American millennials are among the freest people who have ever lived. We can learn anything, travel anywhere, and capture the world with our technological discoveries. Yet, we are risk adverse, shying away from everyday anxieties and human interactions.
Our attitudes are partly because we were born in an era of technology. Many of our exchanges are virtual. We don’t talk over the phone; we text. Face-to-face discussions and phone conversations require immediate and unpolished responses. Millennials prefer more control. Instead of mustering the courage to introduce ourselves in bars, we go on dating sites and make the instinctive decision to swipe left or right. It takes the sting out of personal rejection.
Yet, our technological savvy and entrepreneurial character have not prompted us to start our own businesses. Our futures seem uncertain, and so we resist such long-term undertakings. We find the enterprising spirit theoretically inspiring but don’t seek such risk and responsibility ourselves.
According to a recent study, millennials are also lonelier than previous generations, and this could be due to the decline in personal interactions and our transience.
Millennials are not buying houses as previous generations did, and Pew predicts that 25 percent of millennials are likely to remain unmarried, the highest of any generation in modern history. We’re waiting to commit ourselves, both to a community and another person.
Millennials are the most educated generation to date. Getting a degree was the secure and expected path, the “right thing to do.” Many of our parents were the first generation to make that gamble. They ignored their parents who had been debt averse and skeptical of the benefits of higher education. Many were successful, so they taught their millennial children that taking on debt was acceptable and assured them it would all work out in the end.
Today, millennials feel betrayed by what seemed like a promise. A college degree no longer guarantees a good job, and the burden of student debt has left many with a mediocre standard of living. Having a 10-year student loan is accompanied with the pressure that the recipient must achieve success over the course of those 10 years. This paralyzes millennials. They do not want to undertake additional risks when their first came with such consequences. Opening up a business is out of the question. Rather than starting their own families, not sure they can afford it, they revert to the comforts of their childhood homes, with nearly 23 percent of millennials living with their parents.
Higher education also framed millennials’ beliefs. Classrooms were not a place to test ideas. Rather, students and administrators were on alert for any utterance which could be construed as offensive. And millennials avoid confrontation, so many responded by adopting a noncommittal and risk-free philosophy: moral relativism. Millennials preempt offense with a hedged “I feel” or excuse it with a humble, “Well, that’s just my opinion.” Both of these responses serve to soften assertions and disassociate the speaker from his or her statements. Beliefs are not carefully cultivated views essential to and reflective of the character of the individual, they are mere preferences.
But adherence to moral relativism has created additional anxieties for millennials. Millennials have a well-meaning desire to better America, but flit from issue to issue. They march in the women’s parade, ban plastic straws, and fundraise on Facebook. Because they are relativists, there is no unifying principle which motivates their actions; the issues themselves are almost incidental. Rather, commonality is found in the religious fervency of their activism. Millennials are searching for something to believe, something which will offer them firmness and comfort in their restlessness and distress. Moral relativism can offer no such grounding. So instead, millennials place their identity in their causes. They accumulate them like a collection, but often without examining their substance.
Millennials’ uneasiness runs contrary to the spiritedness which true freedom and self-government demand. When we seek to minimize all discomfort and control every circumstance, our interactions become superficial and our experiences smaller. We lose our ability to embrace the fortunes of life, the challenges of deliberation, and the human excitement inspired by the unexpected. And in so doing, we relinquish something fundamental. As Alexis de Tocqueville asked, “what remains, but to spare [us] all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”
Brenda Hafera is the Director of International and Continuing Education Programs at The Fund for American Studies, a member of The Matthew J. Ryan Society of Villanova University, and was a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
