Barely a day goes by without another (presumably) well-meaning journalist penning an article detailing how hard-done-by Millennials are compared to those who came before them. Dare I say it, Dr Bristow, but these journalists almost always back up their thesis with “findings” uncovered by your fellow sociologists.
Comments pages on the Guardian – both above and below the line – are forever castigating boomers and bemoaning the lot of poor downtrodden millennials.
This effort, by one Dami Olonisakin, headlined “Why don’t millennials have more sex? Maybe we’re just too stressed” was a classic of the genre, in which he opined that Millennials found life too anxiety-inducing to enjoy, or even have, sex anymore.
The truth, for many of us, is that we’re simply stressed out and at our wits’ end, with a million things on our minds that could be interfering with our libidos. We’re worried about finding a stable job, our university loan debt, moving out of our parents’ homes and more. Don’t let the colour aesthetic of our Instagram layouts fool you – we’re slightly freaking out and don’t really have it together.
The previous generation spent their young life under the cloud of potential annihilation in a nuclear exchange. Generations before that living through thousand-bomber raids over our cities every night.
The many hundreds of preceding generations lived (or mostly died) through several millennia of wars, disease, grinding poverty, hunger and grief.
Yet this millennial generation, no doubt suffering post traumatic stress at the price of avocados and having to live with their parents rent-free, are so ground down by life that they can no longer have sex. Sat complaining about their lot in a consoling circlejerk of onanistic self-pity, bleating at every perceived slight and injustice that has been so unfairly heaped upon them.
Poor little lambs. My heart goes out to them. In truth I don’t know any millennials who fit the pathetic picture that is painted of them daily. All the young people I know get on with their lives with the good cheer and optimism that characterises anyone of sense and spirit. But when journalists write this sort of millennial-pitying guff they just make it too easy to mock this generation.
If such journalists actually wanted to help their generation, the best thing they could do would be to stop writing about them.
Maybe I am looking at my youth through rose-tinted glasses, but my recollection is that absoluely nothing could put me off sex – Whether I needed it or not.
LV
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
An observation about Covid is that many people who are anti the ruinous lockdown measures and restrictions designed to ‘protect the elderly and compromised’ are certainly older than millennials and Gen Z. Why aren’t the youth rising up en masse against these measures which will have the greatest and most deleterious impact on their futures?
I do know there are protests here and there, but I am talking about civil action that will actually make a difference. It seems to me that they have decided that BLM (not blm!) was a more worthy cause.
The young have been raised on a steady diet of social media. The internet has effectively circumnavigated the transference of cross-generational wisdom. ‘Lawnmower’ parenting styles, social media contagion, and lack of robust outdoor play have created a generation of coddled and fearful child-adults whose only notion of freedom is that of sexual identity and desire. Unfortunately, it is the only way society allows children to prove themselves. That, and social justice activism.
Sexual identity, yes, but I would argue against the desire. Young people today don’t seem to have much of it, sexual or otherwise. Kids seem to choose their orientation and personality off a list online and then find creative ways to get offended when it’s not consistently validated. Instead of living their lives and learning of who they are and who they desire in the standard messy but glorious ways of youth, they’re curating an image from pre-approved identities and conforming thier feeling to that. It’s bass ackwards.
I actually agree with you about the desire. Girls are permitted everything and boys are forgiven nothing. I attended a Title IX meeting recently where one investigator said that even if a male student happened to be falsely accused of s*xual assault, he should view it as an opportunity to educate himself about r*pe culture.
There’s nothing revolutionary at all about most young people these days. They’re useful idiots. Little shouty activist mouthpieces for whatever woke, divisive crap is served up by the nutcase ‘progressives’
One of the reasons I come here is to keep shouting my conspiracy theory beliefs as I think some one has to. Here one can read the posts in reply to Chivers technical article, and it is amazing how intelligent, informed, and well written the response it, and the sheer volume is equal to 20 X what social/political articles get – These are people of substance and thinking – but they just do not bother with the social side of the conversation, yet it is by far the more important.
VS
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
I could not make any sense of the article, but I find young people ignorant, vacuous, sheltered, priggish, thoughtless products of an education and media which has trained them in limited ways and topics to think, and otherwise stopped actual thinking.
They are unsatisfied gamers and consumers fallowing ‘Influencers’ like sheep do the shepherd. The phones they are addicted to are what raises them, and so it is sort of ‘Lord of the Flies, Lite’
The whole conceit of Beavis and Buthead was two youths in the 1980s raised by sitting all day in front of a TV with MTV on, (a take off of Romulus and Remus, the first Roman’s raised by wolves) and what sort of person that produces.
The modern times it is young raised by peers and influencers and evil social Media and degenerate entertainments via their phones. The results will be along the lines of the B&B, but more full of self doubt and anxiety.
KW
Kirsten Walstedt
2 years ago
The one constant across these articles and books, regardless of geography, is that Gen X is completely missing from the discussion.
JN
Jean Nutley
2 years ago
The media have much to say about everything, but so much of modern reportage consists of what might or could happen rather than facts. I am still trying to find a newspaper that reports actual facts, and leaves the readership to make up their own minds. Instead I am snowed under by columnists own opinions. I don’t care what their opinion is, I want facts so that I can form my own opinion. One thing is crystal clear though, there are plenty of self entitled whingers out there, of whatever generation.
Journalists seem to have (subconsciously?) joined the Post-Modernists. They have abandoned facts and now look for ‘lived experience’. They no longer talk to a range of people and then deliver a considered picture, they just live-interview a few people and present this as ‘journalism.
Perhaps they have simply been seduced by the mobile phone/internet option which was not available to previous generations of journos.
PR
Terry Needham
2 years ago
“Put bluntly: if a cohort that has received less education than a previous one gains better grades as a result, what value do we attach to the accumulated cultural heritage in the first place?”
But that says nothing about how much value we attach to anything – It was just a fiddle to get the government out of a hole.
DR
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
A good article here. I will now venture forth with a slice of where minds might need to meet.
What worries, no, vexes me, is the recent proliferation of the pained expression on the visages of young actors (not forgetting actresses too) in advertisements and what not for the latest shows on TV and what not. The guilt complex. Now built in! In the 2020s! It’s both art imitating life and vice versa. And in the internet era, with the imagery of violence and anger abounding, all the time following one about, the young are very vulnerable to trends. Well, with what’s trendy in the doom-and-gloom age. It might be virtuous to be gloomy simply because that’s trendy. And always trendy? In the olden times, people lapped up every scrap of entertainment they could get. It would have to them been odd to feel guilty about that, about forgetting their cares for a short time. That was a tonic against the hardships of living: outdoor toilet, no central heating, no antibiotics, TB rife, radio not even in its infancy yet, say! It’s as if today, to explain the look of dread, the ridiculously tiny screens we are beholden to have literally diminished all icons, whether they are good or bad. Familiarity breeds much contempt. Contempt for oneself and one’s society, too. But even the older members of Western society today let themselves be lapped up by the wonders of technology and trends and the latest misery guts TV shows and scorn the value of cheerful entertainment for its own sake. Even they say what they used to enjoy and get a good laugh out of is old hat (as if fearful of looking really old hat themselves). It’s as if it’s sinful today to laugh and cheer. And they must make a show of wringing their hands. Old modes of humour, as far as those advanced-in-years are concerned, are out! But what about newcomers to Western shores from God-forsaken lands, who might like, indeed prefer, films or shows that are seen as too wistfully reminiscent of traditional, old society by some, yet radical or the ultimate tonic for possibly quite a few of said newcomers steeped in backwards conservatism and unfamiliar with the arts and entertainments? Newcomers to the New World more than a hundred years ago relished their new-found freedom and helped make a city like New York thrive , jive and hum. “Guilty, but not so dern awful guilty!” to use the old Wild West saying, as many of those newcomers, many Jewish, proved to be not so constrained by their religion or tradition. That robustness is missing today. The mark of a more God-aware way of life? The West now shoots itself in the foot. The solution? The old and older need to simply start name-dropping old shows and old entertainers into everyday conversation whenever it can credibly
be done so, so that the young know it’s alright and just better to steer away from the pained-expression, guilt-laden look. That’s one way for the older to ditch their defensiveness. And one way to lessen the uncertainty of the young. Maybe the dread-laden actors will see the cheery light too.
RB
ralph bell
2 years ago
Parents and the older generation have moulded these younger people and also often put their own needs above the greater need of young people, and other, especially during the Covid-19 period.
Its not just big tech and social justice!
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Barely a day goes by without another (presumably) well-meaning journalist penning an article detailing how hard-done-by Millennials are compared to those who came before them. Dare I say it, Dr Bristow, but these journalists almost always back up their thesis with “findings” uncovered by your fellow sociologists.
Comments pages on the Guardian – both above and below the line – are forever castigating boomers and bemoaning the lot of poor downtrodden millennials.
This effort, by one Dami Olonisakin, headlined “Why don’t millennials have more sex? Maybe we’re just too stressed” was a classic of the genre, in which he opined that Millennials found life too anxiety-inducing to enjoy, or even have, sex anymore.
The previous generation spent their young life under the cloud of potential annihilation in a nuclear exchange. Generations before that living through thousand-bomber raids over our cities every night.
The many hundreds of preceding generations lived (or mostly died) through several millennia of wars, disease, grinding poverty, hunger and grief.
Yet this millennial generation, no doubt suffering post traumatic stress at the price of avocados and having to live with their parents rent-free, are so ground down by life that they can no longer have sex. Sat complaining about their lot in a consoling circlejerk of onanistic self-pity, bleating at every perceived slight and injustice that has been so unfairly heaped upon them.
Poor little lambs. My heart goes out to them.
In truth I don’t know any millennials who fit the pathetic picture that is painted of them daily. All the young people I know get on with their lives with the good cheer and optimism that characterises anyone of sense and spirit. But when journalists write this sort of millennial-pitying guff they just make it too easy to mock this generation.
If such journalists actually wanted to help their generation, the best thing they could do would be to stop writing about them.
Maybe I am looking at my youth through rose-tinted glasses, but my recollection is that absoluely nothing could put me off sex – Whether I needed it or not.
An observation about Covid is that many people who are anti the ruinous lockdown measures and restrictions designed to ‘protect the elderly and compromised’ are certainly older than millennials and Gen Z. Why aren’t the youth rising up en masse against these measures which will have the greatest and most deleterious impact on their futures?
I do know there are protests here and there, but I am talking about civil action that will actually make a difference. It seems to me that they have decided that BLM (not blm!) was a more worthy cause.
The young have been raised on a steady diet of social media. The internet has effectively circumnavigated the transference of cross-generational wisdom. ‘Lawnmower’ parenting styles, social media contagion, and lack of robust outdoor play have created a generation of coddled and fearful child-adults whose only notion of freedom is that of sexual identity and desire. Unfortunately, it is the only way society allows children to prove themselves. That, and social justice activism.
Sexual identity, yes, but I would argue against the desire. Young people today don’t seem to have much of it, sexual or otherwise. Kids seem to choose their orientation and personality off a list online and then find creative ways to get offended when it’s not consistently validated. Instead of living their lives and learning of who they are and who they desire in the standard messy but glorious ways of youth, they’re curating an image from pre-approved identities and conforming thier feeling to that. It’s bass ackwards.
I actually agree with you about the desire. Girls are permitted everything and boys are forgiven nothing. I attended a Title IX meeting recently where one investigator said that even if a male student happened to be falsely accused of s*xual assault, he should view it as an opportunity to educate himself about r*pe culture.
There’s nothing revolutionary at all about most young people these days. They’re useful idiots. Little shouty activist mouthpieces for whatever woke, divisive crap is served up by the nutcase ‘progressives’
To be fair, most adults aren’t much better.
You said it well, J Hop.
One of the reasons I come here is to keep shouting my conspiracy theory beliefs as I think some one has to. Here one can read the posts in reply to Chivers technical article, and it is amazing how intelligent, informed, and well written the response it, and the sheer volume is equal to 20 X what social/political articles get – These are people of substance and thinking – but they just do not bother with the social side of the conversation, yet it is by far the more important.
I could not make any sense of the article, but I find young people ignorant, vacuous, sheltered, priggish, thoughtless products of an education and media which has trained them in limited ways and topics to think, and otherwise stopped actual thinking.
They are unsatisfied gamers and consumers fallowing ‘Influencers’ like sheep do the shepherd. The phones they are addicted to are what raises them, and so it is sort of ‘Lord of the Flies, Lite’
The whole conceit of Beavis and Buthead was two youths in the 1980s raised by sitting all day in front of a TV with MTV on, (a take off of Romulus and Remus, the first Roman’s raised by wolves) and what sort of person that produces.
The modern times it is young raised by peers and influencers and evil social Media and degenerate entertainments via their phones. The results will be along the lines of the B&B, but more full of self doubt and anxiety.
The one constant across these articles and books, regardless of geography, is that Gen X is completely missing from the discussion.
The media have much to say about everything, but so much of modern reportage consists of what might or could happen rather than facts. I am still trying to find a newspaper that reports actual facts, and leaves the readership to make up their own minds. Instead I am snowed under by columnists own opinions. I don’t care what their opinion is, I want facts so that I can form my own opinion. One thing is crystal clear though, there are plenty of self entitled whingers out there, of whatever generation.
Journalists seem to have (subconsciously?) joined the Post-Modernists. They have abandoned facts and now look for ‘lived experience’. They no longer talk to a range of people and then deliver a considered picture, they just live-interview a few people and present this as ‘journalism.
Perhaps they have simply been seduced by the mobile phone/internet option which was not available to previous generations of journos.
“Put bluntly: if a cohort that has received less education than a previous one gains better grades as a result, what value do we attach to the accumulated cultural heritage in the first place?”
But that says nothing about how much value we attach to anything – It was just a fiddle to get the government out of a hole.
A good article here. I will now venture forth with a slice of where minds might need to meet.
What worries, no, vexes me, is the recent proliferation of the pained expression on the visages of young actors (not forgetting actresses too) in advertisements and what not for the latest shows on TV and what not. The guilt complex. Now built in! In the 2020s! It’s both art imitating life and vice versa. And in the internet era, with the imagery of violence and anger abounding, all the time following one about, the young are very vulnerable to trends. Well, with what’s trendy in the doom-and-gloom age. It might be virtuous to be gloomy simply because that’s trendy. And always trendy? In the olden times, people lapped up every scrap of entertainment they could get. It would have to them been odd to feel guilty about that, about forgetting their cares for a short time. That was a tonic against the hardships of living: outdoor toilet, no central heating, no antibiotics, TB rife, radio not even in its infancy yet, say! It’s as if today, to explain the look of dread, the ridiculously tiny screens we are beholden to have literally diminished all icons, whether they are good or bad. Familiarity breeds much contempt. Contempt for oneself and one’s society, too. But even the older members of Western society today let themselves be lapped up by the wonders of technology and trends and the latest misery guts TV shows and scorn the value of cheerful entertainment for its own sake. Even they say what they used to enjoy and get a good laugh out of is old hat (as if fearful of looking really old hat themselves). It’s as if it’s sinful today to laugh and cheer. And they must make a show of wringing their hands. Old modes of humour, as far as those advanced-in-years are concerned, are out! But what about newcomers to Western shores from God-forsaken lands, who might like, indeed prefer, films or shows that are seen as too wistfully reminiscent of traditional, old society by some, yet radical or the ultimate tonic for possibly quite a few of said newcomers steeped in backwards conservatism and unfamiliar with the arts and entertainments? Newcomers to the New World more than a hundred years ago relished their new-found freedom and helped make a city like New York thrive , jive and hum. “Guilty, but not so dern awful guilty!” to use the old Wild West saying, as many of those newcomers, many Jewish, proved to be not so constrained by their religion or tradition. That robustness is missing today. The mark of a more God-aware way of life? The West now shoots itself in the foot. The solution? The old and older need to simply start name-dropping old shows and old entertainers into everyday conversation whenever it can credibly
be done so, so that the young know it’s alright and just better to steer away from the pained-expression, guilt-laden look. That’s one way for the older to ditch their defensiveness. And one way to lessen the uncertainty of the young. Maybe the dread-laden actors will see the cheery light too.
Parents and the older generation have moulded these younger people and also often put their own needs above the greater need of young people, and other, especially during the Covid-19 period.
Its not just big tech and social justice!