Enter the Millennials
April 28th, 2008 by Rafael Shimunov
In a recent Mercury News interview with the authors of “Millennial Makeover, MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics,” Michael Hais and Morley Winograd describe what they call the Millennials and the unusually sustained, life-long impact this generation will have on the politics of 2012 and beyond.
Who are Millennials?
Millennials are born from 1982 to 2003. They are the largest generation in U.S. history; they are also the most ethnically diverse generation. Forty percent are African-American, Asian, Latino or mixed race. One in five has an immigrant parent. There’s a million more Millennials than boomers. Though no more Millennials are being born, some are immigrating, so the generation keeps getting bigger. Boomers are leaving us and Millennials are still gaining in size.
Why should we care about them, beyond the fact that there are nearly 100 million Millennials, about a third of the U.S. population?
Every 40 years, a large, dynamic generation realigns or makes over the political system, and we believe that the Millennials are the generation that will lead the coming realignment. The last realignment was brought into existence by another large, dynamic generation but a very different type of generation, the baby boomer generation. There are twice as many Millennials as there are Gen-Xers, but there’s a million more Millennials than boomers.
Read the entire interview at the Mercury News.
Tags: elections, millennial, youth
April 30th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Looking at what’s on Myspace these days I don’t know if I should be excited about the visible youth interest in politics or scared by their tremendous lack of education in these matters.