The Myth of Generation Y

Conventional wisdom suggests that Generation Y, also known as Millenials also known as Generation Einstein following the book of Boschma and Groen, are among other things Media Smart. So let’s see what it is all about, the myth of “Generation Einstein”.

“Since they were babies, they have been confronted with the media – they understand advertising and have become the ultimate experts. They only need to see the advertisement to know what the marketing strategy of the company is”.

I do not know where such ideas are founded on but my impression is that they are based more on fiction than on facts. For sure the millennials have grown in a media-dominated society but their media smartness is limited since they are heavily exposed to one medium only, namely the Internet: they watch much less TV, read almost nothing on paper (except maybe their school textbooks) including newspapers and they listen much less to the radio than their parents.

This one-sided exposure can never make them experts in advertising as the above quote claims. In fact on this point I would rather argue the contrary: their almost blind faith in everything published online as the absolute truth makes it sometimes difficult for them to distinguish between reality and commercial messages. I do not have any hard evidence to support this argument, maybe some research on this would be useful.

However, there is some evidence already that the Millenials despite their reputation as Media Smart do in fact very superficial and limited use of even the Internet and more specifically of the Social Media: A recent study indicates that most of the Generation Y online users are passive information consumers who don’t realize that they often need failure first to become successful entrepreneurs later on.

A recent study we conducted among teens confirms these findings, pointing also to the fact that the vast majority of this segment is using Social Media for entertainment rather than anything else but there are so many myths about Generation Y placing themselves at the center of it all. Well, perhaps in education that doesn’t need to be that bad, does it? One thing is for sure, the teacher is definitely not the center of education.

The percentage of these children who are actively creating and contributing content online is negligible. They might, on the other hand, better listen to, or read about, some of the interesting things people like Clayton Christensen have to say about entrepreneurship and ethical business endeavors to make sustainable growth.

My conclusion is that often the reality can be different than the perception. Again I would argue for more research in this area and a consistent follow-up of the trends here in a longitudinal study. They don’t see yet that businesses can also be doing well by doing good and that that’s a good thing! But beware, as about the term Generation Einstein, we should use Einstein’s name more carefully!