Module 3 Media Environments

Lesson 6 Millennials and the Rise of the Information Society

Lesson 6 Millennials and the Rise of the Information Society

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/16/how-millennials-compare-with-their-
grandparents/
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

1. Understand who the millennials are and who are they perceived
2. Distinguish the difference between millennials from other generations
3. Know how the millennials control social media
4. Be aware of the effects of the internet to us humans

Who are the Millennials?

A. What are the age bracket of the generation?

It is a common misconception that the millennials are simply the latter part of the
generation. Most people believe that even if you are born in the latter years of
90’s (up until the 2000), you’re technically a millennial. Pew research announced
as of 2018 that you can only use the label millennial to those who were born
between the years 1981-1996. At present time -2020- they are the ones who age
23-37.

B. The Millennial Personality: Other generations on Millennials

Personalities- every generation has them. These young adults, which are the
millennials, are making their way into a new stage in life which is adulthood at a
start of a new millennium have begun to change. They shape and construct their
confidence, self-expressiveness, liberation, and their minds that are very much
open to change. Compared to other adults or other generations, their ethical and
racial perspective are more diverse. They have become less religious or spiritual.
Study says that they are likely to serve in the military. However, they are towards
the path of becoming the most education generation in American History.

On the road to become the most educated generation, 39.6% were enrolled in
university or college as of 2008, according to research. Manners wise, millennials
are on good terms with their parents. Despite the media labelling this generation
as politically disengaged, millennials were one of the previous American President
Barack Obama’s supporters in 2008 with a two-to-one ratio.

Millennials are known for being, as the older generation says, self-centered.
According to Jos Ortega, the chairman and CEO of Havas Media Ortega wherein
anthropologists study millennials, the foundation of millennial decision-making is “I
 want to do things on my own terms”. Millennials have a perspective in life where in
whatever decision they make, it must be their very own. Despite failure, based on
the decision its alright, its my decision, they will abundantly accept the
consequences and go on with their lives. After all, it was their decision and they
will learn from it.

Millennials develop their minds all through the electronic fields and progressively
constructing their way to make social life in social networked world. This generation
has established the most attention when it comes to trades and merchandises of
many different products and deals due to their countless needs. At this kind of
situation, millennials are inclined to tolerate huge differences. Being raised in an
era of people believing the quote “follow your dreams” are making the mind of
these people positive and are more likely to be confident regarding to their works
and progresses in life. On the other hand, the confidence of the millennial’s
generation has exponentially fading away due to narcissism and issues with
oneself. But based on the research, they are proven to be more optimistic rather
than the other late generations regardless that they are the first generation (ever
since the Silent Generation) to be able to be more effective and fortunate than their
mothers and fathers.

Many millennials experienced educational institution with a certain field, only to

discover that they will soon be employed with an unrelated field or worse,
unemployed. They are lucky if they could finish post-secondary education and
afterwards, employed with the particular field they have taken in college. Although
the said generation has been considered and categorized as lazy, study has
already proven that people in this era are encouraged to work on things especially
if it interests them. They comprehend value to the little things that show
significance to them as an individual. Millennials have to see it as an important
matter before they put effort and value to it.

C. The Difference of Millennials from other generation

1. Millennials are more educated

Thanks to the women suffrage movement, the females gained their rights which
included education. The number of women who have finished their education
increased. During the Silent Generation (covers people who were born between
the year 1928 and 1945), only 9 finished or graduated college four years at least.
If we were to compare the silent generation and generation x (millennials), the
women who completed their education increased by 36% at the same age.

For male population, just like the female, have increased the rates of young men
who graduated university or college. Three in ten men in the millennial generation,
which is 29%, have completed their education with the least attainment of a
bachelor’s degree.
 Table 1
Educational Attainment Chart of the Silent Generation to Millennials

2. The number of the female population who has completed education increased.
The female population has made bigger improvement over time when it comes to education.
Among the millennial generation from ages twenty-one (21) to thirty-six (36), women who at
least finished a bachelors degree are 7% more than men. During the silent generation, with
the same age bracket, women were six point behind men who have finished college education
with four years the least attainment. As for Gen Xers, they were the first generation whose
women outnumbered men when it comes to college educational attainment with 3%
advantage among the millennial women.
3. The number of working women increased

In the year 1965, the female population of the silent generation were young
with majority of 58% women who were not in the labor force. With the
generation X or the millennials, 71% of the female are employed and 26% are
not in the labor force.

4. Millennials are three times less likely to get married

In the year 1965, an average woman is most likely to get married at twenty- one (21) and a
man at twenty-three (23). With the millennials, as of the year 2017, the age slides to twenty-
 seven (27) for the females and twenty-nine (29) for the males. When asked why they haven’t
gotten married yet, their reasons vary from not being financially prepared (29%) they have
not found their special someone with the qualities of their standards (26%), and 26% said that
they are not ready to settle down at such a young age.

5. Millennials are more racial and ethnically diverse.

As of the year 2017, the non-Hispanic whites, are 56% of the American
population compared to the silent generation which has 86% of non-Hispanic
whites. The Asian race has also increased; however, the black remains almost
the same.

6. Millennial men are less likely to become a veteran

Despite the age where millennials are born in the conflict between Iraq and
Afghanistan wherein the United States military are engaged, they are less likely
to serve in the military than the older generation. Only 4% of the millennials are
serving the military compared to the 47% of the men of the silent generation
who came in the age of the Korean War and its aftermath.

7. Most of the millennials in today’s time live in the metropolitan area.

Nine (9) out of ten (10) millennials are residing in the metro areas with a
percentage of 88%. Compared to the older generation, the silent generation
only had two-thirds which is 67%, lived in the metropolitan area. With a similar
rate, 68% of the baby boomers were staying in the metropolitan area while the
Gen Xers have a closer percentage compared to the millennials with 84%.

D. The Image of Millennials

It is not a secret that the older generations do not hide their distaste with the
millennial generation. They have called the millennials killers of the industry,
judging them with their outlooks when it comes to marriage, career path, and
simply their perspective in life.

Although people often see just the other side of spectrum, millennials have created
movements that changed a lot. An example would be the Arab Spring and the
Occupy Wall Street.

Good things or bad things, however you want to see the generation of the
millennials, they are still the future leaders of the country, in business, and society
in general.
 I. Adapting to New Technology

What is the New Technology?

It is no secret that technology ghastly evolved over the past few years. From the means of
communication to transportation, it’s unbelievable on how far we’ve come.
Any set of progress in techniques which offers significant help over the created technology for a
given process is a new technology. Whether it is a new invention or an innovation of a previous
work, as long as it new application of a scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in
the industry, it is new technology.
Millennials on Social Media

Millennials for the last ten years have gained a massive increased of popularity
when it comes to social networking online with common users collectively counting
in millions. Both males and females have an equal amount of using the social
network and no difference has occurred in regards to nationality and race.
Millennials today are the biggest and leading generation in the world and it
developed its way to the top with innovation and technology by their side helping
them in terms of media stands and putting them in place where they get hooked
with regard to social media habits. Cell phones, laptops, and televisions are the
examples of technology that they are most often get addicted with. New and
advanced technology are in disguised as a fashion trend where millennials are
digging their way to have it simply because it is practiced and made to be addictive.
They are so good with their multi-tasking capabilities that can work on school
assignment on their computer, and do research at their tablet all while taking notes;
and later that day, they will sit in front of the television to watch a movie and at the
same time, chatting or texting a friend on Facebook from their phones or laptops.
Researchers have certain reports that millennials are more skilled and capable of
doing multitasking compared with the older generations.

Facebook is a social networking website where users are free to post their current
status, comment on posts, share photos, and post links about news or an attention-
grabbing content outside the Facebook itself. As of today, Facebook has become
the most influential platform for social media and also for business matters. It
gained with nearly 2 million active users monthly and became the largest platform
for social media with the most diverse audience.

Although the adults under the age of 35 are already influenced by the enormous
spread of Facebook, still Millennials who are younger are more likely to use social
media networks for news and broadcast better than the older generations.

Social Media on Millennials

 Social media has become more developed and approved by most of the people
with regards to trends and style. It is the most used way as of today for interacting
and communicating globally. Researchers have explained that the social media
have so much to benefit people from. Therefore, it is examined as one of the best
examined learning devices that mends to the people’s talking and communicating
skills and knowledge. According to Kavitha & Bhuvaneswari, it is found to act as a
main social influence when it comes to social media that affects the personal life
of the users.

There are positive and negative sides of social media that may use in any point of
platform features, equating its overuse that leads to an addiction and contributes
to absentmindedness, stress and jealousy. In the research of the National Center
for Biotechnology, social media information links has use depression and may
conduit for misleading information and falsehoods.

The figures for the most popular social media websites as of March 2020 are as
follows:
1. Instagram - over 1 billion monthly users
2. YouTube - more than 2 Billion monthly users
3. Facebook - nearly 2.5 Billion monthly users
4. Twitter – 300 Million users
5. Tiktok – over 800 Million users
6. Pinterest – 320 Million monthly users
7. Snapchat- over 300 Million monthly users

Millennials’ dependency on the Internet

Almost everyone nowadays uses technology. Whether it is for work, for study or for playing. With the
technology that are in present time helped us in making our daily lives easier. Without technology,
students will find it difficult in doing their task since the biggest group of people who are using the
social media or the internet in general are the millennials. There are a lot of ways that we can say that
millennials are dependent or even obsessed as the media perceive it to be on technology.
1. Information gathering
Millennials rely on the internet for gathering any information. If you could ask someone if he/she
would prefer to go to the library or internet, it would probably be the latter. When surveyed, a
number of 88% of millennials receive or get news from Facebook, a big and famous social media
platform. Another report says that they get their daily news from Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit or
Tumblr, which are all social media sites. About 13% use Twitter, 10% use Pinterest, 8% use Reddit
while 7% use Tumblr. With the number of accessible information in the internet such as google
and Wikipedia, they could access all the information they want.
2. Navigation and Transportation
To get around the area or to go to a specific place, the old way is to grab yourself a map and that
will help you navigate. But with today’s advance technology, all you need is GPS or even
smartphone. There are a lot of applications that can help you navigate such as Google Maps and
 Waze. They help you not only to get around the area but even give you multiple directions for
shortcuts and traffic updates so that you’ll know what’s the best route to use.
Same is true with transportation, it becomes more easier when it comes to commuting. There are
applications that manage bus transports so that you’ll their routes and what time they would
arrive. You can even get yourself a cab over your smartphones with the use of Uber or Grab.
3. Communication

The millennials or generation Y are more globally diverse compared to the previous
generations. They have friends and families all over the world. Nowadays, only few
use landlines due to the fact that phones have drastically evolved to smartphones.
Messaging apps such as Messenger and Skype are already used. They are free,
all you need is internet connection.

4. Education
It is really amazing how technology has evolved. Today you can already learn and
study via your computer. There are already inline schools wherein they will give
you books and activities so that you won’t need to leave your home. In the
Philippines, we have AMA, UPOU, and South Ville out of the many.

Is Google is making us stupid?

An article by Nicholas Carr has blown up the internet because he is saying that the internet not just Google
is making us stupid. He mentioned that even his friend who used to read long articles can’t do it anymore.
That even a three or four paragraph article is difficult to read already and that he resolves to skimming.
The company Google stated that their mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful”. It is hard for people not to use Goggle these days. We use Google for
everything from education to online shopping to tutorials on how to make a certain meal. Google wanted
to be the “perfect search engine” which means that it will understand what you want and will give you
exactly what you require. They wanted it to be an artificial intelligence wherein they could solve never
before solved problems.
The internet has made us lazy, like mentioned above, the incapability of reading lengthy books or articles
from being able to. There are times wherein people do not want to think for themselves and just rely on
search engines such as Google. Research syas that the internet has made us impatient as well.
If there’s a good side there will be a bad side. Though technology has been praised and criticized at the
same time, we can still all say that we are thankful that it continues to evolve.
The founders of Google company are Larry Page and Sergery Brin. In 1996 they were students at Standford
University California. In 2014, the company held an Intellectual Property Office and by 2015 the company
restructures the interests as alphabet and became the leading subsidiary of Google that operates as a
partnership to Internet interests.