In recent years, the media landscape has been particularly harsh toward Millennials. Whether Millennials are at school, in the workplace, or at home, their behavior is confounding older generations—prompting many to label this generation as entitled, narcissistic, and lazy. But most of these widely held views betray ignorance about who Millennials really are.
Hedgeye interviewed Demography Sector Head Neil Howe to set the record straight on who Millennials are and why they act the way they do. Below is the first part of a three-part interview. Here, we focus on four common criticisms of Millennials—antisocial behavior, risk-taking, excessive individualism, and narcissism.
Hedgeye: So what are people saying about Millennials today?
NH: These days the headlines about Millennials are hard to read. I recently watched an interview with author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek, who labeled Millennials as “entitled, narcissistic, self-interested, unfocused, and lazy.” He argues that Millennials have been told from a young age that they could have anything they wanted, even if they didn’t deserve it. He also contends that their addiction to technology makes them depressed and unable to form close relationships with others. Although he softens the blows by saying that Millennials’ parents are to blame for their flaws, his assessment is clear: Millennials are a very troubled generation indeed.
Sinek isn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last, to criticize Millennials. In recent years, disparaging Millennials has become a national pastime. Whether it’s books (The Dumbest Generation), cover stories (Time’s “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation”), or videos (Saturday Night Live’s The Millennials skit), Millennials are characterized as self-absorbed, smartphone-addicted sociopaths who are loathed by their elders in every possible way. News organizations like Fox News and Breitbart News often refer to Millennials as “generation snowflake"—that is, over-sheltered, politically correct young people who are obsessed with their own preciousness. (See: “America Revisits Political Correctness.”)
The criticism is unending: Millennials are careless risk-takers. Millennials all live in their parents’ basements because they’re failures. Millennials are depressed. Millennials are impatient because they live in a world of instant gratification. Millennials are stupid because they are too busy looking at their phones and not reading books.
Hedgeye: What do you have to say in response?
NH: I should preface everything I say here with one simple statement based on my extensive research on generations through the centuries: There is no such thing as a good or bad generation. Every generation has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s also fair to say that many negative stereotypes of Millennials are based on kernels of truth. The term “snowflake,” for example, conjures up specialness and risk aversion. And to be sure, Millennials manifest a good deal of both.
But to focus just on these traits in a negative way typically leads to associated claims about Millennials that have no basis in fact. And it tempts us to overlook genuine Millennial strengths that will likely hugely benefit our country in the years to come. Like all rising generations, Millennials see very clearly what older generations—Gen Xers and Boomers—are themselves doing badly. And sooner or later, they will lean on the tiller and change our national direction accordingly.
In short, I’m saying not that the Millennial reality is diametrically the opposite of what these critics are saying. Rather, it’s that the critics’ picture is so wildly and negatively distorted as to be utterly unhelpful.
Hedgeye: OK, you mentioned “special”—which is probably the first thing every Xer and Boomer knows about Millennials. It's often where the ridicule begins. So let’s start there. How special are they?
NH: It’s true. Like any generation raised during an era of moral panic over children—and there have been several of these over the course of American history—Millennials do believe they’re special. It’s what they’ve been told their entire lives. Their parents put “Baby on Board” stickers on their cars after they were born. They were the recipients of legislation like “No Child Left Behind.” They’ve been literally cosseted by high-tech seatbelts and a whole new industry of child protection gear since they first arrived. They’ve had their family fan club protecting and supporting them from day one. It’s hardly a surprise that this generation would have a high self-esteem as a result.
No latchkey guides for them. No child-as-devil horror movies for them. Is this a palpable generational divider between Millennials and the throwaway Xer kids who came just before them? Absolutely.
What I reject, however, is the perverse notion that high self-esteem is in itself a bad thing. I often talk to Xer managers, and I ask them: If you knew nothing else about a new job candidate, which would you prefer, the one with high self-esteem or the one with low self-esteem? Or for that matter, who would you rather meet in a dark alley? Of course, high self-esteem does mean that managers have to use different motivational strategies. Rather than disparage your new hires as trashy and wasted—a strategy that actually might have worked when Xers were young—you need to try something better. Maybe like telling them they’re all very special and that you expect special things from them.
Hedgeye: Critics often point to excessive self-esteem to explain all the negative adjectives they apply to Millennials—namely, antisocial, risk-taking, individualistic, and narcissistic. How do you respond to these charges?
NH: Fine, let’s go through all four, one at a time.
Hedgeye: OK. What about antisocial?
NH: I know of no better indicator of antisocial behavior than violent crime. And violent crime rates among youth have plummeted by an astounding 60% to 75% since the mid-1990s—just when Millennials began to enter their teens. Thanks to Millennials, most core urban areas in America are again habitable. In fact, this generation has accounted for arguably the most dramatic reduction in youth violence in American history. (See: “What’s Behind the Decline in Crime?”)
To see the most recent and accurate data on youth crime, we look at violent crime victimization rates tracked by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. (The youth victimization rate is correlated to the youth offender rate, since research shows that most crimes against youths are perpetrated by youths.) Here too, we see that the steepest declines in violent crime victimization have occurred within the youngest age brackets.
Boomers and Xers, by contrast, both helped drive crime rates up during their youth years. What’s more, the recent decline in crime rates has been much steeper for younger than for older age brackets, which has led to a rapid aging of U.S. prison populations. (See: “Growing Old Behind Bars.”)
Looking beyond crime, other forms of violent behavior as measured by the CDC (such as carrying a weapon to school or getting into a physical fight) have also been on a steady decline.
Bottom line: If violence is your indicator of antisocial behavior, Millennials are innocent as charged.
Hedgeye: Case closed I guess. So what about risk-taking?
NH: As they have matured, Millennials have proven at every age to be a risk-averse generation. From 1991 to 2015, Millennials have brought about significant linear declines in the prevalence of high school students engaging in the vast majority of “youth risk behaviors” monitored by the CDC. These include not wearing a bicycle helmet or seatbelt, having sex, drinking alcohol, and smoking cigarettes, among other things.
And it’s not just personal risks that Millennials are avoiding. As they’ve grown older, they’re avoiding financial ones as well. Millennials aren’t gambling like their elders—preferring games that require at least some skill over sheer chance. (See our recent note on the subject: “Winners and Losers in the Casino Industry.”) Bars and nightclubs are closing across America as young adults prefer to meet in less dark and dangerous places. (See: “Where the Wild Things Aren’t.”) Another gamble Millennials aren’t willing to take is the stock market. According to a 2016 Harris Poll, 79% of Millennials are not currently investing in the stock market.
So if you’re looking for risk-taking, you’ve got the wrong generation. In fact—as with crime—you might want to swing the table around and put older generations in the dock. Boomers and Xers, for example, are triggering steep rises in risk-taking indicators across the board in the 45-to-70 age brackets—everything from divorce, STDs, bankruptcy, and homelessness to opioid use, alcoholism, and motorcycle accidents. Why so much attention on Millennials, who are doing their best to keep their heads down?
Hedgeye: Is anyone taking on the Boomers?
NH: Not many. There is an interesting new book out now by Bruce Gibney—with the provocative title A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America—summarizing many of these not-so-flattering indicators. And of course there was plenty of anti-Boomer editorializing after the Trump-Clinton presidential contest, which struck new highs in acrimony and vulgarity. But by and large, it’s Boomers who judge, and it’s other generations—currently Millennials—who are judged.
Hedgeye: Let’s get back to Millennials. Why are they so unwilling to take risks?
NH: For most Millennials, the real deterrent against risk-taking is the fear of letting others down, especially family and friends. Even credit scores have become a big deal for Millennials (see: “Did You Know? Popping the (Credit Score) Question”)—a sign that institutional shame, which never bothered most of their parents, is beginning to matter again.
The reality is that Millennials have seen firsthand how self-defeating risk-taking can be. They watched Boomers and Xers suffer mightily after investing in the wrong home, trusting the wrong broker—or even marrying the wrong spouse and turning too eagerly to the wrong drug. They’ve learned from their elders’ mistakes and are trying to avoid risky situations as a result.
Because they’ve been told they’re special, they think it really matters if bad things happen to them. Lo and behold one of the many benefits of having a high self-esteem: more prudent behavior.
Hedgeye: Let’s move on. What about individualism?
NH: The supposed “individualism” of Millennials is largely a creation of older observers who take their habits out of context. Yes, Millennials may be taking “selfies,” but they are also receiving selfies from their friends. Yes, they’re staring at their smartphones rather than at you, but they’re checking their social media feeds to see what their family and friends are doing next weekend. For Millennials, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram are social. They’re more about staying close to others than about admiring themselves.
In fact, Millennials are the generation that gave birth to “social media” on the Internet, that democratized “community service” in schools and workplaces, and that pioneered the so-called “sharing economy” among consumers.
Is there anything that Millennials don’t share? More than earlier generations of youth, they share living quarters (with Mom and Dad or friends), they share rides (through ride services), they share storage (on the “cloud”), and they share every category of consumer durable (from bikes and tools to clothes and jewelry).
Millennials’ willingness to be dependent on others marks a real generational break from DIY Gen Xers and lock-‘n-load Boomers. And it’s not a break in the direction of individualism. Critics get this totally wrong. Indeed, I would say that Millennials’ strong group orientation is actually a potential weakness they will have to deal with as they grow older.
Hedgeye: And finally, let’s not forget about narcissism. Who makes that charge?
NH: Ah, you must be referring to Jean Twenge, psychology professor at San Diego State. Author of Generation Me, she is probably the first and most persistent of all Millennial-bashers. Like me, she thinks generational differences are important. But unlike me, she sees no rhythm of correction or compensation in generational change. Instead, she is relentlessly declinist: Americans were pretty altruistic until Boomers came along, and then rampant selfishness—she uses “narcissism” as a term of art—has grown worse with every subsequent generation, from Boomers to Xers and then from Xers to Millennials.
She once famously announced that “young people born after 1982 are the most narcissistic generation in recent history”—and in case anyone misses the point, she elsewhere explains that “narcissism is one the few personality traits that psychologists agree is almost completely negative.”
It will not surprise you that I disagree entirely with most of her findings. Her popular books, chock-full of lurid anecdotes about misbehaving youth, actually cite very little data about the behavior or attitudes of this generation as a whole. There’s a reason for that: The data seldom make her point. She does rely heavily on some narrow and fairly technical survey instruments, including something called the “Narcissism Personality Inventory.” For various reasons, I think these instruments are suspect—and her use of them has been duly criticized by other academics.
Part two of this interview will deal with other common criticisms levied against Millennials, such as their reputation as job-hoppers.
