The Real Reason Young People Are The Poorest Generation In 25 Years

The Daily Dot: As the millennial generation starts to reach its 30s, many of these ‘80s and ‘90s kids are having kids of their own, and recent surveys show one in five millennial parents is living in poverty. That’s the result of a combination of rising costs for raising children, falling wages, increased unemployment, and high debt—mostly college related. But the boomer generation seems to think otherwise: Millennials are to blame for their own financial situation, thanks to wasting time on the Internet and being too lazy to find jobs.

Millennials certainly are facing a financial crisis, but it’s not because of how they use their money, nor is it the result of how many Facebook quizzes they take or BuzzFeed listicles they read. It has much more to do with the financial legacy left to them by the boomers—and the refusal to acknowledge that this is a generation in dire need of better social support.

Everyone loves to hate on millennials. Patricia Sellers at Fortune writes: “While we Baby Boomers typically place high value on pay, benefits, stability and prestige, Gen Y cares most about fun, innovation, social responsibility, and time off.” Charles M. Blow at the New York Times wrote witheringly of the “selfiegeneration” that: “All in all, we seem to be experiencing a wave of liberal-minded detach-ees, a generation in which institutions are subordinate to the individual and social networks are digitally generated rather than interpersonally accrued.”

Workplace consultant Sherri Elliott-Yeary further believes: “Millennials are not willing to make work the central focus of their lives as Baby Boomers have.” Millennials are all too busy looking for fun to buckle down and work—which is why companies have to resort to juvenile features like slides and ball-pits to attract millennial workers, and why millennials flock to the Internet. Millennials believe in YOLO, FOMO, and #picsoritdidnthappen.

The hashtagging, selfie-ing, status updating, social networking generation is so mired in the Internet, it’s no wonder that millennial parents are poor—or so, at least, goes the logic of commentary after commentary on this particular generation. The Internet is classed as a time waster and a sign of millennial laziness, but more than that, it’s evidence that young adults aren’t trying hard enough to find jobs and resolve their financial dire straits.

This is a curious classification of a generation that was handed every possible disadvantage in life by a prior generation. Boomers created a social, economic, and environmental mess that will take decades—if not centuries—to clean up, gifting millennials with war, climate change, a recession, runaway inflation, and an absurdly competitive job market.

Millennials were promised that if they followed the American prescription for success, starting with a college degree, they’d be on a track to profitable careers and respected roles in American society. Instead, they entered college precisely at the moment tuition was skyrocketing, endowments were falling, and interest on student loans was climbing. College loans are a major contributor to millennial debt, so much so that there are legitimate fears of a college debt bubble that could be as devastating as the tech bubble of the 1990s (boomers) or the recession (boomers again).

Read the full article: The Daily Dot