The Millennial generation includes the 83 million people born between the years 1977 to 2000. Included in the Millennials are tweens, teens, and young adults whose purchasing power totals $733 billion. Millennials are generally very comfortable with new technology because they were the first generation to grow up completely surrounded by it. Of the 83 million Millenials, approximately 76 million (91%) are on the internet, 64 million (77%) use social networking sites like Facebook often.
As a Millennial researching the characteristics of my own generation, I feel like I am reading a description of myself. I was born in 1988, and so grew up as the internet got big. I was using instant messaging in elementary school, and I had a “Xanga” account (a social networking site that was popular ten or so years ago) when I was in intermediate school.
“All generations are comfortable with technology, but this is the generation that’s been formed by technology” (Armstrong and Kotler 74).
I feel like I would probably not be the same as I am today had it not been for the huge influence that technology had on me in my life growing up. It is interesting how marketing has to now take into account the medium that which Millennials will be most likely to respond to advertising on. For instance, newspaper advertisements are not a good way to market to Millennials, but the same advertisement located on the side of a computer screen on Facebook might have profound results. Despite my efforts to be a non-conformist throughout the years, it appears as though technology has shaped me into yet another perfectly-molded Millennial consumer.
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