Generation YAYA: how can we live and work with them?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Recently I came across a text that completely shook my consciousness, which describes all the things that I encounter when communicating with the YAYA generation (20-year-old boys and girls). We often tell here how to do this or that, what tool to choose for a particular task. But we forget that modern specialists have a decisive influence on our projects, and they, these specialists, are about 20 years old, and they are not like us. This generation also has weaknesses, there are also superpowers, about which this article, which puts everything in its place.

Narcissistic personality disorder is three times more common in today's 20s than in the 65+ generation; 2009 students are 58% more narcissistic than 1982 students.

As they get older, millennials receive so many incentive prizes for participating in all kinds of contests and competitions that 40% of them expect to be promoted every two years, regardless of success.

They are obsessed with fame: a 2007 poll shows that there are three times more schoolgirls who want to become the personal assistant of a famous person than those who want to become a Senator; those who prefer the job of an assistant to the CEO of the largest corporation are four times more.

Millennials are confident in their own coolness: 60% of them believe that they can intuitively determine what is right and what is not. However, most of those who are between 18 and 29 today still live with their parents.

They are really lazy: in 1992, about 80% of people under the age of 23 wanted to get a job with a high degree of responsibility; 10 years later, this figure dropped to 60%.

The millennial generation consists of those born between 1980 and 2000; those. today it is mainly teenagers and those who are 20+. In the United States, this is about 80 million people - the largest age group in American history.

Millennials from different countries differ from each other, but thanks to social media, globalization and the speed of change, a millennial from one country has much more in common with a millennial from another country than with older generations within his own people.

Even in China, where the family is historically more important than the individual, the Internet, urbanization and the one-child policy are shaping a new generation of incredibly self-confident and self-centered people.

All of this is no longer a problem for the purely rich: poor millennials are even more narcissistic, materialistic, and technology-dependent.

They are the most formidable and exciting generation since the baby boomers. And not because they want to break into the Establishment, but because they grow up without it.

The industrial revolution made the individual stronger - he had the opportunity to move to the city, do business and create his own organization. The information revolution has only aggravated the emancipation processes by providing a person with the technologies with which he can challenge large organizations: bloggers against newspapers, YouTube directors against Hollywood studios, indie developers and hackers against industries and corporations, lone terrorists against entire states …

The Generation I gave birth to the Generation YAYA, whose technologies of selfishness have only become more powerful. Whereas in the 1950s the typical middle-class American family hung wedding, school and possibly army photos on their walls, today they are surrounded by 85 photographs of themselves and their pets.

Millennials grew up in an era of augmented self. They record every step (FitBit), location (Foursquare), and genetic data (23 and Me). At the same time, in comparison with previous generations, they show much less civic activity and almost do not take part in political life.

In addition to narcissism, one of their key qualities is "moron". If you're looking to sell a mid-level management seminar, dedicate it to how to deal with young employees who email directly to the CEO and merge with a project that they find boring.

Despite their confidence in their future, millennials stretch the life stage between adolescence and adulthood.

The idea of a teenager originated in the 1920s; in 1910, only a small percentage of children went to high school. Most of their social interactions took place with adults in their family or in the workplace.

Today, mobile phones allow kids to socialize on an hourly basis - according to Pew, they send about 88 messages a day and live under the constant influence of their friends.

Peer pressure is anti-intellectual. History does not know people who could grow up under the influence of their peers. To develop, you need those who are older: 17-year-olds do not grow up if they communicate only with 17-year-olds …

Mark Baurlein Professor of English at Emory

Millennials interact with the world around the clock, but mostly through the screen. When they meet each other, they continue to write messages on the phone. 70% of them check their phone every hour, many experience phantom vibration syndrome in their pocket.

The constant search for a dose of dopamine (“Someone posted my post on Facebook!”) Reduces creativity. According to the Torrance Tests, youth creativity grew from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Then it fell, and collapsed sharply in 1998. Since 2000, a similar drop in indicators has been observed regarding empathy, which is necessary to be interested in other people and points of view. This is likely due to an increase in narcissism and a lack of face-to-face communication.

What millennials are masters of is the ability to transform themselves into brands with huge “friends” and “followers” tails. As with any sales, positivity and self-confidence work great here.

"People blow themselves up like balloons on Facebook," says Keith Kemble, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. When everyone tells you about their parties and successes, you start to embellish your own life as well. By being active on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, you can become a micro-star.

Millennials grew up on reality shows that are essentially narcissistic documentaries. They are prepared to live in this genre.

“Most people don't self-identify before 30. Today, however, people are self-identified as early as 14, which can be considered a major evolutionary leap,” says Doron Ophir, casting director for popular TV shows such as Jersey Shore, Millionaire Matchmaker, A Shot at Love and others.

In 1979, Christopher Latch wrote in his Culture of Narcissism:

"The media feeds narcissistic dreams of fame, encouraging ordinary people to identify with the stars and hate the 'herd', thereby making the banality of everyday existence increasingly unbearable."

Self-actualization of millennials is more a continuation of a certain cultural and historical trend * than a revolution against the background of past generations. They are not a new species, but only mutants.

Their arrogant insolence is not so much a defensive reaction as a technology of adaptation to their environment - a world of abundance.

Throughout history, most people have been assigned the humble role of farmers. This role is hardly capable of satisfying the individual to the fullest.

Jeffrey Arnett professor of psychology at Clark University

Those who don't want to grow up put off making big life decisions as they choose from a vast array of career options, many of which didn't exist a decade ago. What kind of idiot would climb the career ladder in a company if he had to change about 7 jobs before he was 26?

Thanks to online dating, social media and the ability to maintain international connections, people no longer need to marry classmates or even citizens of the same country with them. The increase in life expectancy and the development of technology allow women to get pregnant and at 40 - big decisions can be postponed. The average age at marriage for an American woman rose from 20.6 in 1967 to 26.9 in 2011.

Basically, what counts as typical millennial behavior is how rich kids have always behaved. What has changed is this: like Prometheus, the Internet has democratized society, opening up information and opportunities to young people that were once available only to the wealthy.

Since millennials do not respect authority, they are not outraged by it. That is why they are the first non-rebellious teenagers.

MTV has always been a parent-free territory. One of our studies has shown that modern youth delegates their superego to their parents. Even when it comes to the simplest solution, our audience turns to mom and dad for advice.

Stephen Friedman is the president of MTV, who today includes parents in almost every show

In 2012, an ad for the Google Chrome browser showed a female student discussing all the little things in her life with her father. “Parents won't understand” is an outdated cliché. The parents of most of my friends are active on social networks, they share and like things with them,”says Jessica Brillhart, director of Google's Creative Lab, author of the aforementioned ad.

“Imagine if baby boomers had YouTube, what kind of daffodils would they seem? says Scott Hess, vice president of SparkSMG, whose market research inspires corporations to work with young people. - Imagine how many damn Instagram accounts of people wallowing in the mud on Woodstock we would see! It seems to me, in most cases, the elders blame the millennials for the technologies that happen to appear right now."

Companies, meanwhile, are beginning to adjust not only to the habits of millennials, but also to their expectations for a work environment.

A quarter of DreamWorks' 2,200 employees are under 30. Dan Sutherwhite, 23 years in charge of Interpersonal Relations at DreamWorks, says Maslow's pyramid tells companies not only to pay their employees, but to self-actualize them.

During working hours, a DreamWorks employee has the opportunity to attend a master class in photography, sculpture, painting, cinematography and karate. After one of the employees insisted that karate was not the same as jiu-jitsu, the company added a jiu-jitsu class.

Millennials use their communication advantages to win the best conditions for themselves in working with traditional institutions. Harry Steeteler, who has been recruiting new recruits for the United States Army for 15 years, truly admires millennials:

When I first started recruiting, this was the generation that had to constantly be told what to do. But the new generation understands even before you opened your mouth. They are three or four steps ahead. They come and say: I want to do this, and then I will do this, but then I want to do this too.

Psychologists agree on one thing: Millennials are cute. “I am surprised by all this positive. The internet has always been 50% positive, 50% negative. But today the ratio is 90 to 10 in favor of the positive,”says Shane Smith, CEO of VICE, who transformed his Gen X company into a millennial company when he began posting online videos to younger audiences.

Millennials tend to embrace differences, not just when it comes to gay, women, or minorities, but everyone. “There are no more all these we are“against them”. Maybe that's why millennials don't rebel. Says 17-year-old Tavi Jevinson, who runs fashion magazine Rookie in her spare time from school.

Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest of Generations, believes millennials' caution in life is a sensible response to their world. “They challenge the familiar and look for new ways to resolve issues. This is what gives birth to this swaying individual who writes epps and creates a new economy."

Millennials are persistent and optimistic. Pragmatic idealists, they use the system; thinkers rather than dreamers, life hackers. They have no leaders, which is why Tahrir Square and Occupy Wall Street were even less likely to succeed than any revolution that preceded them.

Millennials need constant approval and post their photos from in-store fitting rooms. They are terribly afraid of missing something and create an acronym for everything. They are obsessed with celebrities, but they don't idealize them.

They don't go to church because they don't want to identify with big institutions. A third of millennials under 30 - the highest percentage in history - are non-religious.

New experiences are more important to them than material things. They are calm, reserved and not very passionate. They are informed but inactive. They are for business. They love their phones, but they hate talking on them.

They are not only the largest generation that mankind has ever known, but probably the last large social group to generalize about. Already today, autonomous micro-generations are emerging within millennials.

They hold themselves so confidently in front of the cameras that a modern baby in the United States has more portraits than a 17th century French king.

Yes, I have evidence that millennials are lazy, narcissistic and over the top. However, the greatness of a generation is not determined by data; but how this generation is dealing with the challenges facing them.