We are no longer the radical, baby-faced youngsters that the press once endlessly obsessed over and mocked. We have grown up. The very youngest of us are turning 29 this year while our oldest members are turning 44. I am in the latter category and am what has been charmingly referred to as a “geriatric millennial.” But the bulk of us are now inescapably, categorically middle aged.
We were the generation constructed in the media as being unable to properly function in the adult world without adjustments being made. Read any newspaper between 2010 and 2020 and you’ll find a story about us annoying youngsters demanding “safe spaces”, “trigger warnings” and “support animals” just to be able to go into work. If there wasn’t a participation trophy on offer, then frankly we weren’t going to play.
For a few brief but brilliant years, the millennial was portrayed as everything that was wrong with the modern world. In 2013, Time Magazine called us the “Me Me Me Generation,” and it was all because we were spoilt, entitled brats who refused to respect our elders and wanted to do things differently. It was marvellous. We were marvellous. We were doing exactly what young people are supposed to do; namely, pissing the old folk off.
Technically, we aren’t millennials, we are Generation Y, as we came immediately after Generation X, but the truth is that the whole generational identity thing is bollocks. Arbitrarily attributing personality types to groups of people based on when they were born is on par with star signs and online quizzes to find out which Power Ranger you are. It is also a very recent form of categorisation and began with the so-called Baby Boomers because that was a generation defined by a significant, post war spike in birth rates. It was so pronounced that governments around the world needed a word to capture what was going on, hence “baby boomers”.
Is it any wonder that recognising we are the middle-aged people in the room is proving so hard for so many?
Not only has the millennial long been defined by being young, but global events have conspired against us to prevent us from hitting the usual milestones. As an elder millennial, I fully recognise that my generation has become stuck in a form of arrested development. Times have been particularly cruel to us. Through no fault of our own, we are significantly more likely to still be living at home with our parents than the older generations.
I have friends in their 40s who are still living with their parents or who are still house sharing with flatmates, just as they did when they were students. They all have jobs and work very hard, but that’s no longer enough. This wasn’t the deal! We were raised to believe that if you got a job and an education and worked hard, you would be able to afford to do things like grow up, buy a home, have children, and retire. No one said if you get two jobs and work hard you can share a house with eight other people and live like a student for the next 20 years.
The millennial identity is due for a reckoning. Occasionally I still see a headline blaming millennials for this and that when clearly, they mean young people, i.e. Gen Z. Most millennials are busy complaining about back ache, and enjoying sitting quietly on the sofa and eating snacks, but this is no bad thing. I look forward to seeing how the middle-aged millennial persona develops.
But it is time for everyone to accept that we have grown up, even that we are now getting on a bit. I am so sorry.
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