What Happened to Millennials: In Defense of a Generation by Charlie Wells
What Happened to Millennials is a history of our century thus far as well as a Defense of a Generation. Born from 1981 through 1996, Millennials came of age at a moment of high expectations, only to be confronted by 9/11 and confounded by a rollercoaster economy, Covid and anxiety over an uncertain future.
Author Charlie Wells is part of that cohort. In What Happened to Millennials, the Bloomberg News writer looks beyond Britney Spears and pop culture nostalgia to follow the long-term trends that shaped his generation and our world—globalization, immigration, social media, a sickening 24/7 news cycle. Wells builds his account around case studies of five Millennials from different backgrounds; he lets us into their lives and tells us their stories.
Perhaps Tereza Lee’s is the most pivotal in terms of public policy. She came with her parents from Korea who stayed after their tourist visas expired. She was a gifted pianist afraid of applying for college because of her family’s immigration status, but with the help of sympathetic and politically active mentors, she “became the inspiration for a piece of legislation that would follow her—us—through twenty-five years to the present,” Wells writes. He refers to the DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate … on the eve of 9/11. The bill languished in the confusion that followed and with the rightward turn of the GOP, normalizing the status of people who came to the country without papers as minors became a flashpoint.
By 2025 Millennials have reached the turning point of middle age, and according to statistics, they are an unhappy lot. They report being “lonely” at higher numbers than Boomers or GenXers, with higher suicide rates, less sex, more student debt. By some accounts, Generation Z is zipping past them in morale if not yet achievement. In the end, many Millennials paid the price for their Instagram-ready lives. Reality kept butting against fantasy. “Remember, nearly one out of every three Millennials say they have zero best friends,” Wells writes. The ubiquitous “connection” of social media? “We now exist in what feels like a never-ending high school reunion we weren’t prepared for.” And yet, some of the stories Wells relates in What Happened have resolved happily, at least for now.
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Wells mounts a successful defense against the many careless charges hurled against Millennials by their elders but acknowledges near the onset that he’s faced with the same conceptual problem as those critics. Generations contain multitudes, they are like Zodiac signs, and no five people can speak for everyone.
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