It is said that my generation, the Millennium Generation (that's my favourite name, but Generation Y is just as good, I suppose), is cynical. I wonder why? Perhaps since we have been given messages by the media since our birth? It also happens that we are not the "me" generation that preceeded us. Generation X we are not.
Though we are very consumerist, we have a lot of questions, namely "why". Why should I buy that? Why should I do that? We have a set of values we want things to fit into. If we find out that something doesn't actually meet our credentials, we ignore it. Our numbers are such that we have the power to make things go away by ignoring them. Sure, right now that means basically clothes and toys, but it's beginning to mean cars and computers. In a few years it's going to mean jobs and loans and political stances.
But guess what? Unlike Generation X, we are also a generation to be reckoned with. We are the largest generation since the Baby Boomers (though our numbers are still miniscule in comparison), but much more culturally diverse. However, we are much more community minded than the generation before us- we volunteer our time for causes we believe in. We plan our futures because (since we have massive automobile and university loans) we understand we're going into the world owing it a lot of money. Unlike our Generation X predecessors, we are more knowledgable of politics, but see that it has little to offer us, since it's much more concerned about our parents and grandparents. We care about issues and want to be able to have a voice, but we don't see the current political situation as answering our needs.
In essence, we are locking horns with our parents again. The Baby Boomers are running things, and we don't like the way they're running them. We are more demanding: it's not that we want it "our way", but we want to know why something is the way it is. We are the ones who will stand up and say, great, this is what you're doing, what's going to happen? We know too much about the mistakes of the people who came before us, we hear about the irresponsibility of companies, we hear about the inability to foresee all causes of a disaster. In response, we say OK, how do we fix this?
Corporate America, Political America, spend some time understanding your kids. We're going to change the world, but we're going to do it on our terms.
In a lot of ways, this makes me much more comfortable with the people around me, because I see it. I see students who, yes, buy the latest iPod, but they buy it not because they're supposed to, but because it does what they want it to do. We watch television and are online round the clock because if we aren't, something important happens in the world that we didn't know about.
If the cliche of our parents was "Good things come to those who wait", ours is "You snooze, you loose".