A headline that we’re constantly harassed with from news sources on all sides of the spectrum is this familiar phrase: “Millenials are ruining ______” Fill that in with just about anything, and there’s probably an article existing about it. Millenials are constantly criticized for being a generation of people who ruin things created by the baby boomers and traditionalists. When Google searching “millennials are ruining” and allowing a suggested search, these are the top suggested searches: divorce, the wine industry, brunch, Applebee’s, and even cheese. It’s interesting to inspect the data reflected in these sorts of articles, because although “ruining” reflects a deficit perspective, the data would suggest the things being ruined are probably for the better.
Take, for instance, “millenials are ruining divorce,” the number one suggested search. A Fortune.com article, just one of the first articles to pop up from the search, reads “Having ruined everything from home ownership to the mayonnaise industry, millennials are the process of spoiling yet another major American industry: Divorce. Darned kids. New data from the University of Maryland shows that the divorce rate has fallen 18% from 2008 to 2016, as Generation X and millennials are moving slower when it comes to marriage, Bloomberg reports” (fortune.com). The article goes on to talk about the amount of money that’s annually collected from marriage versus divorce. Another interesting thing to note about this article is that it refers to divorce as an industry. That perfectly represents what this article is really indicative of: rather than the fact that millennials are yet again “ruining” something, it’s more so about the fact that Boomers and the previous generations care more about the profitability of things, even something as emotionally difficult as divorce. The way this data is presented is to put a negative twist on divorce having lower rates, because although it would seemingly be beneficial for society to have a low divorce rate, it’s bad for you guessed it: capitalism and profit, which Boomers seem to care more about.
Another interesting topic to look at is how millenials are ruining “breastraunts” like Hooters. This is actually supplemental to how they’re ruining other chains, like Applebees and Buffalo Wild Wings, but this one is particularly interesting because of the morality behind it. This is actually from an excerpt of an article from Business Insider called “Millennials are killing list,” where the author writes “People ages 18 to 24 are 19% less likely to search for breasts on the pornographic website Pornhub compared with all other age groups, according to an analysis conducted by the website. For “breastaurants” like Hooters and Twin Peaks, a loss of interest in breasts is bad for business. The number of Hooters locations in the US has dropped by more than 7% from 2012 to 2016, and sales have stagnated, according to industry reports” (businessinsider.com). As someone that trails right behind millennials, therefore is subjected to the byproduct of a lot of their decisions, it doesn’t take a lot of analyzation for me to conclude that the emphasis for them has been moved from “breasts” like the former generation, which is who Hooters was created for, and on to butts (reference: the Kardashians). This is very contrary to that of the generations before them, such as my mother who’s a boomer and frequently comments on how “unbelivable it is” that “your generation” (millennials) like butts so much. That said, it seems that the blame for millennials “ruining” something in this piece is put to blame on our cultural shift from one body part to another. Instead of relying on business to adapt as generations of people change and grow, millennials are left as responsible for ruining everything. Another time where the data is being used to negatively reflect millennials, when according to their economic philosophy, the market should be changing and adapting itself for the consumers if it wants to remain in existence.
So, what’s all of this got to do with data? Well, the data can be used in a few different perspectives. Here, and throughout most of media, it seems like this data about the millennials generation is used to indicate that they’re ruining everything that the boomer’s and previous generations had in place. However, what if there was a perspective shift on this data to think of it as the millennials are changing things for the better? What if instead of “Millennials are Ruining Divorce,” such titles read “Millennials are Crushing Divorce Rates?” From a larger perspective, this example demonstrates how we can manipulate media and use it to create entirely deficit perspectives, or not. The way that we present media matters.
Sources:
Taylor, Kate. “Millennials Are Killing List.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 31 Oct. 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-killing-list-2017-8.
“The Latest Thing Millennials Are Ruining? Divorce.” Fortune, Fortune, fortune.com/2018/09/25/millennials-ruin-divorce/.
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 