To Old People: A Lesson on Generation Y

Okay, okay! I know I am getting a lecture because obviously it is so rude I had the gall to call you old. Chances are, however, that I attracted exactly my target audience by doing just that!

... Or perhaps not, because a lot of people from my generation are feeling old before their time and might have also been sucked in by my title. Here's the thing, you probably don't like being called old if you are a Gen X, Baby Boomer, or whatever else it is you call yourselves in studies that are created to show how different Gen X and Gen Y are. I am from what you call the Millennial generation or Gen Y. Today someone from Gen X called me something I have heard a number of times, that I wanted to set straight. This misinformed individual believed that young people today (i.e. Gen Y) are extremely apathetic and need to be bribed and otherwise coerced into doing pretty much anything. I hear this a lot. "Young people are lazy. Young people are apathetic. Young people are sarcastic, dispassionate , jaded."

I'm here to tell you something very important about Gen Y and the way they behave, that might make you think differently next time you have an encounter with a young person. (And yes, if you are going to call me a young person and/or apathetic I am going to call you an old person. Deal with it!) Here's the secret: we are not really apathetic. The truth about my generation is that we were raised immersed in technology and media bombardment. The sense of apathy you get from us is actually a common form of mental and emotional protection we have formed as a generation. It can be argued that the instant access to pretty much any information we could want (or not want) has led to us losing a sense of innocence at an early age. We were denied childhood through the horrors of the things we saw on television or stumbled across on the internet. We were never sheltered. We grew up fast in some sense. We built shells around ourselves because we just had so much access to too much information so fast that it was too much for our emotions to handle. Hence, what you discern to be apathy. We are never apathetic. Many things touch us deeply. We are loving and compassionate and caring individuals. We are also highly aware of events happening around the world.

Don't expect us to express our dissatisfaction with things in the same way Gen X has. We grew up in a world that expected us to get university degrees, respect (or perhaps fear) authority, and entertain ourselves in our downtime with technology. That has shaped us. Current changes in law and governments around the world have left us feeling somewhat helpless. Even in democratic nations we often feel our opinions and our votes do not count. To a certain extent that is true, because the number of Gen X voters is larger than the number of Gen Y voters in many cases. The current economical situation has left us feeling insecure because let's face it... we just spent thousands of dollars on university and then at some point found out that this doesn't guarantee us a job. A lot of us owe governments we don't really believe in, large chunks of money. We have years worth of debt and Gen Y does not like to take risks.

We're not apathetic. Many of us are angry. Many of us want change, but we are afraid. We have been shaped through television and media and through financial circumstances to believe that we are helpless. We have been made to feel dependent on the government. We have been shown as disrespectful, anti-authority figures who might hurt members of Gen X on the television. It is dividing our generations when really we are in this together. That's why we often don't read the newspaper or watch the news. We believe the world is full of a lot of bad things and that media is often biased. The media is like a slow poison and we have withdrawn from it.

If you want us to stand for change stand with us. We are broad picture people with a desire for change. Lots of change. Don't narrow the focus. We want equality. We want freedom of speech. We believe in humanitarian aid. We want to help people, on a grassroots level. We want to make a difference. We want to feel strongly the human emotions of the individuals we help.

So don't say Gen Y is apathetic. We have strong beliefs we often do not voice because in the past when we tried our ideas were just shot down. So listen closely. Befriend us, and we'll tell you what we think, what we feel, and what we believe.