Christian Harding
Staff Writer

Over the past couple of years, it seems to have become pretty common knowledge that that members of Generation Y – also referred to as ‘Millennials’ – are a typically unhappy group of individuals, at least more so now-a-days than previous years. For those unaware, the terms ‘Generation Y’ and ‘Millenniuals’ refer to the demographic of people born in the time period from the early 1980’s up until the late 1990’s or early 2000’s, though there aren’t any exact dates for such distinctions. Pretty much everyone now in their late teens/early twenties who is just recently blooming into adulthood.
So what is this generation so angst-ridden and upset for? Reasons for this could vary, depending on whoever you ask. But let’s really examine this for a moment. What could it possibly be? Is it because they’re delusional yuppies who think they’re somehow more special than previous generations, and therefore more entitled? Or because they’ve been born into an economic hellscape, left to them by past generations?
I’m thinking the latter.
Something really popular that keeps getting passed through the blog-o-sphere and hundreds of people’s Facebook newsfeeds recently is a Huffington Post article which contains a statistic attempting to pinpoint the reasons why Generation Y is so miserable, saying that it’s merely because they’re a bunch of juvenile and delusional yuppies. Or something.
A thought provoking piece, I admit. But like most related publications of the sort, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny very well, and is based mostly on highly presumptuous generalizations. Because why statistics are helpful at getting a grasp on the situation as a whole, they mean nothing to the individual, despite the fact that most Gen Y members are united in their frustration at being poor and jobless.
For every one good point brought up in the aforementioned HuffPo piece, there is double the amount of oddly contrived generational categories, too weird and off-base for such black-and-white reasoning. Personally, I’ve always considered myself more within the middle tier of Generation Y, at least in terms of temperament, age, and outlook. But the time frame that Gen Y allegedly occupies is a sociologically ambiguous no-man’s land, and even people born years before or after the cutoff limit typically get lumped in with the Millennials, especially when it comes to money matters.
In conclusion, it appears that nobody really seems to know for sure why the Millennials are so angry, despite the heaps of theories and assumptions, very few of which I’ve noticed sympathize with their situations at all, if any. I suppose the reality of the matter is that the Generation Y members are just flat out displeased with the post-grad situation that’s been passed down to them, and will continue to be until things start to look a little better for them. Not because it’s what’s entitled to them, but because it’s fair.