Everything in this world seems to be advancing at astronomical rates, but what specifically has made the most recent generations so unique in comparison to the ones before them. Part of it was the introduction of the life-changing mechanism commonly known as the internet. As of 1991 the worldwide web opened to the public and changed our lives forever. Especially the millions of children who were born in the middle of this tech boom. This is the generation commonly referred to by the media as lazy, narcissistic, and entitled otherwise known as the millennials or generation y. They’re a group of people born between 1980 and 2000. The generation is well known for having grown up with the internet, living through 911, and experiencing the effects of the great recession in 2008. Technology and social media are revolutionary mechanisms connecting people in more ways than ever before. With an incredibly powerful resource with so much information it’s become possible for it to be more destructive than most are consciously aware of. It’s more than elderly people complaining about kids using there devices too frequently, its turned into an epidemic. The overuse of social media and smart phones is becoming an addiction which is rewiring our brains. Ultimately technology is targeting the millennial generation allowing them to be the first ones to experience such crucial behavioral changes affecting all areas of their lives. 

When comparing the lifestyles of generation y to the generations before them it might at first appear as if they are lazier, but then again you cannot judge a book by its cover. The millennials are now using devices every day that never existed when their parents were growing up. As Darrin DeChane states in his article “While the GI Generation read about Pearl Harbor in newspapers and listened to commentators on the radio and the Baby Boomers watched day old footage of the Vietnam War, the Millennial Generation watched the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center on live television.” (inquiriesjournal.com). This quote puts into perspective how quickly technology has advanced and how it influences a generation. To many adults, it appears as if the technology is doing all the work for them and providing a more leisurely lifestyle which they drift through from day to day. They use their smartphones to constantly snap pictures of themselves and are known for sounding more entitled then most other people. Most elders have this idea that this generation just sits around playing on their tablets, smart phones, and laptops mindlessly scrolling through social media pages all day. 

One could argue this generation is incredible at multitasking and that most of them are using their devices as tools to constantly research valuable information. It’s also possible to categorize some of them as minimum wage workers participating in clubs, and attending a university while trying to pay off their debt. This most certainly appears far from lazy. A generation who’s mastered the art of multitasking that are doing things smarter than the generations before. But sometimes facts can be incredibly misleading such as the one saying that the millennials are most educated generation with 34% of 25-29 year olds having an associate’s degree or higher. In many situations, the parents are the ones who are taking out loans or making most these massive payments and the kids are just gliding through these classes so that they can say they have a degree. As most millennials say in college “Cs get degrees”. In the 20th century it’s been made possible that there is literally a college for everyone. It’s also easy to argue that their parents are mostly from generation x who were told that they were cynical slackers and the same was for their parents. The horrifying truth is that this is only one way to optimistically view the generation who can’t go five minutes without looking at their phones. I suggest the more reasonable way to view them is that they are living a more leisurely lifestyle than any other previous generation making them lazier and more entitled. In fact, this generation has expectations that have never been seen until now. The degree doesn’t make them smarter, it makes them more educated. There is a difference between someone who is “educated” and received a degree and someone who is intelligent and can make a difference in the world. Some of the most innovative entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were college dropouts. This proves that a degree doesn’t mean you’re “smarter” than anyone else who doesn’t have one. The millennials think that they’re worthy of getting anything they want in life.

So why did Martha Stewart, a very successful businesswomen, writer, and television star call the millennial generation “lazy”? Since well because surprisingly she is just one of many who think that this generation isn’t working enough and has too many twenty year olds still living with their parents. This is true, “more people from the ages 18-29 live with their parents then with a spouse” according to Clark University poll of Emerging Adults. She states millennials are “overgrown kids, in her eyes suffering from a failure to launch”. It’s common to hear this detrimental criticism from what seems like everyone. There’s so many people attempting to put together some logical reasoning for why the millennials are such a unique generation. In the “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation” TIME article, author Joel Stein brands the Millennials as overconfident, fame-obsessed narcissists. He believes that this generation’s problems root from an overdose of self-esteem. He says that these kids have way too high of a self-esteem and argues that this is the main cause for their laziness and narcissism. Although this may sound far-fetched at first there is a reason why Time magazine published an article labeling nearly 80 million people as “lazy, entitled, selfish, and shallow”. This isn’t just restating what older generations have done for as long as history can recall, the author has a lot of proof to back up the claims. According to the article the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times higher for the millennials compared to the generation before them and 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. It also reported that in 1992 80% of people under 23 wanted to one have a job with greater responsibility while 10 years late only 60% did. The facts show the tough reality to face for many young adults in modern America. It’s difficult to realize that this generation is truly quite different in many negative ways in comparison to the previous ones. There are some underlying similarities as well. 

Growing up during the early 1900s traumatized the lives of millions of people all around the world. The GI generation grew up under circumstances where it was their duty to support our country. As the war toughened many Americans, it also destroyed many families across the nation. It’s obvious when looking at history to imagine how this environment can affect a generation growing up during these strenuous times. What might not appear so obvious is how something as thoughtless as technology has shaped the attitudes and beliefs of the millennial generation. Technology can be considered good and bad at the same time, although it makes life easier, quicker, and more efficient, it can rewire the brains of anyone over-using it. Specifically, social media and smart phones will influence the way people live their daily lives. Using too much technology directly effects our brains and the way we communicate with one another. 

The reason for this is due to the way in which technology affects the reward center in our brains by releasing a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which sends a signal to other nerve cells. Most rewards will increase the levels of dopamine in the brain and the most notorious things known to do this are addictive drugs, gambling, and alcohol. Ironically enough this is the same chemical responsible for why people feel good when they receive a like on their Instagram picture or get a text from someone they care about. Based on a study by the RadiumOne firm social media is considered a gold mine for dopamine since “Every time we post, share, ‘like,’ comment or send an invitation online, we are creating an expectation,”. With Facebook being a part of the millennials daily lives having more than a billion daily users it’s becoming a serious addiction. The people who design/edit social media websites are the same people who are hired at casinos. This is so that the user will be addicted and will eventually rely on social media just as how some people end up getting addicted to gambling. It’s not any coincidence that both contribute to high releases of dopamine since both are being targeted to similar markets with very similar objectives. At the end of the day whether you’re on Facebook or at a casino the goal is to manipulate the users brain into making them “feel good” and to get the user hooked/addicted so that they come back. My point is that it’s negatively affecting people’s daily lives. According to the journal of social and clinical psychology of 2014 people who spend more time on Facebook suffer higher rates of depression. This is horrifying since it basically means that we’re living at time with higher depression rates than ever before. So while the millennials appear incredibly happy in their pictures it leads to a narcissistic view from an outsiders perspective. The truth is they are usually shallow and depressed just hoping a high number of likes will make them feel cool and liked. Technology is a part of the millennials culture and it’s a problem that has formed such an incredibly unique generation. 

Social media is truly rewiring the brains of millions of people day by day. When a whole generation is consistently exposed to this technology it leads to the appearance of everyone being narcissistic and overly obsessed with themselves. It’s an addiction which ruins relationships and is why they spend so much time focusing on themselves and their social media profiles. Now I’m not trying to say that Mark Zuckerberg is an evil tyrant who intends on manipulating and controlling the entire cyber community. It’s just important to understand since it’s how companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter generate revenue. The more daily users they have the more advertisement seen and uploaded, ultimately leading to continuously increasing profits for the companies. It’s a product that comes with a cost attached to it. This is referred to as an opportunity cost, the time you give up is your opportunity cost and it is more detrimental than most people would think. The company is making money off all the free information that you provide and in return you get to waste a few hours of your day gazing at memes and ridiculously bizarre videos. The other issue here is that browsing useless information is proven to shorten your attention span, your focus, and has been linked to ADD/ADHD. The biggest problem about social media is that nearly everyone uses it. According to statista.com in 2017 81% of Americans are using some type of social media. That makes it nearly unavoidable when it’s human nature to follow your peers and to avoid feeling left out. Overall technology is the overpowering reason for most of the problems with generation y and the reason they tend to appear lazy and narcissistic. 

Narcissism is defined as “the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one's own attributes”. People tend to label the millennials as narcissistic because of the overly confident ways in which they carry themselves in their daily lives. It’s a common to hear on the radio or television that they’re “obsessed with themselves”. Apps such as Snapchat and Instagram reinforce the self-centered and narcissistic appearance, which have become modern forms of communication that evolved from technology. The technology use creates an obsessive appearance when they’re constantly sending selfies to their friends. Although the problem with this generation is that they grew up in a world filled with instant gratification. If you want a pizza just click a button, if you want to watch a TV show just go on Netflix. You don’t even need to wait for the next episode you can binge watch a whole season. If you want to find a new girlfriend just download Tinder and swipe right. Nowadays you can receive almost any good or service immediately if you’re willing to pay for it. This leads to a generation filled with high expectations of receiving exactly what they want immediately without needing to do much work. This can subconsciously lead to the narcissistic attitudes and behaviors of entitlement that are so prevalent in this entire generation. It’s tough not to consider this environmental factor when judging this group of people since it’s something that no other generation has grown up with. It seems to make perfect sense when you start to take everything into consideration. This is a serious problem since the millennials are the largest generation yet. The toughest part when evaluating this group is drawing a conclusion to whether it’s their fault or not. The truth is that at the end of the day this narcissistic behavior was inevitable when taking into consideration the environment in which they were raised. 

If there were anyone to blame when it comes to the entitlement and high expectations of this generation, it would be the parents. The problem is that too many of them grew up in a society with what Simon Sinek calls “failed parenting”. The parents constantly preached to their kids that they’re special and that they can have anything they want. In school growing up I was constantly envious of my friends getting put into honors classes. Although I later realized this wasn’t because they were smarter, it was because their parents fought the schools to have them placed in “better” classes. I also clearly remember receiving a medal for losing the middle school hockey championship and one year even receiving one for making it to the playoffs, when every team made the playoffs! So quite literally everyone who was “tough” enough to endure the pain of the five-minute drive to the hockey rink had received a medal. This completely devalues the medal since everyone is receiving one which leads to less competition. In the Time article, mentioned earlier the author says, “Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance”. The problem is that these are circumstances that this generation was forced to grow up with. It’s not fair to immediately start pointing fingers at them and complaining about how they act. They’re not the ones to blame when you start thinking about it. Their parents play a big role in these two characteristics which supposedly define the generation. Then once they finally graduate and are looking for jobs everyone is starting to ask why they’re acting so entitled. It’s because they get a rude awakening once they realize that they can’t have anything they want and that their parents can’t get them a promotion. Growing up with these dynamics will lead to many adolescents feeling entitled and having high expectations. 

Growing up in the 80s and 90s was an experience that no other generations will truly be able to relate to. The amount of change and technology was so involved in this generation’s lives it became very influential on their behavior and attitudes. It lead to the development of unusual characteristics which will make them appear as an inferior generation until further analysis on more recent generations.  The millennials can evaluate the people before them and decide how to make their own choices to the live the life they dream of. Being constantly stereotyped is difficult to live with, but so far, the facts prove the stereotypes to be accurate. The millennials are one of the first generations to grow up with more comfort and down time than any other generation. Whether it be their fault or not the millennials are growing up as the most unique and unusual generation yet. 