Modern-Day Sales and Marketing Blog

I challenge any of you to peruse Twitter or Facebook and not find a comment, shared article, or tweet about how bad our young people are.  Millennials (who aren’t really that young anymore) get beat up by us older folks so frequently that one would think we were The Greatest Generation.  Sometimes, when I hear my friends talking about “walking through snow in bare feet, uphill both ways” I start to laugh.  Then I realize that they’re not joking.  “Wait a minute.  We grew up together … in Florida … where there are no hills or snow.”

So, I thought I’d list the items that I like about the Millennials (born roughly between 1980 and 2000).  I’m doing this exercise partly because I like Millennials.  I also feel bad for them.  They’re the first generation to be the youngest generation since the advent of social media.  Imagine how bad the hippies of the 1960s would’ve gotten bashed by the Ward Cleavers of the world if Facebook was around back then.  I have to admit though, my primary motivator for writing this post is that I hate euphoric recall.  There aren’t many things sadder to me than people who talk about how great it used to be, and how much better their generation was compared to the current one. 

With that said, here are my top 10 things I like about Millennials… 

1. They’re smart.  Don’t judge them from the short video clips you see on YouTube.  Talk to them.  Ask them about politics or history or sports or other countries, and be prepared.  They’re smarter than you think, and maybe more knowledgeable than you are.

2. They don’t care about our opinions.  I think this one bugs us the most.  We talk about how stupid they are and how they can’t talk to another human without texting them first, and they don’t care what we say.  I love it.

3. They don’t see race.  Seriously, look around at a Starbucks, a happy hour, or a football game and you’ll see groups of friends and couples socializing that look like a Coca Cola commercial from the 1970s. 

4. They don’t smoke. 

5. They have perspective.  They get it.  I think this bothers us, too.  Many Generation Xers and Baby Boomers needed a midlife crises and thousands of dollars of therapy to gain perspective.  Many of the Millennials just get it… and that pisses us off a little.

6. They eat better than we did.  They don’t eat well, but we just stuffed anything in our guts.  At least Millennials try to eat healthier options.

7. They’re happy.  Most Millennials that I run across are light-hearted and playful. 

8. They get involved politically.  I don’t agree with most of what they believe, but that’s not a Millennials thing – that’s an age thing.  Men in their 40s will never agree with those in their 20s on politics.

9. They’re not afraid of conflict.  I’ve been in dozens of meetings in the last few years where someone in their 20s challenged the room with boldness and transparency.  In some cases, it didn’t necessarily help their immediate career progression.  Again, they didn’t care. 

10. They think for themselves.  This makes sense.  In our world in which the internet is the center of virtually everything we do, Millennials have no one to tell them how to live.  We learned in the pre-internet days.  As far as everyday operations, they knew more than their parents by age nine.  As a result, they learned to think for themselves.  A lot of mistakes occur from their lack of following directions, but a lot more greatness happens.

There it is – my top 10 reasons that I like Millennials.  Are they flawless?  Of course not.  However, they’re a whole lot better than we portray.  They’re different, just like Xers were different than Boomers, and God knows how different those Boomers were!