Who Created Millennials? Generation Y Psychological Traits - Society

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 12:13

Who are millennials and can they really change the world? How unique are the psychological properties of representatives of new generations?

The first about the "unique" features of the new generations of "millennials" and "post-millennials" began to trumpet all kinds of "salespeople" who were faced with the fact that the old advertising tricks on young people are getting worse and worse.

HR directors and other “headhunters” were the second to start when it turned out that the newly minted “graduates”, before lifting a finger in the field of a new job, set a bunch of such requirements that even ten years ago the venerable professionals could not even dream of.

Scientific affairs

The managerial approach to the study of a person initially presupposes an internal agreement that we cannot do anything with the younger generation - which are ugly, such are ugly - we will try to work with what we have. But it is completely incomprehensible why this “doomed” intonation was picked up by psychologists and educators writing and researching new generations, that is, exactly those people who, by virtue of their profession, are called upon to “shape” this young generation.

Moreover, studies full of enthusiasm are being mass-produced, demonstrating the "uniqueness" of the psychological properties of representatives of new generations! At the same time, they completely forget that mental properties and characteristics rarely have only one polarity. There are always different degrees of severity, different manifestations and, accordingly, different consequences of the manifestation of the same features.

No wonder

Well, for example, if a child is given a gadget from birth, then what is surprising in the fact that he masters it much earlier and more successfully than his ancestors, who first saw this very gadget in adulthood? What is great about the fact that a person sitting at a computer screen is so accustomed to regularly “changing the picture” that he cannot concentrate on the task in another way? Or that he has formed a habit of being involved in several simple activities at once, but at the same time he is not able to concentrate on doing one difficult one for a long time? And what's positive about these features if you call them the buzzword "multitasking"?

Do not forget about the massive growth of "functional illiteracy", when people who can formally read and write are unable to understand the meaning of the assignment and for the same reason are not able to independently find out the necessary information on the Internet.

Sad picture

Do not forget about an interesting question - where exactly do millennials show all those positive traits and features that are attributed to them by the authors of countless publications? Widespread "optimism" in practice often turns into cynicism.

The claim that millennials are good communicators is shattered by the question "Between whom and whom?" Within your generation? How do they interact with representatives of other generations? Yes, they seem to know foreign languages better than others, but this does not lead to a high level of general culture.

As a result, the process of communicating with such "polyglots" is reduced to discussing the latest fashion trends, the latest football match or a loudly publicized tabloid book. By the way, they are also credited with the characteristics of the "most intelligent generation", based on the fact that they, they say, are better than others imbued with the ideas of environmental protection and therefore - attention! - they love Tesla cars. And further in the same spirit.

"New" values

It sounds more and more often that new generations have new values. Wonderful! Here only one unpleasant question arises: how do the newfangled "awareness", "independence", "self-sufficiency" and "better understanding of oneself" relate to old specialties? Or will professional affiliation no longer guarantee the presence of a certain system of values in the head of a specialist?

We already feel a change in the attitude towards patients in medicine, where more and more people are working who have not gotten into their heads the "outdated" value system "from Hippocrates." Do not lag behind doctors and teachers, who, living in the new conditions of the attitude to education as a "service", cease not only to educate, but also to really teach something new "consumers".

Harsh realities

By and large, there is no evidence that behind all these "traits", which are always described as "positive traits," are not the usual bad manners, underachievement, laziness and inability to work. Because in practice, wherever you go, from bank to catering, the younger the employees, the worse they work.

Today, few people can be surprised by the fact that a young bank employee fiddles with one or two clients for about forty minutes, because he does not fully understand his job. Or charming little girls at the dispensing or at the checkout of a reputable catering establishment clearly hadn't heard of what a "service culture" is, not to mention courtesy, helpfulness and other properties that any service staff should have by status.

Spiritual matters

Some especially advanced subjects, under their own "originality", manage to bring a whole "spiritual base". You have probably already come across a theory widespread in all kinds of "spiritual" practices that, they say, "the child's soul chooses its own parents"? So, recently it turned out that this postulate also has a continuation - attention! - "therefore, she (the child's soul) is to a certain extent responsible for her choice." How do you like such an intellectual somersault with the outweighing of responsibility from a sick adult to his unsuspecting offspring?

Moreover, representatives of other generations seem to start projecting their unfulfilled dreams and expectations onto the “millennials”. So, we had to deal with the fact that the lack of adequate professional self-esteem inherent in some post-millennials and unjustifiably high starting expectations are interpreted in such a spirit that, they say, “finally, people will not be slaves because they know their own worth”.

I have the right

There would be nothing wrong with that if the representatives of the “new generations” did not get the impression that they “have the right to be like that”. Of course, from a psychotherapeutic point of view, this is probably very good - such an acceptance of one's own characteristics, but what to do with the catastrophic increase in the level of psychological distress just among the representatives of the last two generations, about which fellow psychologists never cease to trumpet?

In addition, there are a lot of serious social institutions, such as the state bureaucracy, the army, the police, which “sharpen” people to their own standards and are not ready to “accept” any other specifics. It is not for nothing that all employees of such structures after a short period of service become similar to each other, like close relatives. Otherwise, people will not survive in such systems.

Where do the legs grow from?

To begin with, it is worth paying attention to the "Eurocentrism" of all reasoning about differences between generations. After all, we are talking about residents of countries belonging to the conditionally "Western civilization", whose increased standard of living determines the possibility of the appearance of most of the above "features", since most of them are directly related to the availability of unhindered access to network technologies.

It is also logical to assume that all these "intergenerational features" are created with the close participation of the parental generation. After all, all the time you come across couples whose one-year-old child behaves exceptionally decently in public places only because his attention is firmly riveted to some gadget. Conveniently, I don’t argue, but you should not complain later that “he does not see and hear you”.

Remarkable stories also happen to young mothers, who at first cannot regulate what their children watch on TV, and after a while begin to hysterically accuse the TV that “shows such horror” on it.

Cultural affairs

The problem is that, by and large, culture has ceased to be viewed as a way of forming a certain type of person and a way of establishing connectivity between generations.

Now the achievements of previous generations are taken to be perceived outside the historical context, solely as a product that future generations have the right to use at their own discretion. And when this style of upbringing turns into a mass phenomenon, its fruits involuntarily begin to be perceived as an "irreversible process" that sets an objective reality.

The primacy of youth

By the way, the prevailing philosophy of the "primacy of the young generation" that prevails in the world threatens all previous generations with not the most pleasant consequences. After all, if you have not specifically raised one or two decent descendants for yourself who will take care of you in old age, then it becomes scary, because in the mass consciousness this "option" is no longer there, and the size of the average post-Soviet retirement wallet is unlikely to attract many outside helpers.

As a matter of fact, everyone is frightened by the fact that, they say, look, if you do not find a common language with the "newcomers", then what will you do next? But nothing! History remembers cases when whole generations turned out to be superfluous in the chain of development - and nothing, humanity somehow survived. Because already on the territory of the post-Soviet states, all these "features" of millennials do not look so convincing and unambiguous.