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Comment by kren | Hacker News Reader

Not trying to pick a fight here, just want to understand the truth. Is it possible that millennials are bombarded by internet and media that’s designed to keep your attention and entertain you, such that millennials are not focusing on how to earn a better living or increasing their skill set during a time in their lives when it matters most? The amount of information we have at our disposal is incredibly more accessible than it was for boomers in their 30s, for better or for worse.

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Millennials were born centered around 1990. Most of them were in their late teens by the time social media as we know it today really entered the zeitgeist. Even if it's true that social media is distracting in a way that affects education and skill development, this would have an impact on younger generations, not as much millennials, who are used to the internet as a tool, not as an integral part of the world.

As for the premise itself, I find it doubtful. All of my friends below age 30 (i.e. past millennials) have a much stronger working knowledge of marketable skills than I did at a younger age, as well as more open and free resources to develop them. It is most often access and connections that block their career progress, not capability.

Look up the salaries for jobs boomers got out of college and compare to today. Also look at the amount of debt they took on to get their education. Next look at real estate prices at the time. Taken together these factors explain everything to first order.

Boomers rode a wave of affordable education and economic growth. They did not see fit to secure those benefits for their own children in the way their parents did for them. Their final legacy is climate denial and environmental damage that will haunt their descendants for generations.

Boomers were the generation who decided to cook food on plastic instead of normal pans because it saved them a few seconds of cleanup. Millennials are the generation who grew up eating food cooked on plastic and now have unprecedented rates of early onset cancers. This type of pattern touches many aspects of the intergenerational relationship in the US.

> Millennials are the generation who grew up eating food cooked on plastic and now have unprecedented rates of early onset cancers

I am curious about this. Do you have a source?

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