Stop Hating On Millennials

Millennials: the generation media love to hate. It seems like every day there’s another hit piece on the “most selfish generation,” the one that still lives with their parents, won’t get married young enough, take endless selfies, post food pics on Instagram and can’t decide on a career path. Relax, people. We’re not as bad as you think.

Millennial cartoonist Matt Bors (born in 1983) drew a spot-on editorial cartoon in defense of his generation. CNN published the piece, titled “Can We Stop Worrying About Millennials Yet?”

Bors culled headlines from major news outlets, ones decrying the generation for its lack of empathy, lack of foresight and and lack of ambition. Books have called us the “dumbest generation” and warned us that “not everyone gets a trophy,” Bors notes. Headlines decry us as helpless and hopeless, “Do Millennials Stand a Chance in the Real World?,” asks one.

Bors asks everyone to cut it out. 

“Millennials aren’t marrying, buying houses and having kids later than previous generations because they’re sitting around trying to beat a video game,” he writes, er illustrates. “They’re ‘delaying adulthood’ because the job market is the worst it’s been since the Great Depression.”

The cartoon, got a lot of play on the Internet last week, comes on the heels of another high-profile defense of the much-maligned Gen Y. Stephen Colbert recently called out Baby Boomers for having cornered the market on selfishness.

“Your generation needs everything to be about you, and that’s very upsetting to us baby boomers because self-absorption is kind of our thing,” the political satirist told the University of Virginia’s graduating class in May. “We’re the original ‘me’ generation. We made the last 50 years all about us. We took all the money. We soaked up all the government services. And we deep-fried nearly everything in the ocean.”

Click here to see Bors’ cartoon on CNN. Click here to see PayScale’s exclusive data package all about Gen Y on the job.

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(Photo credit: Jonny Goldstein / Flickr)