The Truth About Millennials

The speech about millennials is a popular article delivered by Joel Stein. Millennials are the generation of people born during the period of 1980s-2000s. They were born on the edge of the millennium and had a number of distinctive features, which differ them from the people born before. Under the influence of technological progress and other factors influencing the development of personality they have become a distinctive layer of society, having a special attitude towards life. They have their own, fears, problems, insecurities and difficulties.

Joel Stein managed to analyze the personality of representatives of this generation, uncovering their fears and hidden skeletons in the closet.

Primarily the author supplies the target audience with the millennials definition. Millennials are the new generation of people, who were born on the edge of the millennium. That is why they have gained this name. The author calls them narcissistic, selfish and frames obsessed. The main characteristic, which author emphasizes throughout his whole essay.

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However, according to the position of the speaker Stein, they have reasons for such behavior and life position. Family, society, technology have made a great impact on them, making them prisoners of their own prejudice, fears and frames. Younger generations keep claiming that Millennials are ungrateful and not able to appreciate what they have. Steiner in his report claims that the way these people live and perceive themselves were influenced by the conditions, in which they were raised. The new people have distanced themselves greatly from the previous generations and have established new standards of living, striving and achieving.

Steiner uses a positive, humorous tone, which adds special coloring to his speech. Using simple language, but the very relevant wording, he manages to render the main idea behind his speech and analyze all the peculiarities of newly came generation. By applying logos and pathos, the author manages to illustrate both positive and negative sides of the personality of a typical millennial generation representative. Stein manages to appeal to an older people and asks them to reflect on this generation. Mr. Joel applies plenty of stylistic devices, making his speech colorful, emotional and appealing.

So who are the millennials? Joel begins his speech using pathos to present a general description of the representatives of this layer of society. He enforces the text with the clarified statistical data gained in the process of testing various generations. Techniques of contrast and comparison enable the author to render to the reader the idea of differences and gaps between various generations of people. Apart from that, Joel Stein implements several quotes of people working in various spheres and on different positions. They express their thoughts and attitudes towards the new generation. Practically all of the millennials aim to work in a place with purpose and have a strong desire to make an impact. Their main requirements for the new workplace comprise free food and bin bags. These original demands demonstrate their uniqueness and characterize their personality as well. Apart from that, Mr. Joel implements quotes to demonstrate that these people are too entitled to themselves.

Millennials generation representatives are special people. Primarily, it concerns the ways of their upbringing. These youngsters were born and raised in the families were the uniqueness and specialty of each child was highly cultivated. They were told, that they are special, deserving only the best. Even in schools, in the most primitive competitions, the last participants in the rating received participation medals. While those, who paid efforts to occupy the first position felt embarrassed and confused. The reality told them – you cannot just have what you want. Because of such differences between the home and external reality, millennials have low self-esteem, which may cause depressions and lack of confidence.

Another factor, which influenced reality the formation of the personality of the millennials representative, is the technology development. With the appearance of cell phones, Internet and social networks, these people lost the engagements in social life. Social media addictions equal to drug and alcohol addictions. Unfiltered access to media to medial make young people isolated. They are so close with their devises, that they are not able to interact with each other without them. They are not able to build relations, having no practice of these skills. It provokes stress. To fight this stress they turn to social networks, which create an illusion of sharing emotions with other and getting relief from feeling that you are understood.

The second part of the speech about millennials, he uses a rhetorical device of pathos to switch from listing of weaknesses to enumeration of their strong points quickly. He tells that millennials are the new species, who have just started to adapt to a new environment. Their way of thinking and interacting with the world is too modern for the current time. The speaker uses similes to enforce the effect on the target audience and render his thoughts maximally accessible for the audience. Throughout the whole text, he uses plenty of humor stylistic devices. It evokes a various feeling within the readers. The real-life examples enforce the position of the author and enable readers to understand the message better. He builds the text in the way that the reader wants to read until the end finally to understand what the attitude of the author towards millennials is.

While analyzing the whole approach of the author, it is possible to conclude, he made the right choice. Joel Stein approached his task seriously. He elaborated a great strategy for applying various stylistic and lexical means and techniques enabling to hold the attention of a target reader for a long time. Apart from that, the author managed to grasp the attention of an audience and hold it until the ends of the text. Among the effective techniques, applied by the speaker there is the implementation of humor, techniques of contrast and comparison, parallelisms etc. apart from that Mr. Joel manages to impalement successfully statistical data and other facts, helping the audience to develop their opinion about the article.

Summing up, the article of Joel Steiner is to express his position towards the millennials generation. All the information presented in the article is mainly aimed at depicting of the strength and weaknesses of people born between 1980 and 2000. Numerous repetitions, comparisons, facts, statistical data are mainly aimed at demonstration of how different the millennials are in comparison to other generations. They have to interact with the world, which is not ready to accept their ways of thinking and perception of this world. Finally, the author claims that this new generation of people came to this society to save us all.