The Death of Death-by-Millennial

You have heard it all before. Millennials hate free speech! Millennials killed the housing market! Millennials are killing… brunch? This cacophony of sophistry is just a mounting pile of internet-enabled, editorialized nonsense. The truth is much simpler, for those who dare to read past the headline. Behind these poorly drawn conclusions from misinterpreted data sets about this generational cohort lies a fundamental truth about how and why products and services naturally cycle. The truth is, Millennials have yet to kill anything (figuratively). Pragmatic spending from debt pressure and the digital future afforded by the advent of the internet, however, did. Millennials are simply better poised than their generational peers to leverage this promising new technology to improve their lives. And, in their defense, why would they not?

Although casting blame to the same usual suspects every time a traditional product or enterprise meets its inevitable demise makes great material for headlines, the picture painted in real life shows a different culprit. The reality is that the preferences of the generation of 80+ million individuals is no more divergent from transient social and economic trends than those of previous generations. A report by two economists at the Federal Reserve concluded that many of the prominent demographic attributes of Millennials are simply consequences of natural trends in the population. Most notably, they identified that a major driving force for the lower income and increased debt relative to previous generations were the disadvantageous credit and labor conditions caused from the Great Recession of the late 2000s.

Despite these burdens, Millennials are also the most educated generation by far, with a ten-percentage point increase of Bachelor’s (or higher) degree attainment with respect to Gen X, the next most educated generation, at 29%. Meanwhile, the cost of attending university has increased eight times faster than median wages between 1989 to 2016 (adjusted for inflation), while average student loan debt has skyrocketed to $30k a person. These factors make striving for a strong education an even larger percent of the paycheck for these individuals. Home ownership is also 39% more expensive than it was for Baby Boomers. The mass of data comparing generational costs can be distilled simply: rent, housing and tuition have all increased at a faster pace than wages than they ever have before. Considering the burdens of these increased costs in conjunction with an unpropitious labor market should give rise to little disbelief that the rates of home and car ownership are lower amongst Millennials. Most importantly, however, the Fed found little evidence to support that that Millennials have lower spending preferences for housing, cars or food than those of earlier generations. The decline of ownership is entirely due to decreased income and affordability, economic conditions into which they were forced. So, are Millennials killing the housing market or the automotive industry as headlines so often exclaim? Maybe if you ask BuzzFeed. But in reality, a wealth of evidence shows that this generation still wants these assets, but just cannot afford them due to overbearing market effects.

The last, most influential instrument of social change and consequent industry obsolescence is the internet. The astronomical rate of technological change over the last thirty years has led to an exponential increase in computing power and the initiation of new, monumentally disruptive technologies from thin air. Millennials are only the scapegoat this time around for this very natural process because the internet has so swiftly and broadly altered the landscape of how people interface with the world. No other technology in history is more effective at disseminating information, fostering connectivity, or enabling people and industries to achieve better productivity with even less work. Millennials were the perfect age to maximize its potential. The inception of such a powerful tool naturally obliterated some industries, while fostering the creation of many, many more. Uber decimated the taxi industry, but for great reason. They provided a service that they thought a fast-paced, Internet-of-Things world wanted and indeed were right. Their consumers transcend any one generation, and never chose to kill this industry. They chose the service that they wanted. The taxi industry was simply outmatched by a vigorous competitor. Online dating apps and clever artificial intelligence took advantage of a fast-paced, single, and insecure generation and got rid of the least comfortable part of dating. Facebook proliferated social and business connectivity but opened the floodgates to every wannabe blogger to share unsolicited collages of their Sunday brunch.

It is easy to always find someone to blame for new trends that aggress those of old, like constant food pictures on Instagram, a slowing housing market, or the inevitable uselessness of once familiar products, services, and industries. What is prudent, but certainly harder to do is to consider that these trends are not anomalistic, and we may all be in some sense responsible for them. Just about all of the data at the forefront of this issue analyzing trends of Millennial spending, social and workplace preferences, shows that there is no reason to believe that any other named generation would not have the same inclinations if they instead grew up during this time. Millennials developed in an age where they could leverage new technology because it met their wants (distinctly human, not generational, wants) and the cycle of innovation would perpetuate. For as long as the economy is in flux and new inventions continue to disrupt complacent industries, this casting of blame on young generational cohorts for the emergence of new trends will persist.

Understanding Millennials and generational differences | Deloitte Insights [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/economy/issues-by-the-numbers/understanding-millennials-generational-differences.html (accessed 4.29.19b).