Millennials: The Characteristics

of the Tech-Savvy Generation

Merry A. Sompie (1701320680)
Born within a range year of the early 1980s to early 2000s (Main, 2013), the
Millennial Generation or simply Millennials are now more than 80 million people around
the world (Solomon, 2014) with the age varied from 15 to 30. They are the last generation
that was born in the 20
th
century, and also the biggest one. Millennials are very different with
their preceding generations, mostly because they were born and grew up with technology and
the Internet, thus creating the term Net Generation, because some of them cannot even
remember the time when there was no Internet (Rouse, 2011). Even though they are most
recognized for their relations to technology, Millennials also have other characteristics that
define them. The shared characteristics of those who are called the Millennial Generation can
be divided by their general traits, relations with media and technology, social skills, view of
marriage, and religious view.
Like other generations, Millennials traits tend to be generalized. They are seen by
others as confident, self-expressive, narssistic, family-oriented, and open to changes. They
are confident and ambitious, especially of their careers (Gibson, 2013). Young entrepeneurs
that have been successful, like Kevin Systrom (CEO and co-founder of Instagram) and Mark
Zuckerberg (CEO and founder of Facebook), are their inspirations; making them believe that
there is no limit in what they can reach. They are also self-expressive and narssistic
nicknamed the Generation Me as most of them have accounts on one or more social
networking sites or Social Media (Pew Research Center, 2010) that allow them to tell the
world about themselves and their lives in many ways, including but not limited to text,
image or photo, video, audio, or a combination of two or more. Millennials are also family-
oriented, placing family first before work, thus leading to their preferrence to flexible
working hours, something that the older generations may interpret as being lazy (Gibson,
2013). Giving the most agree votes on same-sex marriage, interracial dating, and equal
rights for minorities, Millennials are also defined as more open-minded than the other
generations (Main, 2013; Pew Research Center, 2010). Another one of their described traits
is that they are multitaskers they are able to do more than one thing at the same time, which
means they can text or go through Social Media when doing something else (Abbot, 2013).
One thing that is very distinctive about Millennials is, as stated before, their relations
with technology, having spent hours per day with gadgets and the Internet, half working or
studying and half playing or refreshing. According to Andersons (2011, para. 31) statement
in his web article, [] roughly one-third of Millennials waking lives are spent on a
computer, Millennials apparently live with technology. As almost every human work can be
done through computer in this era, Millennials have accepted technology as a part of their
lives that cannot be taken: Millennials, as stated earlier in the essay, were born and grew up
with technology and the Internet, thus making the supposedly new stuff that can connect
people just a norm for them, while the older generations are impressed by what Millennials
think as little changes (Solomon, 2014). Despite the nickname Net Generation, most of
Millennials prefer to communicate by phone when not physically be with the other person.
The younger Millennials prefer to text (Anderson, 2011). Though having many ways to
communicate, Social Media is what really makes Millennials around the world connected to
each other. It is an easy and simple way to communicate through different kinds of media
information, and it can spread the news of ones choice to his or her family and friends by
choice with one click.
Many say that Millennials are team players, but most of the youngsters in the
generation themselves say that one must be careful when building a relationship with another,
noting that they are skeptical, less trusting of others. This is very different to the previous
generations who are trusting of each other, even from just the first encounter (Pew Research
Center, 2010). Despite the fact, Millennials have a positive view of social diversities in their
communities. They are the generation that have the most supports given to the rights of gay
and lesbian marriages and equality for minorities (Main, 2013; Pew Research Center, 2010).
They also have a positive outlook for the results of interracial and same-sex marriages
(Wilson, 2014).
Though Millennials grew up at the time when divorces are often found and some of
them have only one parent, most of them does not agree to the idea that they will marry more
than once (Anderson, 2011). Millennials have an older age standards to marry that they set
themselves than the previous generations, learning from the fact that only a little percent of
them stated to have married when they reach the age of the 30s (Wilson, 2014). That is where
the other name of the Millennial Generation, Peter Pan Generation, is based upon: the
Millennials tendency to delay adulthood by leaving marriage, also career and mortgage to
later time to do (Main, 2013).
In 2010, Pew Research Center of Social and Demographic Trends reported that there
is one person that does not have a religion of every four Millennials (Pew Research Center,
2010, p. 86). Not having religion not necessarily means not believing, but it is likely that
most of Millennials are less likely to care about religious or spiritual matters than the
previous generations, placing religious or spiritual matters after family, friends, career,
education, and marriage (Anderson, 2011). Compared to the preceding generations, the
Millennial Generation is the least religious one, displaying a decreasing attendance to
religious institutions like Church, Vihara, or Mosque since the previous generation
(Anderson, 2011). Though most of them rarely or even do not attend religious services, some
have stated that they still pray (Pew Research Center, 2010).
The explanations above have explained that even though Millennials are the
generation that is said to be always related to technology, they also have many other
characteristics that differentiate them from other generations, that is diversed from their traits,
relations with technology, social skills, view of marriage, and religious view. They draw a
new tradition of their own that will soon replace the old tradition of the older generations as
they grow up and set their place in the community. But, even though they can be generalized,
each of the teenagers, young adults, and adults of the Millennial Generation are a complex
being of their own that have more to them than what can be generalized and described as the
Millennials Characteristics and Traits.
References
Abbot, L. (2013, December 4). 8 Millennials Traits That You Should Know About Before
You Hire Them. Retrieved from http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2013/12/8-
millennials-traits-you-should-know-about-before-you-hire-them
Anderson, K. (2011). The Millennial Generation The Future of Christianity in America.
Retrieved from
http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.6601055/k.7A91/The_Millennial_Gene
ration.htm
Gibson, R. (2013, March 31). Generation Y Characteristics. Retrieved from
http://www.generationy.com/characteristics/
Main, D. (2013, July 9). Who Are the Millennials?. Retrieved from
http://www.livescience.com/38061-millennials-generation-y.html
Pew Research Center, Social & Demographic Trends Project. (2010, February). Millennials:
Confident. Connected. Open to Change. Retrieved from
http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-
change.pdf
Rouse, M. (2011, March). millennials (millennials generation). Retrieved from
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/millennials-millennial-generation
Solomon, M. (2014, April 21). Millennials, Biggest Generation Of Customers Ever, Dont
Care About The Internet. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2014/04/21/millennials-the-biggest-
generation-of-customers-ever-dont-care-about-the-internet/
Wilson, R. (2014, March 7). More diverse Millennial generation rewrites traditions.
Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/07/more-
diverse-millennial-generation-rewrites-traditions/