Millennials are the generation raised by the Baby Boomers, still often called “kids” despite the fact the eldest are entering their forties, and they have their work cut out for them. The Millennials have numerically passed the Baby Boomers who grew up in the post-WW2 era of American economic prosperity and Cold War fears of atomic annihilation. The Pew Research Center says that Millennials comprise those born between 1981-1996, and, like all generations, most Millennials identify with certain commonly shared experiences. Namely, they were old enough to be fully aware of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They pride themselves on being the last generation to grow up in an “analog” world, a time long before parents decided to Instagram and TikTok their children’s lives from the moment they came out of the womb, leaving a lifelong digital footprint. Millennials knew they were the last to have experienced any kind of childhood anonymity in the truest sense.

As Millennials grew up, like most generations before, they were idealistic, set to change the world. With the wreckage of 9/11 coloring their worldview, they were raised to be “global citizens” and embrace the world and its opportunities, while reconciling the cold facts that the world was still one where force and money were the actual levers of power, now and as they always have been. Millennials went to classes with the memory of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, but schools were still largely as they had been for their Generation X predecessors. Few schools had lockdown drills, security cameras, or metal detectors. For many suburbanite Millennials, leaving school to go out to lunch and coming back in through a side door was nothing strange…

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