My fellow millennials, I am going to hold your hand when I say this: we are not young anymore. We are not old yet, not by a long shot, but no one means us when they are talking about “the young generation”.
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.
It’s never easy to pass the torch, but my generation seems to be having a particularly difficult time with it, and I think I know why. The millennial, as an identity, is one that has been deeply connected with youth, and not always in a good way.
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.
We were the first to be called “woke” by the conservative press and when we weren’t taking a mental health day to heal our hurt feelings, we were simultaneously wreaking havoc on society with our unreasonable insistence on inclusive language and love of avocado toast. We invented cancel culture. It was all complete nonsense, but that didn’t stop a media hysteria that attacked us as what Clint Eastwood called “the pussy generation”.
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.
Only now, we are not young anymore. We are the same age as the people who once sneered at us, and what’s more, there are not one but two younger generations (Gen Z and Gen Alpha), snapping at our heels. Needless to say, this is causing something of an identity crisis among the generation that was relentlessly attacked for being what Time called “lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents”.
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”.
But while the Boomers came to be defined by the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s, and Gen X, also known as the “slacker generation,” were grungy, nihilistic, and angry, the millennial came to be thought of as a stunted adults who would get triggered and cry when our feelings got hurt. Our very identity has been infantilized from the start, which was fine when we were young adults, but now we are just adult adults – and many of us are still living with our parents.
Is it any wonder that recognising we are the middle-aged people in the room is proving so hard for so many?
Only a few weeks ago, The Guardian ran an article titled “Cringe! How millennials became uncool” and asked, “how did we get here?” “Because we grew up!” I shouted at my phone as I read it. Of course the younger generation think we’re morons, that’s their job! It’ll happen to them too in a couple of years. You wait until Generation Alpha start to come online, and even then, their time will come.
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.
The average house in the UK now costs £268,087, but the average salary is £37,430. There are no “jobs for life” to walk into after school anymore. The numbers of us side hustling with one or more jobs just to be able to afford the rent is insane. Owing to multiple recessions and a pandemic, we have had to delay marriage, childbearing, and the mere mention of retirement can bring a millennial to tears. It’s been a rough ride that has prevented an entire generation from maturing as quickly as their predecessors.
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.
But such circumstances do seem to have engendered a resistance to recognising the fact that we are not young anymore. For example, I have friends in their 40s who still talk about which Harry Potter house they are in for goodness’s sake, or say they are “adulting” when they manage to pay a bill on time. I know grown adult men who spend every spare moment they have playing computer games, like teenagers. I have lost count of the number of fellow millennials who I’ve heard say something like, “I know I don’t look like I am in my 40s,” when they absolutely and most certainly do. In fact, they have teenagers of their own!
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.
Perhaps our inability to grow up sensibly will become an asset? If nothing else, we are young at heart. Given our familiarity with communal living, I imagine the millennial care home will be an absolute riot.
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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