THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION
Recently,
Joel Stein of Time
wrote
an article about "why Millennials will save us all." Stein
states "I am about to do what old people have done throughout
history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and
shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from
respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my
great-grandparents, I have proof. Here's the cold, hard data: The
incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times
as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65
or older, according to ... National Institutes of Health ..."
Stein
goes on to say "[m]illennials consist, depending on whom you
ask, of people born from 1980 to 2000. To put it more simply for
them, since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their
heads, thanks to computers, the group is made up mostly of teens and
20-somethings. At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age
grouping in American history. Each country's millennials are
different, but because of globalization, social media, the exporting
of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials worldwide are
more similar to one another than to older generations within their
nations. Even in China, where family history is more important than
any individual, the Internet, urbanization and the one-child policy
have created a generation as overconfident and self-involved as the
Western one. And these aren't just rich-kid problems: poor
millennials have even higher rates of narcissism, materialism and
technology addiction in their ghetto-fabulous lives."
Stein's
warning is "[t]hey are the most threatening and exciting
generation since the baby boomers brought about social revolution,
not because they're trying to take over the Establishment but because
they're growing up without one. The Industrial Revolution made
individuals far more powerful--they could move to a city, start a
business, read and form organizations. The information revolution has
further empowered individuals by handing them the technology to
compete against huge organizations: hackers vs. corporations,
bloggers vs. newspapers, terrorists vs. nation-states, YouTube
directors vs. studios, app-makers vs. entire industries. Millennials
don't need us. That's why we're scared of them."
So,
what do Millenials mean for the NPO sector? Baby Boomers established
the most recent crop of nonprofit entities in the 1960s, 70s and 80s
(youth centers, advocacy groups, family service providers, job
programs, and sundry other establishments). Are Millenials destined
to expand the sector? Are they destined to enhance the sector? Are
they destined to better the sector? Or (forgive me for even thinking
this) are Millienials going to destroy the sector? According to
Stein, they don't need the ESTABLISHMENT
(a
Baby Boomer phrase — and remember, Baby Boomers wanted to destroy
it also).
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