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According to a new Pew report, Millennials: Confident. Connected. open to Change (February 2010), "Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials - die American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium - have hegun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, Uberai, upbeat and open to change. They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They're less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history."
Each generation is named according to some aspect of the culture. Millennials are named to reflect their coming of age in a new millennium. According to the Pew research, there are about 50 million Millennials who currently are aged 18 to 29 years old.
Basing their findings from a survey of a national cross-section of 2,020 adults (including an oversample of Millennials) conducted by landline and cell phones in January 2010, and drawing on more than 20 years of Pew Research Center surveys, plus Census Bureau data and other relevant studies, this new report reflects quite an extensive analysis.
The report examines Millennials' demographics, political and social values, lifestyles and life priorities, their digital technology and social media habits, and their economic and educational aspirations. Interestingly, the study also compares Millennials with the nation's three other living generations, that is, Gen Xers (ages 30 to 45), Baby Boomers (ages 46 to 64) and the generation known as Silents or, in other research, as Matures (ages 65 and older). When trend data permit, the report compares the four generations as they are now and also as previous generations were at the ages that adult Millennials are at this point in time.
Before delving more deeply into the section of the report dealing with technology and social media for this coming-of-age generation, here are some of the general highlights of the report:
* More than a third of 18- to 29-year-olds are unemployed or out of the work force; this represents the highest proportion among this age group in more than 30 years.
* Two-thirds of this generation say, "you can't be too careful" when dealing with people. They are, however, less skeptical than older adults of...