American Millennials Are Useless

A revisited 2013 survey reveals that American millennials are arguably the most useless generation alive today.

A “millennial” is loosely defined as any person born no earlier than the late 1980’s and no later than the year 2000. For many so-called millennials born in the U.S., their early developmental years were largely comprised of people telling them of their unlimited potential. Many American millennials grew up hearing that they and their inherent technological abilities would blaze a trail into the future. Such a sentiment is perhaps no better summarized than by the satirical open-source publication, Urban Dictionary’s definition of a millennial.

“…this generation [the millennials] is something special, cause Mom and Dad and their 5th grade teacher Mrs. Winotsky told them so. Plus they have a whole shelf of participation trophies sitting at home so it has to be true. They believe themselves to be highly intelligent, the teachers and lecturers constantly gave them “A”‘s in order to keep Mom and Dad from complaining to the Dean.”

Despite years of hearing that they are the best, American millennials may not be so great after all.

Recently, a revisiting of a 2013 survey has revealed that across almost every tested field, American millennials lag behind the rest of the world. The test is known as the Survey of Adult Skills and is part of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies or, PIAAC. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the organization that implemented the survey, states that the 2013 survey, “measures the key cognitive and workplace skills needed for individuals to participate in society and for economies to prosper.”

The Washington Post summarized the survey as focusing on “literacy, math, and technological problem solving.” The survey was designed to compensate for factors such as race, language, and cultural differences. Furthermore, the survey’s participants were aged 16-65 in order to incorporate a more complete spectrum of working-age people.

The results form the 2013 administration of the survey revealed that millennials born in the U.S. were one of the least equipped groups of people. The Washington Post reported that that American millennials were the fourth least literate and the absolute least mathematically minded of all the surveyed groups. Perhaps most surprising however, was how poorly American millennials performed in the technology-based portion of the survey.

American millennials have always been told that they are “tech natives” meaning that theirs was the first generation to have access to advanced technologies from childhood. Despite being born into the technological age however, American millennials were shown to be the second least capable group when it came to technological problem solving.

Given American millennials’ disappointing performance on the OECD survey, perhaps it is time that U.S. millennials stop settling for Mrs. Winotsky’s participation trophies. If such a rejection of minimalistic goals does not occur, the OECD survey suggests that American millennials will be virtually incapable of developing their economic society.

[Featured Image credit to The Sheppard Post]