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Copyright © 2015 by Christine Romans. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.
ISBN 9781118949351 (Hardcover)
ISBN 9781118949375 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781118949368 (ePub)
I remember the exact moment the power, influence, and potential of your generation first struck me.
It was midnight, four hours after the first polls closed in the 2012 presidential election. My colleague John King handed off CNN's “magic wall” to me and I quickly began studying the exit polling data. Surrounded by swooping cameras and a blinding grid of lighting, I stood in the CNN Election Center tapping through and cross-referencing table after table of numbers and responses from voters who had just left the voting booth.
Barack Obama had been reelected president of the United States just hours before, and the numbers were rolling in throughout the night telling us who voted and why. Measures for same-sex marriage were on the ballot and passed in three states. Washington and Colorado legalized marijuana. In all, there were 180 ballot measures in 38 states. As I scrolled through the results, I was struck by the fact that your generation had become a power player in social change in the United States. Those polls showed a generation that considers itself innovative and diverse. One that is open-minded and, better yet, flexible enough to change your mind. You have values you believe in, but you respect others' values. As I clicked, tapped, and dragged data across that magic wall, it became quite clear that this generation known as millennials is one to be reckoned with.
And you are different from your elders.
All of my reporting shows you are the first generation to value experience over possessions, which is a huge change for a U.S. economy based on the idea of me, more, now. Your parents' generation bought bigger houses, cars, boats, and second homes, and they spent more time planning vacations than their retirement – all thanks to a mirage of easy credit. But that's over – and you know it.
You're a generation forged by the Great Recession, the War on Terror, and an explosion of consumer technology no generation before you could have dreamed of. You've grown up comfortable with technology, and you expect it to change the world. And that technology brings you different experiences and values that you put above most other “things.” Look no further than the ideological and economic heart of this country right now, thriving with millennials at the helm: Silicon Valley. Understated is better. T-shirts, jeans, and ideas trump Wall Street bling, pinstripes, and financial engineering. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's car of choice sums it up: She drives a BMW that's nearly 20 years old!
