So millennials are a generation, we define them as having been born after 1980. So the
oldest of them is in his or her early thirties. The youngest is mid teenagers. Typically generations
last about 20 years or so. We don't really know when the back half of this generation
ends. There's probably a 12 or 13 year old who's somebody different. But he or she hasn't
quite come of age yet. It's a very distinctive generation and the oldest of them has now
made the passage into adulthood so we know a little bit more about them than we did eight
or ten years ago when they first came on the scene. Distinctive. They're a very large generation.
By the time the 20 year cycle is done there'll probably be 80 million strong, the largest
generation since the baby boomers. They are very distinctive racially and ethnically.
They are the transitional generation in an America that in the middle of the last century
was about 85 percent white. By the middle of this century will be only a little more
than 40 percent white.
Millennials are the most nonwhite generation. They're more than four in ten are nonwhite.
This is driven by the great modern immigration wave that's now about four or five decades
old. Like our earlier immigration waves which are almost entirely from Europe, this immigration
wave is mostly from Latin America and Asia. And it's the immigrants themselves but more
so now it's the children of the immigrants, the U.S. born children of the immigrants who
make up a very heavy portion of this millennial generation. They're distinctive politically.
They're now old enough to have voted in two or three presidential elections and they were
a very big part of both of President Obama's victories. By our calculation at the Pew Research
Center where I work and did a lot of the research that led to this book, they are the most democratic
voting generation of young adults of any we have seen in 50 or 60 years of tracking voting
patterns.
They're very liberal in their social and cultural values so some of the changes that are going
on in the country on issues like same sex marriage, marijuana legalization -- we see
pretty dramatic changes in a fairly short period of time in terms of public attitudes.
It's the millennials, it's the young adults who are leading the way. Despite their distinctive
political and social views and voting behaviors, however, they're not terribly attached to
the Democratic Party even though they gave big votes to democratic presidential candidates.
When we asked adults of all ages are you a democrat or republican or an independent,
millennials -- 50 percent of millennials say I'm independent. We've never seen that high
a share from any age cohort. We see a similar thing when we ask about their religion. I
mean, what are you? Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish? A record share of millennials
say I'm nothing in particular.
And there's a third anchor institution of society, if you will, that millennials are
not attached to and that's a little old 5,000 year old institution called marriage. So of
today's 18 to 33 year olds only about a quarter are married. If you go back to older generations
when they were the same age, five in ten, six in ten of the older generation, more than
six in ten were married. I think the slow walk toward marriage and the disassociation
from anchor institutions, I think, are explained by first their economic circumstances. Another
distinctive thing about this generation is they're the first in modern American history
and perhaps the first in American history that at least so far -- we don't know how
their story ends but we know how the story of their economic lives have begun and at
least so far they are the first generation in modern times that is doing less well economically
than their parents' generation on any way you measure it.
Whether it's income, whether it's wealth, whether it's poverty, whether it's employment,
unemployment -- all the classic measures. And you correct for inflation and you make
it an apples to apples comparison, they're doing less well. The fact that they're doing
less well means a lot of them when we asked them those who aren't married, would you like
to marry? Almost seven out of ten say yes. Why haven't you gotten married? Well, look
at me, you know, I don't have a job. I don't have a career. I don't have the economic foundation
to get married. And that will reverberate in interesting ways as they mature into middle
age and beyond. And then finally perhaps if not the most distinctive thing about this
generation -- certainly one of the most distinctive things is they are a first generation of digital
natives. So they are the only age group of adults now for whom these amazing gadgets
we now all hold in our hand and we all take for granted that with three click you can
access the sum of all human knowledge.
And frankly, these days if it takes you a third click you're wondering what takes so
long. So somebody my age this is jaw dropping. It's still jaw dropping every time I access
these information platforms and do it in mobile sites and I'm just amazed. These young adults
are not amazed. It's the only world they've ever known and they are carnivores in terms
of their habits with these information systems. Not just for information acquisition but for
the creation of networks. They organize their social lives around these networks. They can
build their own tribes. Somebody more clever than me described them as a pre-Copernican
generation. The universe really does revolve around them because they can build their social
networks and they can place themselves at the center of their social networks because
their social networks are built around the things they care the most about whether it's
their hobbies, whether it's their work, whether it's the games they like to play, whether
it's information seeking and all the rest.
This behavior has led some to suggest that it's a narcissistic generation. My own view
is that that's a bum rap. I think it's all about the new platforms and it's all about
the human condition. And if you have the ability to kind of place yourself at the center of
the universe you will take it. I think it's empowering. It may lead to another -- a trait
of the millennials. They're somewhat distrustful of other people, and it may be because as
they navigate the online world it turns out not everybody is exactly who they say they
are and there's a certain wariness about this generation.
And I think there's an interesting question about whether the networks that they build
online with their the median millennial has 250 "friends" on Facebook. Somebody my age
or older has only one-fifth that amount of friends. And many fewer of us are on Facebook
so, you know, discuss among yourselves -- has there been a quantum leap in human friendliness
over the past few generations or is it simply that the new platforms create new behaviors
and new ways of organizing your social life. It's clearly the latter. I think an interesting
question I don't think we know the answer to it yet is as millennials age more into
middle age, as they probably age into some of the more traditional anchor institutions
of society -- marriage, children, home ownership and all the rest. And these things are all
happening more slowly for millennials. Will they establish a more of an offline network
that begins to resemble the networks and the affiliations and associations that their parents
and grandparents built.