The media portrays millennials as lazy little losers who won't get off the couch long enough to apply for a job. But not all millennials are disaffected, undisciplined people. Take my little Janie, for example. Janie wants a job—she just hasn't found one yet. But we think she's going to start looking one of these days.
According to the media, millennials use drugs and alcohol to forget their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their lives. Janie doesn't drink or do drugs because she is unhappy or dissatisfied—she drinks and does drugs to get high.
I also take issue with the accusation that constant texting and computer use is ruining their eyes and making them overweight. Janie was blind as a bat and big as a boat years before she started texting or using a computer.
Millennials have the reputation of being self-centered and narcissistic. Not my little Janie. She's just not that interested in other people or what they have to say. She prefers to focus on herself.
Another erroneous assumption made by the media is that millennials don't get enough exercise. I don't know about the lot of them but Janie has told me that pole dancing is a hell of a workout. Too bad that gym teacher got fired.
Drunk texting is apparently one of the habits of a millennial, according to the media. That is so not true of my Janie. When she's drunk she can never find her phone.
I don't know how long the media thinks it takes to reach adulthood, but it is commonly believed that millennials are taking longer to reach adulthood than generations before them. For what it's worth, Janie reached adulthood in the back of her boyfriend's Chevy long before the other girls in her class, so that accusation doesn't apply to her.
The media claims that millennials assume that menial jobs are beneath them. Bagging groceries, for example. But Janie has trouble doing those jobs, or any job actually, so she would never make that assumption.
Some people say that millennials are spoiled and have everything. Janie does not have everything. Janie has no high school diploma, despite being 20 years old, and no resume either. Well, she has a resume but there are no jobs or degrees on it.
Millennials are accused of being addicted to social media. They may be, but Janie isn't. She doesn't have the concentration to do anything for more than a few minutes at a time.
So the media should back off and stop hurling insults at millennials. They're doing the best they can given the economy and the fact that it is damned hard to look for a job when you get out of bed in the afternoon and have a lot of texting and sexting to catch up on.