How millennials were raised:
Boomer parents are protective of their millennial youths. They seek out, identify and remove all kinds of obstacles that are in the path of their children’s road to success. We, the millennials expect everything to be handed down to us as if we are entitled to it and without it, we won’t be able to survive in this world. And due to the protective parents, teachers and other people are being blamed whenever things go wrong hence it will develop the feelings that we are always right no matter what situation we are in and refuse to listen to other people’s advice. This is because they are brought up in an environment that they are seen as being superior than others. Financially, the parents would provide money to sponsor their child’s academic expenses instead of making their child work hard to earn a source of income. Due to their actions of not letting their children work, they became spoilt and thus not knowing how act on their own and hence, they could not survive the real challenges in the world. The previous generation actually make their children work for something on their own while we the millennials which were born with a silver spoon in our mouth. It is today’s mindset that being born in a well-off family may provide a strong foundation for a better future in the sense of financial stability. It is not only that, being born into a well-off family usually may provide better upbringing.
Social media :
We are living in an increasingly self-centered society. Can we connect this to the rise in narcissism to social media ? To begin with, earlier generation did not have advanced technology like smartphones which could connect to social medias compared to today’s millennials. Social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has become a distraction to us millennials until we are not aware of our surrounding. We tend to check our phones every hour to keep updated on the news posted by our friends or followers and feel special about knowing certain information. Earlier generation are not exposed to these kind of platforms as they only update their personal information to their close friends and family. Social media encourages self-promotion as we, millennials tend to generate the best photos and the most attractive bits of ourselves because we believe that others are always paying attention to what we are doing which gradually leads to unrealistic portrait of ourselves. This can have a negative effect on our followers due to social media users are likely to compare themselves to others and become inferior about themselves. Hence, we can conclude that social media creates a generation that tries to frame themselves in a way that is socially acceptable or attractive and that today’s millennials are more self-centred than ever before due to the presence of social media.
Constant desire:
Other than that, this can be proven true as millennials have a constant desire to promote themselves among peers. For an instance in today’s generation, we could see that a lot of us are very competitive among each other. This trait though can be regarded as a positive trait as it drives a person to be better, but it also might turn to be a negative one since it would make a person become overworked to be seen superior than the people around them, which then leads a person to become self-centered. This issue starts when the millennials tend to compare their lifestyle and even their social and educational standards with the people around them. It is arguable to say that such culture has been created ever since in the earlier generation but the pressure of promoting such things was not as strong as it is today. Back in their days for example, the people in the earlier generation might think that going to the university is good enough whilst today, being a Bachelor’s degree holder is said doubtable to guarantee a job placement for some people (which can be supported by the increase in number of unemployed undergraduate). It is therefore what makes the millenials feel the need to keep updating of any achievements that they make. This could be the issue which helps to arise such urge in the millennials to compare what they have with the people around them in order to promote themselves hence, creating a self-centered generation like what it is said in this essay.
Exaggeration:
Despite all statements mentioning how self-centered we millenials are, it could just plain exaggeration by older generation themselves. Forget self-centred, millennials could be the most open-minded, educated and ambitious generations there is yet. When some may criticise them for not being able to retain a job, maybe they just want to be challenged further. When critics shoot millenials for being demanding, maybe they really believe they can change the world, and hence strive for the best. Maybe, the fact that self-centred has become a common label is due to the fact that it is a ‘trend’ to just call every millenial self-centred. These stereotypes eventually becoming self-fulfilling prophecies because people are worried about confirming them. In other words, if millennials keep hearing that they’re immature and irresponsible, they may start to believe it. This stereotyping eventually will create a harmful bias. If 20 year olds were expected to have a superiority complex, then people may respond differently to them than they would have otherwise. A person stopping by the street to check on his phone, may be counting likes on Instagram, or he may just be searching for the nearest route to his destination. A person spending his time “updating his status” may be oversharing personal information, or he may be trying to find interested parties to adopt a street cat he just saved.
The question comes down to this, why is there exaggeration in the first place? In general, lamenting on the younger generation may be something all generations do, no matter which generation you come from. There are many reasons as to why the stereotype of older generations towards millennials can be regarded as exaggeration. Perhaps, the older generation are only doing this because they forgot how they used to act when they were young. At an age where you are developing and finding your identity, it makes sense to focus on finding your true self and goals. Narcissism does in fact, tend to decrease as you age.
Other than that, there is the undeniable fact that every generation is concern about the next generation, and in fact thinks their generation is unique to the next. There was the Me Generation, being compared against the Baby Boomers generation and now the baton has been passed down to us, the Me Me Me generation, being compared against the Me Generation, in some circumstances, against the Baby Boomers generation. Compared to previous generations, people just generally see young adults today as less hardworking, lazy, less caring and more self-centered.
Misunderstood- harmless confidence
Millennials like us have begun to forge our confidence and tend to be more self- expressive, upbeat and open to changes since the start of our teens life. These kind of expressions are often mistaken as egoistic and self- centred as we are more ethnically and racially diverse than the previous generations. We are less likely to have served in military and are not as religious as they were since we have grown in a liberal world where we are allowed to voice out our dissatisfactions vocally and more open to changes than the previous generation. Relating to the statements made regarding social media, being confident and expressive in a way you want to influence and motivate others has always been mistaken as being self- centred or narcissistic. It always depends on the person who views the posts and their behaviour or reaction to the posts. Being self- centred means you are focusing on your own needs, taking care of yourself and ignoring others needs in a way you think other people are less important or has lesser value than you are. On the other hand, confidence is when you know how to take care of yourself without disqualifying or looking down on other people in such manner that they feel unimportant when they are with us. In conclusion, being confident with ourselves is inequivalent to being self- centred in which these two traits differ a lot from one another.