The Millennials The “Me Me Me Generation” by Joel Stein is a publication by The Time
The Millennials
The “Me Me Me Generation” by Joel Stein is a publication by The Time, the organization Joel Stein worked as a columnist. Published in May 20, 2013, the publication was as a result of the commonality amongst the millennial of today across the world unlike other groups such as the aging and the senior adults. The content of the publication details of the narcissistic personality disorder amongst the millennials; those born after 1980. It also highlights how the millennials are greatly influenced by technology and living a fast life (Stein, 2013). Despite the similarity of the millennials, the impact they can have on organizations is formidable.
The internet world is responsible for all the impacts of the millennials in the world. The attraction towards fames and material wealth cuts across all millennials inclusive of the rich, the poor and the middle-class. They have proven to be self-dependent as they have a rivalry for almost everything in the society; bloggers vs newspapers and hackers vs corporations among others (Stein, 2013). The increasing life expectancy also prolongs the lives in this stage; they postpone decisions such as marriage and other basic decisions including moving out of their parent’s home; their connection to the digital world has made them a little less creative.
This publication is effective especially in explaining the impact of technology to the millennial’s world; it provides how significant the aspects such as twitter and Facebook have connected the world and the western culture has spread all over the world and especially amongst the millennials. The publication is also ineffective as it has generalized some of the effects of the technology to these group such as creativity loss and preferences of life status. This paper will critique how effective and how ineffective the publication is as far as the millennials are concerned.
Indeed the narcissism amongst people in their 20’s is high compared to the aging beyond 50; this is according to a research conducted by the National Institute of Health. This effectively proves that narcissism has increased as 58% more college students scored higher in the narcissism scale in the year 2009 compared to 1982 (Stein, 2013). This is supported by the rationale that the millennials are fame obsessed and want to be associated with the famous people in the society through social media such as celebrities and great personalities. However, they are not inclined to share the fame or the prowess they achieve and as such they shy away from positions requiring them to lead; whether in organizations of or in the political field. This is as a result of their morality being guided what they think is right or wrong and not necessarily what the law says. The impact of the millennials in the world is as a result of parents in the 1980’s onwards focusing on building the self-esteem of the children; this rationale is supported by the fact that increased self-esteem increases the creativity of the children and makes them perform better in academics (Stein, 2013). However, self-esteem does not sustain the excellence and the relationships it forms in the children; leading to the almost similar characters across the world for those in their 20’s.
The publication is ineffective in some aspects as it generalizes some factors that are of disparity amongst the millennials (Stein, 2013). The publication calls out the millennials as lazy but in essence, only a small percentage of them are lazy; this is because they are financially responsible and most of them use their influence on social media to start small business such as turning their twitter followers into their market platform for a product they want to sell among others. Most of the millennials are proactive in making capital as they are attracted by lavish lifestyle and would want to live lavishly.
The millennials are indeed influenced by social media and the spread of western culture through the media; however, Joel Stein would be a bit biased when he concludes that they are quite lazy. They are self-involved and perceive entitlement as an adaptation to the world of abundance. This rationale is supported by the fact that had technology existed beyond the 1950’s, then the aging generation in the world would have been influenced similarly to the millennial generation. Joel Stein’s publication almost right in all aspects talked about the millennials; this achieves the purpose of the publication (Stein, 2013). However, the aspect of concluding that the millennials are lazy is not achieved as their impact is greatly felt in the world and even business moguls are interested in learning the preferences of this group as they form a large part of the world population. DreamWorks is a true a living exhibit of how productive the millennials are. The organization’s employees are over 2000 with 96% of them being under the age of 30. The organization has a high retention rate; this is evident by the success of the organization in its productions. The military also appraises this group as the people who would think fast before acting unlike the previous troops who would just do as they are told without questioning the reasoning of the actions and making the right decisions.
However, the decline of this group in involvement in leadership matters and positions of responsibilities such as CEO is worrying; a new way to motivate the involvement of the millennials in the leadership role and reduction of the narcissistic traits in them should be pursued in order to control the impacts of the group to the world.
