For the first time, the term “Generation Y” appeared in Western sociology, where the theory of generations is very popular. According to this hypothesis, developed by the Americans Neil Hove and William Strauss in 1991, the entire history of mankind can be divided into several regularly repeated cycles. They correspond to a period of about 20 years.
The origins of the term
The new generation Millennium (in translation from English - “millennium”), or Y, are people born in 1981-2000. This gradation may fluctuate depending on which country and society in question. Western sociologists try on this model primarily in the United States. There is a generation Millennium in Russia. Its boundaries are determined approximately in the framework of 1985-2000.
Hove and Strauss wrote in detail about the phenomenon of “games” in their book “The Ascent of the Millennium Generation: The Next Great Generation”. It was published in 2000. At that time, the senior representatives of this younger generation just celebrated adulthood and graduated from school. The authors predicted that in the coming years, new youth should radically change the concept of youth.
Children of the new era
The emergence of generation Y is associated with several reasons. The main one is the population explosion in the early 1980s, when the birth rate rose sharply in the United States. It is also called "echo boom", which is why representatives of this generation are also known as "echo boomers".
Demographic fluctuations periodically occurred throughout the history of mankind. Therefore, a much more important feature of the people of the Millennium was their education during the inception and rapid development of modern means of communication. We are talking about e-mail, mobile phones, SMS, Internet, social networks. All these attributes of modern life today seem commonplace, but only twenty years ago they were all in their infancy and were not accessible to everyone, even in the United States.
Generation Y was lucky to be the first to become the owner of new technologies with which you can freely communicate with a person on the other side of the world. All modern institutions: states, nations, cities, families, church, corporations, etc. - are forced to constantly change and adapt to new conditions. For young people, this ability to change their minds and get used to change is elevated to absolute. Generation Y already in his youth received a unique experience that previous generations did not have.
Ability to handle information
Today, everyone can publish their works and express their views without any obstacles. There is a minus in this feature of the modern era. The flow of information has become so large that it is already worth a lot of effort to filter it. At the same time, what we know today may already become hopelessly outdated tomorrow. Technologies and projects, which yesterday seemed like an invention of science fiction writers, managed to become a reality. This pace of change continues to gain momentum. In a world where nothing is constant, only the quickest response becomes truly important. The older a person, the more difficult it is for him to accept such principles of existence in the information age. But the people of the new generation understood these rules from a very early age and can navigate without any problems in the modern world.
Why do young people easily live in such conditions? Because she did not know what could be otherwise. Constant variability has always been the medium of their existence, and growing globalization allows us to feel like citizens of the world, while in the older generation it causes a sense of unfamiliarity and, in some places, even rejection. Born in the middle of the 20th century, they are not without effort trying to keep up with the accelerating technological boom, while young people take what is happening for granted.
Using the Internet, young people can quickly and easily emphasize their individuality. They have a habit of absorbing an ever-growing stream of food for their mind: texts, pictures, sounds - today there is no end to information formats. The number of reasons to learn something new is also growing. This can be study, self-education, news, entertainment, health, life planning, life, the search for spiritual foundations, etc. If their parents had to go to the library and spend several days to find the right book, then these young people can find the one they need source of information in minutes. By itself, the limit of knowledge that one person can absorb is growing. This happens naturally. Generation Y people may be the most unexpected mixture of views, theories, and ideas.
The habit of change
In the modern world, the authorities and those in power can change literally before our eyes. But even such changes do not frighten generation Y. It is used to the heroes of one day and considers this situation to be the norm. Even the turbulent information flow does not bother youth. If the older generation is lost in it, then representatives of the Millennium generation are able to grasp the agenda on the fly and feel like experts in all matters.
Researchers note that new youth grew up in the midst of everyone's attention when children were instilled with the habit of being confident. Perhaps in this pattern lies the reason for the calm with which generation Y looks into the unknown future. It is not crushed by the setting of total control in which previous children of X grew up.
Interests and Priorities
According to UN estimates, today the Millennium generation accounts for about a quarter of the world's population (1.8 billion people). Now these people are from 18 to 35 years old. Researchers note that modern youth is not interested in religion - at least a third of the young population consider themselves to be atheism. Another half of the "gamers" are indifferent to politics, do not support any party and do not go to the polls. In addition, these young people do not want to connect their lives with the same work.
According to opinion polls, two-thirds of American students want to be millionaires. Because of this, and for many other reasons, the next generation is accused of being capricious and narcissistic. The desire to earn money from young people is really great. According to the same American statistics, 47% want to retire earlier than sixty years due to their own fortune, and about 30% believe that they will become millionaires before the age of forty. All these features of Generation Y are not only true of the United States. The fruits of capitalism are noticeable in Europe, and in Russia, and in other developed countries - Japan, Korea, Canada, etc.
Education
Young and active representatives of generation Y belong to the most racially diverse stratum of the world community. There are other fundamental features. They markedly distinguish the “next” generation from previous generations - X (with an age of 35-49 years) and baby boomers (with an age of 50-70 years). Education for modern youth is more important than creating a family. So, only a quarter of Americans aged 18-32 have already managed to tie the knot. Moreover, the dynamics are such that the proportion of married continues to fall sequentially.
The delay in creating a family is most often associated with the desire to learn how to live and provide for oneself. Regardless of the reasons, it can be stated with confidence that admission to adulthood is much more difficult for modern youth than for their older relatives. With all this, the generation of "gamers" faced a serious problem in employment. 25% of French youth live without work, in Italy this figure is 40%, in Greece and Spain - almost 50%, in Russia - 23%. Many earn informally.
Attitude to work
What does the millennium generation mean for employers? A lot of research is devoted to this issue. For the most part, modern youth wants everything at once, it does not want to put up with uninteresting, routine work and does not want to tear it from their own creative self-realization. All the characteristics of Generation Y suggest that it is idealistic and even childishly infantile. This means that young people are not enthusiastic about the fact that today it is necessary to endure hardships so that everything is fine in the unknown future.
"Players" care little about the formal component of their work (rank and position). They are much more interested in physical and mental comfort. According to their ideal, work should be liked and evoke a sense of personal growth and development. The lack of personality movement is very worrying for those who belong to the Millennium generation. The need for physical comfort is expressed in the need to spend money, travel and live with dignity. “Players” can be called idealists of the past era with the needs of a generous 21st century.
Coming to a new place of work, new youth is not looking for a way to adapt to it, on the contrary, it adapts work “for itself”. Increasingly, young employees refuse to believe that the corporation will help them out in a difficult situation and therefore are not ready to make big sacrifices for the sake of another vacancy. The young man’s modern career is a combination of many small deals with different employers, where all parties get what they want from each other. Such professional relationships are built solely on the principle of mutual benefit. Generation Y more often disagrees with the decisions of superiors than the more inert previous generation X. Young people tend to ignore the usual hierarchy of power in corporations. At the same time, she treats with decent and comfortable working conditions with much greater respect.
Positive generation
With all the spoilage and individualism of the “game” generation, its representatives can easily be rebuilt when it comes to completely new, unfamiliar conditions. Researchers note that modern youth has much in common with young people at the beginning of the 20th century, when Europe was experiencing its “magnificent age” and technological revolution, while not knowing the horrors of world wars.
At the same time, the “gamers” have a noticeable gap with their parents, grandparents. This abyss is especially noticeable in our country. The Millennium generation in Russia does not know and does not remember the turbulence of the 1980s and 1990s, when the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation found themselves in a difficult political, economic and social situation. Hence the cynicism of the elders, who came with experience, and the faith in the bright future of the young.
Selfish or individualistic?
In Russia, the egocentrism that distinguishes modern youth is often condemned. The Millennium is a generation that became a mirror response to the previous generation, which grew up in the Soviet Union and was very dependent on what the surrounding society thought of it. Some sociologists propose to consider the "gamblers" not selfish, but rather self-oriented. Several previous generations lived within the framework of official ideology, when it was extremely difficult to realize our own project, which was condemned by society. People who fought off the “general line” became marginalized. Today, when such a rigid framework no longer exists, young people have more room for self-realization.
The new capitalist economy, along with the culture of consumption, naturally fosters a craving for everything individual. As a result, representatives of generation Y are much more likely to think about themselves and listen to themselves. They believe that collective interests should not infringe on their own individual interests. Such egocentrism is not destructive — it merely denies universal equalization.
Youth and money
Generation Y is burdened with much more debt than their parents at the same age because of the craving for education. Therefore, modern youth face serious economic challenges. Studies show that about 85% of Millennium representatives have already learned how to save money every month. At the same time, only a third have a specific long-term plan for managing their funds. Today's youth only saves, while their parents and grandparents sought to invest. 75% of American students believe that they are not able to make financial decisions on their own.
In the rich countries of the first world, it is becoming a law to reduce their expenses for financing social support programs for young people and their education (instead, investments in pension programs are increasing). Therefore, people of Generation Y increasingly have to rely on themselves and their abilities or family support. So, in the USA, senior citizens receive 2.5 times more money from the state than young people. These patterns are explained by the democratic structure of developed countries. It is the old people who choose politicians, and the state course focuses primarily on the needs of their constituents.
The future of the "gamers"
Already today, sociologists are trying to understand what the world will be like when the key place in it will be taken by the finally grown generation “next”. Globalization and simplification of communication between different parts of the world should lead to a more tolerant attitude of different cultures towards each other. The same applies to race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender. The younger generation has much less prejudice than their parents. They are an order of magnitude more mobile and more productive. First of all, this breakthrough is connected with the technical revolution, which has radically changed the nature of human life in just the last twenty years. The number of innovations over this period is equal to the progress that people have made over decades and centuries. The generation of igrek accustomed to changes and future changes will take much less painful than their predecessors from the X generation did.
Youth mobility faces many challenges. Some of them create political power. The openness of the world is prevented by registration - approximately 60% of states put barriers to internal migration of their population. The conflict of “fathers and children” is expressed not only in this. At the same time, the whole history of mankind shows that young people will succeed sooner or later in the confrontation of generations, which will replace the elderly.