The Entitlement Generation

This past weekend, I was asked by my Relay for Life team leader to volunteer with a group at a fundraiser to try and raise more money before the walk this Friday. The concept: play Rebecca Black’s atrocious song “Friday” nonstop for two hours or until we raised $100. It sounded relatively easy. I thought if enough people were annoyed (like I was) they would willingly throw dollars our way. I wanted it to rain money, but as with every dream I have, roadblocks presented themselves.

While a good number of people filtering in and out of Cro that evening stopped to donate money or laugh and sing along with the song, there were a few people who expressed, what I would term, disrespect for our event. Now, I understand that playing any song on repeat is infuriating to listen to, and that hearing “Friday” for two hours without stop is probably the equivalent of getting a root canal (without Novocain). But I don’t think this event, which was approved by the necessary heads of event planning, warranted the negativity that it did. I don’t think it was necessary to yell at us to “turn the music off” without first bothering to see what our cause was. I don’t think it was respectful or productive to unplug our speakers in the middle of our fundraiser because the music was disrupting the “quiet” Thursday evening at Oasis.

Since it was a Thursday night, I’m willing to bet that some alcohol or other substances may have been involved in the antics. But upon further thought, I realized that this behavior may be the result of a greater problem that exists among members of our age group. I think our generation has developed a toxic sense of entitlement and an undeserving expectation for instant gratification. If an annoying song started playing on your iPod, you could always hit “next” and listen to something else. Back when your parents or grandparents sat around and listened to the radio and Rebecca Black started playing, they would just suffer through it and wait for the next song to come on—hopefully something by the Biebs. But seriously, in a world where we can watch TV on our computers, send emails from our phones and turn on our car’s heater with an app, we can’t handle waiting more than five minutes for our food at Oasis or stand in line for any amount of time without complaining or getting visibly annoyed at the hardworking employees.

We’ve been dubbed the Millennials, the iGeneration, the YouTube Generation and so on, because of our technology-driven lifestyles. We’ve grown up with computers and cell phones, things that our parents and grandparents didn’t have. We Facebook, tweet, G-chat, Tumble, text and all sorts of other verbs that didn’t exist twenty years ago. We’re constantly connected to the world around us via these devices. It’s impossible to walk into Harris and not see people playing with their phones or computers. It wouldn’t surprise me if we were all diagnosed with ADD in ten years; I’ve discovered that my attention span while reading books has decreased since the creation of Twitter and the 140 character limit. We’re addicted to technology, whether we’d like to admit it or not, and because of the instant gratification it provides us with, we’ve become spoiled.

It doesn’t help that our generation has been taught that we can do anything. While it’s a wonderful sentiment echoed by our parents, teachers and coaches, it’s instilled an exaggerated sense of self-worth and confidence that may actually be hindering our progress rather than helping us. A lot of pressure has been put on us to receive excellent marks in school, score high on the SAT or ACT, get into top-notch universities and be the best athlete, musician, activist, writer, thespian, or whatever, we can possibly be. So much pressure has been placed on us to succeed, to go forth and change the world, to be the leaders of tomorrow. No wonder we have large egos: we’ve been told our whole lives that we can do anything we want, while the reality is, we can’t.

America’s in an economic recession and it’s not that easy to find jobs right now. It’s not impossible, but it’s not going to be effortless, which is what a lot of people expect nowadays: to do things effortlessly, to be good at anything they set their minds to, to have anything they want at the snap of a finger and to never have to be in an annoying or uncomfortable situation for longer than five minutes.

Back in January, Daniel Radcliffe hosted an episode of SNL and starred in a sketch entitled “You Can Do Anything,” which poked fun at our generation’s inflated sense of self-worth. As Vanessa Bayer’s character called it: “The only show that celebrates the incredibly high self-esteem of the YouTube Generation.” On the show, Taran Killam’s character threw ten bowling pins into the air to try and “juggle” when he had never before juggled in his life, and exclaimed, “I juggled” when they all came crashing down around him. Bill Hader’s character, co-host of the show, told Killam that he could now say he was a juggler, to which Killam replied, “Because I have no shame or self-awareness.” Touché, SNL.

This sketch sought to point out the disillusioned attitude that many of our generation possess. We pick up a guitar, play a few chords and suddenly we can add singer-songwriter to our resumes. We pick up some bowling pins, throw them in the air and we’re a juggler. Maybe this idea stems from the practice of writing everything we ever did in our lives on our resumes for college applications. “I played the recorder once in fourth grade” does not translate to “I’m a musical prodigy,” just like attending math camp for a week doesn’t make you a mathematical genius. These thoughts are delusional, and need to stop before we poison future generations with this “do everything, excel at everything” attitude.

Maybe we need to stop pressuring kids by telling them that they can all be the next President of the United States; maybe they need a dose of reality every now and then to keep them grounded. In a society where we value connections over hard work to launch us into careers, it’s no wonder our generation has some kind of superiority-complex. We’re told to market ourselves, to make ourselves look the best we can possibly be. Naturally, we start to think we’re hot shots when in reality, most of us are just average people, trying to make it in the world. And that’s not really so bad, is it? •