Demographers and researchers believe that each generation has common characteristics that give it a specific character. Baby Boomers, for example, is a term used to describe individuals born during the post-World War II baby boom. Generation X, on the other hand, often referred to as the MTV Generation, are individuals born in the late 1970s and early to late 1980s. The current generation is called Millennials or the Peter Pan generation. Are Millennials to blame for where our society is headed?
Traits
What's so unique about Millennials is that this generation has abundant access to information - social media, smartphones, new media, digital technology.
Unlike their predecessors, Millennials are refusing to grow up -- while drawing conclusions about a large demographic group based on their cultural preferences and habits may seem superficial, it is still a manifestation of its collective consciousness. And what do Millennials like? Comic books, video games, superheroes. Is this generation infantile and, if yes, what does that imply?
The Peter Pan syndrome doesn't begin or end at television and movies. American sociologist Kathleen Shaputis argues that Millennials have "a tendency for delaying some rites of passage into adulthood for longer periods than most generations before them." Members of this generation, for example, tend to live with their parents for longer periods than Baby Boomers or Generation X-ers.
At a glance, the Youth of today is more superficial and, arguably, more narcissistic and self-obsessed than the youth a few decades ago. Is this a natural consequence of this generation's exposure to social media and modern technology? It most probably is. This poses a set of legitimate questions, with the most important one being: If previous generations had been exposed to new technology and grew up in the today's society, how would they behave?
What can be done?
If this generation wants to make our society better and help us all move forward, it needs to find a way to adjust to adulthood, accept responsibility and discard censorship masquerading as tolerance. It needs to develop its collective consciousness, so to speak, a consciousness free of exclusivity and faux-political correctness. The grotesque PC culture that we see today is merely a consequence of this generation's tendency to seek excuses and justify censorship, while at the same time refusing to grow up.
