Someone Asks, "What Will Die With Millennials?" And 45 People Don't Hold Back Their Opinions

We reached out to the woman who started this conversation on Reddit in the first place, Lindsay, to hear what inspired her to ask this question. "I am a millennial, I identify as an elder millennial," she told Bored Panda. "I am a therapist and work exclusively with Gen Zers at my practice: Austin Teen Therapy. Honestly, I didn’t think much about my generation until there were grown up people in a generation following mine."

"There has been a lot of talk about millennials and the internet," Lindsay explained. "We hear about millennials being the first generation to have grown up with the internet. The flip side to that: we will be the last folks to remember life without the internet so widely available. And when we die that will die with us. This fascination with generational culture, disappearing culture, and technology led me to pose the question."

We also asked Lindsay if she thinks certain things will always die out with every generation, or if technology has advanced to a point where that will happen less often. "I suspect things will continue to die with each generation despite advances in technology," she shared. "And for that very reason: technology continues to advance."

Millennials get a lot of flack for being “snowflakes”, obsessed with brunch or being the “me generation”, but no generation is perfect. And just because many of them don’t have the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality of their elders does not mean they are lazy or entitled. They have just realized that being treated poorly by employers should not be the norm, and having a healthy work-life balance shouldn't be merely a fantasy. Plus, what some people call being “snowflakes”, others consider showing empathy for others and being sensitive to social issues. Potato, puh-tah-toe, right?

There are some great qualities about millennials that tend to be swept under the rug as well. For example, 90% of millennials say that working for a sustainable company is important to them, while only 77% of baby boomers feel the same way. These snowflakes are actually concerned about the future of the planet and want to ensure that climate change doesn’t add actual snowflakes to the list of things that die out when their generation does. Gen Z might be even more famous for being socially aware and active, but millennials certainly paved the way for their younger siblings.     

While millennials may only be 26-41 years old at the moment, we can already predict some of the trends, memories and experiences that will become things of the past as this generation ages. Technology has progressed rapidly during their lifetimes already, and most of Gen Z has no memory of a world without smartphones and streaming platforms. Remember when watching a movie on Netflix meant being sent a DVD in the mail? Or watching a film on Friday night meant a trip to Blockbuster? If you’re not a millennial, you might not remember those days!

There are also various cultural phenomena that no one will remember as well as millennials do. For example, one of the responses on this list mentions how normal it was for millennials to mention their Harry Potter houses. Similarly to how Gen Z might mention their astrology signs, knowing what Hogwarts house you fell into was imperative when I was growing up. The Harry Potter books became the most sold book series of all time, and anyone who did not read the series, or at least watch the films, could be easily left out during lunch time chats. However, with the controversy surrounding J.K. Rowling’s transphobic tweets and the fact that times simply change, reading the Harry Potter books might not be a rite of passage for all kids in the coming generations. 

Now that millennials have reached the age where they’re raising children of their own, some outdated mindsets and views might be going extinct as well. Katy Steinmetz wrote a piece for TIME examining just how parenting is shifting over time, where she noted that millennials are raising their kids the way they wish they had been raised. “These young adults, having been raised to count individuality and self-expression as the highest values, are attempting to run their families as mini-democracies, seeking consensus from spouses, kids and extended friend circles on even the smallest decisions,” Steinmetz writes. “They’re backing away from the overscheduled days of their youth, preferring a more responsive, less directorial approach to activities. And they’re teaching their kids to be themselves and try new things—often unwittingly conditioning their tiny progeny to see experiences as things to be documented and shared with the world.”

And while millennials are also famous for their optimism, it can be challenging to raise kids in a world full of influencers and constant pressure on social media. Nearly 90% of millennials are active on social media, meaning that it is extremely easy for them to compare their own lives, including their children, to others. But sharing baby pictures on Facebook and documenting every “first” a child has might just be the new norm. Millennials will likely be the last ones to remember growing up without their parents posting on Facebook or having access to it when they were teenagers, and the idea of not being on social media, or at least not knowing how to use it, will be a thing of the past.    

Kids today have a completely different experience growing up than millennials did when they were young. It will be interesting to see how having a digital footprint of essentially their entire lives will impact them. “Children growing up will have multiple identities,” Sarita Schoenebeck of the University of Michigan told TIME. “They will have a more public one that has been created by their parents, that’s been cultivated by grandparents. But they will maintain a more personal and private independent identity as well.” Gone are the days of having to print photos or keep journals for memories. The children of millennials will have everything at their fingertips. 

One negative idea that will hopefully die out with millennials is the stigma around discussing mental health issues. For the most part, millennials are open to engaging in conversations about mental health and promoting practices like therapy, but Gen Z is even more open-minded. In fact, 70% of teens say that anxiety and depression are major issues for their age group, according to Pew Research Center. With young people starting to talk about and be mindful of mental health issues at increasingly young ages, hopefully any stigma associated with taking care of mental health will soon be a thing of the past.