It’s a phrase I’ve only recently come across, largely used to describe many young activists within the Occupy and UK Uncut movements. However, the definition could be loosely;

A person who has reached maturity at the beginning of the 21st century who is keen to challenge the status quo, Pareto’s Law and social policy and morality of (their/a) nation

Just looking at the time of birth, and of the right of passage to adulthood, one must be aware that unlike myself, a Millennial has not generally lived in a world without mobile phones, has not lived in a world without personal computers, has not lived in a world without unlimited access to information within their own home and has also generally not held a full-time job for more than five years.

For those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, we have seen the rapid evolution of technology and the digital era unfolds in front of us. The first class I lived in didn’t contain a personal computer, the home I now live in with my husband has five. I got my first mobile phone at the age of 18 and it was the size of a large mug with an antenna.

In sharp contrast, I have a half sister who has recently turned 12. She was born when I got my first mobile phone. She has her own mobile phone for 2 years already. She has social media, social networking, instead of using Microsoft Encarta to do her homework, she can simply use Wikipedia and a vast quantity of information available on the Internet. if I wanted to find a new (heavy metal) music, I had purchased Kerrang magazine. If my sister wants to find a new type of music, she simply uses iTunes or another multimedia supplier that links to music types.

This is perhaps one of the key issues for the Millennials. They are keen to challenge the law, considering themselves to be protagonists in a V for Vendettas movie of their own lives hosted through Facebook, serialised on blogs and dramatise through YouTube. And for them, all of this is free.

The reason that my first flat did not have a personal computer is because I couldn’t afford one. The reason I had no access to unlimited music was because I was limited to purchasing music piped through magazines. The Millennial generation are provided a whole host of things for free; access to computers which in turn provides access to information and by the same reasoning they demand access to other things for free.

The digital era has provided unlimited access to technology and subsequently unlimited access to information. While this is fantastic and sparked a range of protests against things that are not morally fair, one key message that is lost in translation is everything costs money. that time costs money, and manufacture costs money, and even the streets that you sit on cost money.

Other people observe the commodity focused generations of millennials with their demands for free education as a gimme-gimme-gimme generation. Mariella Frostrop has been running a show entitled Bringing up Britain which aired an episode last night entitled Consumer Children.

There are many quotations on the optimism and naivete of youth combined with the wisdom of the older generations. However, is very difficult to observe them in transit. The problem is this every study of the millennials and their accession with consumer society and so-called freedom always ends up sounding petulant and jealous.

The millennials do not have a cynical edge yet, they genuinely feel that demonstration against perceived unfairness, based on the facts as they choose to present them through the Internet, it’s the only way forward. However, they do not have the wisdom of maturity to understand that change takes a generation, nor to understand the patience of delivery. By the same measure, they would lack the understanding in the value of such achievements.

It would be a shame to lose a generation of politicised young people into a vacuum of cynicism and hopelessness. However, the exuberance of youth may well be shared in every generation like the first skin of a lizard. Eventually we can all slot into our meaningless, nihilistic states; a manufactured society on escalators of perceived importance.