Millennial Mania

After several recent invitations to speak at conferences on the subject of Millennials as teachers and parents, I am struck by the level of interest in the topic from Boomer (and Get X) administrators and board members. Inevitably, the questions seem to be about ways in which Millennials are different, and what impact this has on their relationship with the school as either parents or employees. As with every new generation, those of us in the ones before can’t shake the sense that something is different, and that the difference isn’t always positive. Backing up our suspicions are a raft of recent articles of varying degrees of rigor, but are these supposed differences real or simply the anecdotal observations we inevitably make as one generation fades into the next?

The problem is that it is too early to tell. We are just not deep enough into the Millennial generation as parents and employees to know how different or similar they will end up. Amid the ink already spilt on Millennials we can see evidence in both directions: more extreme in some ways and more traditional in others. This calls to mind a distinction between within and between groups variation that is at the heart of inferential statistics in the social sciences. To reach the threshold of statistical significance, the degree of variation between two groups must exceed the variation within each group, not by just a little but by enough to pass muster with whatever inferential statistics tool one uses.

For example, it seems as if every generation has unique and sometimes quite radical preferences for music, a difference that pits it in conflict with the previous generation. In order to be meaningful—to be something we would say defines part of a generation—the variation in musical preference between it and another generation must exceed that within the group. Applying this test to Millennials, although not specifically about music, we read about wide variances within as well as between groups. Sure, musical tastes will differ, but are the difference with Boomers greater than those among the Millennials themselves? Perhaps not, and we can ask the same about parenting and work behavior.

There might be and probably are real differences between generations. However, until we have more data, it is at best misleading, and perhaps even dangerous, to paint Millennials all with the same brush.