The Myth of the Cursed Millennial

Is Gen-Y in as bad shape as everyone thinks

If you were alive and in America in 2005, you heard the news that Brad Pitt left his wife, Jennifer Aniston, for fellow movie star Angelina Jolie.

Aniston was the star of one of the biggest TV shows ever. Jolie and Pitt were two of the most beautiful movie actors on the planet. It was everywhere, all the time, for months on end. Pitt’s affair with Jolie didn’t just end a marriage; it created a brand: “sad Jennifer.”

No matter how many years, career advancements, awards, and subsequent marriages Jennifer Aniston enjoyed after her divorce from Pitt, she was branded as “sad” by the media. For nearly two decades, this accomplished, wealthy, beautiful woman would always be portrayed as longing, childless, betrayed, and sad.

Now, I don’t know Jennifer Aniston; for all I know, she’s the happiest person in the world. I doubt that she’s been sad over a divorce for two decades, but I know that perception matters more than facts in the eyes of the public.

And like Aniston being sad, my generation, millennials, are branded as cursed. We came of age during some heavy changes in America: a childhood shaken by 9/11, a destabilized national economy as markets opened to China, a global war on terror, and coming into adulthood during a mass economic recession and a drug crisis that devastated millions of families. Millennials were perceived as being entitled, narcissistic, and cursed. The Washington Post went so far as calling them “the unluckiest generation in history.”

Some 15 years after the economy collapsed in 2008, as the youngest millennials are just shy of being in their 30s and the oldest millennials are middle-aged, the perception still exists: millennials are cursed.

They don’t have children, they don’t own houses, and they're poor.

This is the explanation many people give for why millennials are still liberal. They’re not getting more conservative as they age because they don’t have investments in society.

But is any of this true?