerates (more on this in the next point) which is why we’ve begun using memes to spread the truth using humor to try to bring people’s attention to what really matters.
The Fake News Machine
In India and abroad, the fake news machine is growing rapidly. It’s gotten to the point in India where we can’t even believe the reputed news agencies (refer to cobra-post’s sting). Individuals rely more on memes and fact-checking websites to know the truth rather than the media.
