The Millennial Generation: Gen Y’s greatest social impact

“What is the greatest social impact your generation has made so far and what do you predict for the future? The impact could be in the area of politics, technology, religion, the arts etc.” – Leo Briones

Wikipedia defines my generation as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation. We’re the successors of Generation X, the tech savvy resilient bunch that is said to be born from 1977 – 1998 or so.

We’ve grown up in an age where the Internet has played a major role on our development. We are the “Napster” generation where we expect things, like the music industry, to work different than they did in the past. I mean, really, it’s the new millennium, isn’t it?

We witnessed 9/11 and the changing political climate that followed. We’re staging anti-war protests, we’re fighting for our right to love, we’re voting and we’re dying.

Some call us the “Trophy Generation” as we expect lots of positive feedback and ample high-fives. We grew up in the “no one loses” era of sports and competition. We’re finding our bosses hard-line stances harder and harder to swallow. We’re rejecting the idea that hard work alone will guarantee anyone success.

So far, our biggest social impact has been our ability to change. We’ve seen huge changes during our time on earth and we’ve adapted accordingly. We will be known as the generation who spawned such social networking giants as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. We see opportunities for change and jumped on them like no other generation has in the past.

However, our legacy, will be so much more than just tweets, and #hashtags, and wall posts, or even high fives and slaps on the back.

We’re here for our revolution. We’re here to change what so desperately needs to be changed. We’re here because we believe in our own imaginations more than any other generation has believed.

In this time of economic crisis, we’re seeing that the deferred life-plans of the past are no longer relevant. We can no longer depend on getting a job out of college, working for 50 years and then retiring. There are no promises of the American dream that we grew up believing in.

However, we are choosing to create our own American dream instead. We are changing the status-quo. We’re giving a big high-five to entrepreneurialism, to lifestyle design, to vagabonding and extended travel, to volunteerism, to working abroad, to learning new languages, to accepting new cultures, and most of all; to accepting ourselves for the great creators that we are.

We’re exercising our right to quit jobs that suck and make us depressed. We’re building our empires. We’re unwavering in our resolve to be different and to adapt quicker than the last generation. We’re opening our minds and our hearts.

Our biggest impact on the world will be political, social, technological, artistic, revolutionary, global, and really damn fun too.

Our biggest impact will be that of passion. We’re going to bring passion back into a world where it has taken a backseat to being realistic. We’re not thinking about the future, we’re thinking about NOW. We’re not unemployed, we’re funemployed. We’re not putting off our dreams, we’re living them now. We’re putting passion back into the American dream and because of that, we will bring that dream alive with a millennial kind of spirit that has never been witnessed before.

Hey, I’ll give a high-five to that. Just don’t leave me hanging.