I imagine if you’ve been born anywhere within the late 90’s/2000’s you’ve more than likely overheard an older person complain about you or the group they’ve assigned you to, “the millennials.”
They’ll typically say something along the lines of, “Those millennials are bringing down our culture with their smart phones.”
A common stereotype millennials catch are that we are lazy, narcissistic, addicted to our tech (mainly phones), and are too far into ourselves to look out into what’s going on our world, AKA look at the news. However, a recent study from the PEW Research Center not only suggests those perceptions are wrong, but something far more interesting about our “slacker generation” and the generations of old.
WSBTV reported the study showing that not only do 18-29 year olds read the news, but they prefer to read it and read it online. The graph shows that 42 percent of the said millennials prefer to read their news which is higher than any other generations, but also the method of getting news online for the age group is a staggering 80 percent!
What’s fascinating but expected is that the older generations, including the Baby Boomers, prefer to get their news from the T.V. Their numbers where at 58 percent of surveyors in their age group which is larger than the younger generations by a margin.
So what does this all mean? It means that everyone needs to think twice before they criticize someone they caught staring at their cell phone. Harsh criticism would never follow a person on the train reading a newspaper or a student in the park reading a book. In the age of technology, however, that may be exactly what those “narcissistic” millennials are doing… they’ve just found a way to do it with a much smaller and more convenient device.
