Gen Y

Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the Western demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with the generation typically being defined as people born from 1981 to 1996. Most millennials are the children of baby boomers and older Generation X; millennials are often the parents of Generation Alpha.

Across the globe, young people have postponed marriage. Millennials were born at a time of declining fertility rates around the world, and are having fewer children than their predecessors. Those in developing nations will continue to constitute the bulk of global population growth. In the developed world, young people of the 2010s were less inclined to have sexual intercourse compared to their predecessors when they were at the same age. In the West, they are less likely to be religious than their predecessors, but they may identify as spiritual.

Millennials have been described as the first global generation and the first generation that grew up in the Internet age. The generation is generally marked by elevated usage of and familiarity with the Internet, mobile devices, and social media, which is why they are sometimes termed digital natives. Between the 1990s and the 2010s, people from the developing world became increasingly well educated, a factor that boosted economic growth in these countries. Millennials across the world have suffered significant economic disruption since starting their working lives; many faced high levels of youth unemployment during their early years in the labour market in the wake of the Great Recession, and suffered another recession in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Terminology and etymology

Members of this demographic cohort are known as millennials because the oldest became adults around the turn of the millennium. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, known for creating the Strauss–Howe generational theory, are widely credited with naming the millennials. They coined the term in 1987, around the time children born in 1982 were entering kindergarten, and the media were first identifying their prospective link to the impending new millennium as the high school graduating class of 2000. They wrote about the cohort in their books ''Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069'' (1991) and ''Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation'' (2000).

In August 1993, an ''Advertising Age'' editorial coined the phrase ''Generation Y'' to describe teenagers of the day, then aged 13–19 (born 1974–1980), who were at the time defined as different from Generation X. However, the 1974–1980 cohort was later re-identified by most media sources as the last wave of Generation X, and by 2003 ''Ad Age'' had moved their Generation Y starting year up to 1982. According to journalist Bruce Horovitz, in 2012, ''Ad Age'' "threw in the towel by conceding that millennials is a better name than Gen Y," and by 2014, a past director of data strategy at ''Ad Age'' said to NPR "the Generation Y label was a placeholder until we found out more about them."

Millennials are sometimes called ''echo boomers'', due to them often being the offspring of the baby boomers, the significant increase in birth rates from the early 1980s to mid-1990s, and their generation's large size relative to that of boomers. In the United States, the echo boom's birth rates peaked in August 1990 and a twentieth-century trend toward smaller families in developed countries continued. Psychologist Jean Twenge described millennials as "Generation Me" in her 2006 book ''Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before'', while in 2013, ''Time'' magazine ran a cover story titled ''Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation''. Alternative names for this group proposed include the ''Net Generation'', ''Generation 9/11'', ''Generation Next'', and ''The Burnout Generation''.

American sociologist Kathleen Shaputis labeled millennials as the ''Boomerang Generation'' or ''Peter Pan Generation'' because of the members' perceived tendency for delaying some rites of passage into adulthood for longer periods than most generations before them. These labels were also a reference to a trend toward members living with their parents for longer periods than previous generations.Shaputis, Kathleen (2004). ''The Crowded Nest Syndrome: Surviving the Return of Adult Children''. Clutter Fairy Publishing, Kimberly Palmer regards the high cost of housing and higher education, and the relative affluence of older generations, as among the factors driving the trend. Questions regarding a clear definition of what it means to be an adult also impact a debate about delayed transitions into adulthood and the emergence of a new life stage, Emerging Adulthood. A 2012 study by professors at Brigham Young University found that college students were more likely to define "adult" based on certain personal abilities and characteristics rather than more traditional "rite of passage" events. Larry Nelson noted that "In prior generations, you get married and you start a career and you do that immediately. What young people today are seeing is that approach has led to divorces, to people unhappy with their careers ... The majority want to get married ..they just want to do it right the first time, the same thing with their careers."

Date and age range definitions

Oxford Living Dictionaries describes a millennial as a person "born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s ." Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines millennial as "a person born in the 1980s or 1990s."

Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote for ''The Economist'' in 2018 that "generations are squishy concepts", but the 1981 to 1996 birth cohort is a "widely accepted" definition for millennials. Reuters also state that the "widely accepted definition" is 1981–1996.

Likewise, the Pew Research Center defines millennials as the people born from 1981 to 1996, choosing these dates for "key political, economic and social factors", including the September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Great Recession, and Internet explosion. The United States Library of Congress explains that "defining generations is not an exact science", although cites Pew's 1981-1996 definition to define millennials. Various media outlets and statistical organizations have cited Pew's definition including ''Time'' magazine, ''BBC'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The New York Times'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', PBS, ''The Los Angeles Times'', ''The Guardian'', the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Statistics Canada. The Brookings Institution defines the millennial generation as people born from 1981 to 1996, as does Gallup, Federal Reserve Board, American Psychological Association, CBS, and ABC Australia.

Australia's McCrindle Research uses 1980–1994 as Generation Y (millennial) birth years.Generations Defined
. Mark McCrindle The Australian Bureau of Statistics uses 1981-1995 to define Millennials in a 2021 Census report. Psychologist Jean Twenge defines millennials as those born 1980–1994. CNN reports that studies often use 1981–1996 to define millennials, but sometimes list 1980–2000. The United States Census Bureau is inconsistent, mentioning 1996 as the end of the date range for millennials in a 2020 news release, but saying 2000 in the charts in a 2020 demographic analysis. However, they have previously stated that "there is no official start and end date for when millennials were born" and they do not officially define millennials. In the UK, the Resolution Foundation uses 1981–2000. Sociologist Elwood Carlson, who calls the generation "New Boomers", identified the birth years of 1983–2001, based on the upswing in births after 1983 and finishing with the "political and social challenges" that occurred after the September 11 terrorist acts. Author Neil Howe, co-creator of the Strauss–Howe generational theory, defines millennials as being born from 1982 to 2004.

The cohorts born during the cusp years before and after millennials have been identified as "microgenerations" with characteristics of both generations. Names given to these cuspers include ''Xennials'', ''Generation Catalano'', the '' Oregon Trail Generation''; ''Zennials'' and ''Zillennials'', respectively.

Psychology

Psychologist Jean Twenge, the author of the 2006 book ''Generation Me'', considers millennials, along with younger members of Generation X, to be part of what she calls "Generation Me". Twenge attributes millennials with the traits of confidence and tolerance, but also describes a sense of entitlement and narcissism, based on NPI surveys showing increased narcissism among millennials compared to preceding generations when they were teens and in their twenties. Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett of Clark University, Worcester has criticized Twenge's research on narcissism among millennials, stating "I think she is vastly misinterpreting or over-interpreting the data, and I think it's destructive". He doubts that the Narcissistic Personality Inventory really measures narcissism at all. Arnett says that not only are millennials less narcissistic, they're "an exceptionally generous generation that holds great promise for improving the world". A study published in 2017 in the journal ''Psychological Science'' found a small ''decline'' in narcissism among young people since the 1990s.

Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe argue that each generation has common characteristics that give it a specific character with four basic generational archetypes, repeating in a cycle. According to their hypothesis, they predicted millennials would become more like the "civic-minded" G.I. Generation with a strong sense of community both local and global. Strauss and Howe ascribe seven basic traits to the millennial cohort: special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving. However, Arthur E. Levine, author of ''When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today's College Student'', dismissed these generational images as "stereotypes". In addition, psychologist Jean Twenge says Strauss and Howe's assertions are overly deterministic, non-falsifiable, and unsupported by rigorous evidence.

Polling agency Ipsos-MORI warned that the word "millennials" is "misused to the point where it's often mistaken for just another meaningless buzzword" because "many of the claims made about millennial characteristics are simplified, misinterpreted or just plain wrong, which can mean real differences get lost" and that " ually important are the similarities between other generations—the attitudes and behaviors that are staying the same are sometimes just as important and surprising."

Though it is often said that millennials ignore conventional advertising, they are in fact heavily influenced by it. They are particularly sensitive to appeals to transparency, to experiences rather than things, and flexibility.

A 2015 study by Microsoft found that 77% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said yes to the statement, "When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone," compared to just 10% for those aged 65 and over.

Cognitive abilities

Intelligence researcher James R. Flynn discovered that back in the 1950s, the gap between the vocabulary levels of adults and children was much smaller than it is in the early twenty-first century. Between 1953 and 2006, adult gains on