Chapter 2
Lost Heroes

In 2000, as the oldest members of the millennial generation were entering adulthood and the youngest were emerging from infancy, historians Neil Howe and William Strauss published Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. They wrote in prophetic tones, describing millennials as a cohort that would follow deep rhythms of Western history to become archetypal heroes, the likes of which had not been seen since the “Greatest” Generation fought World War II. Strauss and Howe predicted that millennials would push the United States “into a new era.” The country would be, they envisioned, “on the brink of becoming someplace very new, very ‘millennial’ in the fullest sense of the word. That's when the ‘end of history’ stops, and the beginning of a new history, their Millennial history, starts.”1

As someone born at the end of 1980, right on the cusp between Generation X and the millennials (as well as the beginning of the neoliberal era), I read Strauss and Howe's account with fascination and visions of grandeur. Hearing echoes of Roosevelt's words to the Greatest Generation in 1936, I wondered what our millennial “rendezvous with destiny” might be.

About the same time, however, other titles were emerging that painted a much grimmer portrait of me and my peers, such as psychologist Jean Twenge's 2006 Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before.2 Rather than rising heroes, Twenge saw millennials as self‐focused and fragile. Their individualism created “unprecedented freedom to pursue what makes them happy,” but their “high expectations, combined with an increasingly competitive world, have led to a darker flip side, in which they blame other people for their problems and sink into anxiety and depression.” Twenge was clear about her disagreement with Strauss and Howe's grand predictions for the millennial generation. “Even the subtitle, The Next Great Generation,” she wrote, “displays the hubris fed to the young by their adoring elders.”

This bleaker narrative gained traction. Over the years the millennial wings on which we might have risen turned to wax and melted in the sun. Millennial grew to be synonymous with entitled, and Time magazine ran a 2013 cover story declaring millennials the “Me, me, me Generation,” a negatively exaggerated version of our “Me Generation” boomer elders.3 Suddenly millennials were being blamed for “killing” everything from department stores to the sport of golf to napkins.4 During the global pandemic, COVID‐19 was hinted at as a “millennial bug,”5 and in 2022 after the Federal Reserve (which is not run by millennials) printed enough money to nearly double the United States’ money supply within two years,6 CNBC nonetheless suggested, “The size of the millennial generation is to blame for sky‐high inflation.”7 It seems the generation that dwells in parents’ basements and loves avocado toast is truly “fun to hate,”8 and convenient to scapegoat. Author and English professor Mark Bauerlein has gone so far as to write two books that label millennials “the dumbest generation.”9

Yet, despite the bad press, the blame and the name‐calling, vestiges of the millennial “Greatest Generation” narrative still exist. Josh Tickell's 2018 book The Revolution Generation: How Millennials Can Save America and the World (Before It's Too Late)10 explores whisperings of a “great millennial awakening,” and follows millennials to Standing Rock and inside state houses. Tickell believes millennials can make good on Strauss and Howe's predictions by enacting significant civic and economic shifts including ranked‐choice voting, a $15/hour minimum wage, and an embrace of blockchain currencies. Charlotte Alter's 2020 title The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America11 sounds like the fruition of Strauss and Howe's vision, and profiles millennial political wave–makers such as Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio‐Cortez, and Elise Stefanik.

Even Time's “Me, me, me Generation” cover story back in 2013 ran a paradoxical subtitle: “Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents. Why they'll save us all.” At the close of his article, Joel Stein wrote, “a generation's greatness isn't determined by data; it's determined by how they react to the challenges that befall them… . Whether you think millennials are the new greatest generation of optimistic entrepreneurs or a group of 80 million people about to implode in a dwarf star of tears when their expectations are unmet depends largely on how you view change.”12

It also depends on what you believe needs changing. As millennials like myself enter midlife, we are taking hold of our narrative and acknowledging our less‐than‐desirable attributes. Further, we are identifying the societal and systemic forces that have shaped us to the core. And many of us are not happy about it. In Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials,13 journalist Malcolm Harris writes, “Over the past forty years, we have witnessed an accelerated and historically unprecedented pace of change as capitalism emerged as the single dominant mode of organizing society… . The profiteers call this process ‘disruption,’ while commentators on the left generally call it ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘late capitalism.’ Millennials know it better as ‘the world,’ or ‘America,’ or ‘Everything.’ And Everything sucks.” Harris goes on to describe a neoliberal system that has treated millennials like “productive machinery”: high‐pressure schooling that primed children for overwork, universities functioning like corporations, a precarious and disempowering employment landscape, and declining mental health that is increasingly treated with medication. Likewise, in her recent book Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,14 Anne Helen Petersen laments, “America is broken, and we, too, along with it.”

This brokenness is reflected in millennial stereotypes: we are called the selfie generation, a lonely generation, the burnout generation, and a lost generation. In this chapter we'll explore these epithets one by one, and trace clear lines between each stereotype and the neoliberal landscape that, along with its freedoms and upsides, is causing suffering. Although specific to millennials, these stereotypes comprise a case study within an era of hyper‐individualism and unchecked growth, that members of any age group may find relatable.

The following passages are not optimistic, but they are only the beginning of the story. Later we will explore how our brokenness may be a secret key; the cracks in our armor could be openings into new possibilities that will help us heal, and help heal our world. But first, we turn to the darker side of the millennial tale.

Selfie Generation

Just a few months after Time ran its “Me, me, me Generation” cover story, Oxford Dictionaries declared its 2013 word of the year: selfie. First used online in 2002, selfie pervaded the English lexicon from 2012 to 2013, its use soaring by 17,000%.15 The following year, Charles M. Blow wrote an op‐ed in the New York Times drawing on the Pew Research Center's findings on “Millennials in Adulthood.”16 Pew characterized millennials as “unmoored” from political parties, religious organizations, and even the institution of marriage, and identified us as the first “digital natives” who lived into, rather than had to adapt to, the rise of tech innovations like Facebook. “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,” Blow concluded. “This is not only the generation of the self; it's the generation of the selfie.”17

By the time Blow wrote his op‐ed, millennials had already been linked to the psychological construct that selfies invoke—narcissism. Narcissism is defined as excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance, and narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by “need for admiration, entitlement, and lack of empathy.”18 It was Professor Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me who demonstrated millennial narcissism with data. Using archives of research that employed a measure called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Twenge studied changes in typical college students’ scores over the past few decades and found a clear upward trend. Compared to a college student in 1982, a student in 2009 was significantly more likely to endorse a statement such as, “I think I am a special person” or “I can live my life any way I want to.” Twenge and colleagues published a paper with the title “Egos Inflating...