Millennials Untie! - Entrepteneur Generations

These two articles appeared on my FB feed virtually adjacent to one another. The first was from The Atlantic:

Followed by this from The Economist.

So, we now know that Millennials are young, gifted, and held back by old people, while apparently avoiding college and happily living in the suburbs. And they hate being called Millennials.

Do you think we're a little confused? The Atlantic and The Economist are both brilliant publications, and after reading both articles, it's hard to argue with their conclusions. So, perhaps it's just the term we're using?

For the record, there is no official Census Bureau designation for Millennials. It's a construct we use when we can't think of another word to describe 80 million young Americans who are otherwise about as diverse as any 80 million-developed-country-individuals could possibly be.

Of all the generations discussed in the press, the only one actually defined by the Census Bureau is the Baby Boomers, bracketed from 1946 to 1964. Following the Baby Boomers came Generation X, which is sometimes placed in the 1965 to 1984 time period. This was followed by Generation Y, which can range from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s, depending upon who is writing about it. The Millennial generation itself was fixed by Neil Howe and William Strauss from 1982 to 2004. Given these overlapping brackets, Gen X and Gen Y collide, and the Millennials might themselves fall into either Gen X or Gen Y. See here.

Here's a thought. When I was writing about King Philip's War, I would ask the various native peoples I interviewed whether they objected to being called "Indians." (I would not need to ask that question today, but it was reasonable and polite in the early 1990s.) Indeed, I got all sorts of answers, but the one I liked best went something like this: If you know our name, use it. Metacom. Weetamo. Canonchet. Tom. Harry. That's specific and respectful. If you don't know our name but know our people, use that. Pokanoket. Pocasset. If you don't know our people, use our tribe. Wampanoag. Narragansett. If you don't know our tribe, use "Native American." And if you need to write "Native American" too many times in a paragraph, then for grammar's sake you may use "Indian" occasionally. But know that "Indian" is the least preferred and most confusing, ambiguous, and potentially offensive of any of the many terms you have to choose from.

This is simply the Linnaeus taxonomy applied to people, from individual to crowd--which is the way most of us like to be thought about, anyway.

"Millennial" is a handy term and I don't see it going away. But for any of us trying to write with some degree of precision about 80 million people, maybe there's a lesson here.

from The Occasional CEO http://ift.tt/26gFblV Millennials Untie! - Entrepteneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations