millennial

millennial, term used to describe a person born between 1981 and 1996, though different sources can vary by a year or two. It was first used in the book Generations (1991) by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who felt it was an appropriate name for the first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium. Millennials are the cohort between Generation X (Gen X; defined as those born between 1965 and 1980) and Generation Z (Gen Z; defined as those born from about 1997 to the early 2010s).

Where were you when …? The events that defined the generations

Defining events and characteristics

Comprising some 72 million individuals in the United States, millennials surpassed the baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) to become the largest generation of adults in 2019. Millennials in the United States grew up during a period of relative stability and economic prosperity. In their 2000 book, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, Howe and Strauss noted that millennials had “never known a year in which America doesn’t get richer.” The September 11, 2001, attacks, however, punctured the semblance of security millennials had known up until then. Most were old enough to remember the events and to recognize their significance. The terrorist attacks were the first of a number of crises that defined millennials’ adulthoods; others were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose costly failures made millennials question the idea of American exceptionalism; and the Great Recession of 2007–09, which contributed to millennials’ difficulty in achieving the same milestones and affluence of earlier generations. Some scholars have remarked that millennials in the West are the first modern generation to be economically worse off than their parents. This generation, however, is also known for being adaptable. Indeed, they are considered the first digital generation, quickly acclimating to new technologies, including smartphones, social media, and streaming entertainment. They are the generation that has received the most formal education. They are also more diverse and more politically liberal when compared with earlier generations (later generations show signs of eventually surpassing millennials in many of these categories).

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The rise of the Internet

One of the defining characteristics of millennials around the world is that they came of age during an era of major technological shifts, especially those associated with the rise of the Internet. In the United States, millennials are the first generation to have access to computers, cell phones, and smartphones from a young age. As young adults, they were the target consumers for social media and streaming entertainment. The rapid advancement of technology, however, created a nuanced subcohort. Younger millennials, for example, tend to be more comfortable with technology than older millennials. Moreover, millennials’ experiences with the Internet vary around the globe, depending on the reliability of their country’s networks. Although parts of the non-Western world are rapidly growing their networks, Internet access remains less reliable in those places than in the West.

Millennials are the first generation to integrate all manner of digital technology into their daily lives. They use social media to keep up with friends (using websites such as Facebook and apps such as Instagram and TikTok on their phones), date (on apps that include Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge), network (on the website LinkedIn), shop (on Amazon and other websites), and consume entertainment (using YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, and others). Irish author Sally Rooney, who has been called “the first great millennial novelist,” skillfully captures the types of conversations young people have over e-mail and text and how those technology-based exchanges often result in miscommunication and isolation.

Millennials, however, are not just passive users of technology. They are some of its main drivers. Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps one of the most famous millennials, grew Facebook from a college directory into a powerful and influential social networking website over the course of 10 years. Other millennial innovators include Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and TikTok developer Zhang Yiming.

With the proliferation of streaming services for music, sports, movies, and television, millennials were the first young adults to have access to a broad range of media suited to their specific tastes. Millennials therefore may not have popularized one specific style of music, as did the Silent Generation (those typically born between 1925 and 1945) with rock and roll and Gen X with hip-hop and grunge, but millennials offered a diverse mix of megastars with lasting influence. These millennial performers include Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Drake, Cardi B, and Lady Gaga. Moreover, streaming services offered new avenues for diverse voices. Millennial Issa Rae loosely adapted her YouTube series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (2011–13) into the hit HBO show Insecure (2016–21), which follows two Black women living in Los Angeles. Comedy Central’s Broad City (2014–19), which recounts the misadventures of two hapless millennial women, was also picked up this way; it came from Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s YouTube series (2010–11) of the same name.

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The great recession and its consequences

One of the events that had a lasting impact on millennials was the Great Recession of 2007–09. Many millennials in the United States and Europe entered the workforce at the height of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. They faced particularly high unemployment rates, and those who could find work were usually underemployed or in jobs that did not match their degrees. The difficulty in gaining satisfactory employment lowered millennials’ potential earnings and hindered their ability to grow wealth. In the Western world, many blame the recession for millennials’ tendency to delay significant milestones.

Millennials’ stunted growth is reflected in their housing situation. Many millennials in the West have lived at home with their parents for longer stretches than other generations. This is especially true for millennials who did not attend college. They are twice as likely as those with a bachelor’s degree or higher to live in their parents’ home. The recession also restrained millennials’ ability to save money to purchase a home, which, combined with limited housing stock and sharply rising prices, has resulted in fewer millennials owning their own home. For example, in Britain in 1998, when the average age of Gen Xers was 27, 55 percent of that cohort owned a house. However, when millennials were of the same average age, in 2014, only 32 percent were homeowners.

Millennials are also getting married and having children later in life. Yet this seems to be the case in many countries that were not affected by the Great Recession. In China, for example, millennials joined the workforce when the country’s economy was soaring. And, while they have not necessarily delayed purchasing a house, as their counterparts in the Western world have done (some 70 percent of millennials in China own their own homes), they are holding off on other significant milestones. In 2019 the average age of first marriage in China was 27 for men and 25 for women, whereas in 1982 the average age was 23 for men while half of women were married by age 22. Researchers have suggested that as women have become more financially independent, they have more options and therefore do not feel the need to marry as young as earlier generations typically have. Live births have also declined significantly. China’s birth rate hit such a low in 2020 that the government subsequently raised the number of children allowed per family from two to three. Yet researchers have observed that women around the world have been giving birth later since the 1980s; such dynamics may be the result of longer-term trends and not necessarily specific to millennials.

The most-educated generation

Researchers have posited that the causes for millennials’ lag are complex, not necessarily limited to the recession. Part of the reason may be because more young adults are spending their early adulthood attaining college degrees. Since 1968 educational attainment has steadily grown, and by the 2020s about 4 in 10 millennials in the United States had earned a bachelor’s degree or higher—more than any previous generation. The rise in educational attainment has been especially sharp for young women. More millennial women than men possess bachelor’s degrees or higher, a trend that Gen X women started when, in 2001, they became the first generation to surpass men in educational attainment. Elsewhere around the world, education levels have dramatically increased. Between 1999 and 2006 the number of young people studying in postsecondary education in China more than tripled. In Egypt the rise is also pronounced. In 2010 about 11 percent of the population had attended university, compared with 2.4 percent in 1970.

Attending college in the United States, however, often requires students to take out loans, thus compounding the difficult economic situation many graduates faced during the recession. According to the Pew Research Center, millennials have a greater share of outstanding student debt and owe more than previous generations. The number of young adult households with student debt doubled between 1998, when Gen Xers were between the ages of 18 and 33, and 2016, when millennials were between 20 and 35 years old. Moreover, the median amount of outstanding student debt was greater for millennials ($19,000) than Gen Xers ($12,800).

The bridge to a “majority minority” nation

Millennials in the United States are much more diverse than previous generations and are leading the transition from a majority white nation to a “majority minority” nation. Their birth years during the 1980s and ’90s coincided with an increase in immigration, particularly from Latin America and Asia. This contrasts with earlier generations who were born during an era when immigration was historically low, and the few immigrants who did settle in the United States were white Europeans. Millennials, who have grown up with a far less homogeneous culture than their elders have, tend to have more open and positive attitudes toward diversity.

The most liberal generation

The generation whose avid support in 2008 was helpful in ushering the first African American into the White House (and who voted in large numbers to reelect him in 2012) continued to be politically active, despite low turnout in local and midterm elections and waning enthusiasm in the 2016 presidential election. Millennials, however, came out in force for the 2018 midterms and helped marshal some 20 members of their generation, including Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota as well as Republican Dan Crenshaw of Texas, into the U.S. House of Representatives. Indeed, record numbers of millennials ran for office that year, citing dissatisfaction with the administration of Pres. Donald Trump and a lack of representation. Although the oldest millennials were eligible to run for Congress starting in 2006, only five millennials had seats in the house in 2017. Moreover, no millennials sat in the Senate until 2021, when Democrat Jon Ossoff of Georgia defeated incumbent Republican David Perdue in the closely watched Georgia runoff. Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg, the popular Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was the first millennial to run for president (and the first openly gay candidate to become a serious contender), but he dropped out of the primaries after a poor showing in South Carolina. He later joined Pres. Joe Biden’s cabinet as transportation secretary, thus becoming the first millennial (and the first openly gay) cabinet member.

As millennials began to age out of the “youth vote” bracket, they remained politically liberal, breaking with the adage (backed by data) that individuals become more conservative as they grow older. Researchers have found that millennials grew to be by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Many analysts suggest voters are often shaped by the politics of their early voting years. For millennials, that means early political experience with a conservative U.S. president in George W. Bush, unpopular wars, and a financial collapse may have shaped their generation’s political leanings for decades to come.