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Millennials shaping the future: an interview with Neil Howe.

Article Excerpt
Keynote speaker for the 2007 American Camp Association National Conference Neil Howe brings his expertise as an author, economist, demographer, and media commentator on fiscal policy, retirement, and global aging to the table. In an exclusive interview with Camping Magazine, he shares his collective instinct for generational development and tells us in definitive terms what the new generation of teens is all about and how they will influence the camp community for years to come. They are the Millennials. Different from any previous generation, distinctive in thought, perceptive, and powerful....

How do you define Millennials?

We define Millennials as the generation born in 1982 and later. Teenage Millennials are mostly the children of Boomers; preteen Millennials are mostly the children of Generation X. They are the grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) of the war-winning "greatest" (G.I.) Generation.

Every generation is born over a period of approximately twenty years. For example, Generation X was born between 1961-1981; Baby Boomers were born between 1943-1960. Each generation is uniquely shaped by its own location in history-formative eras shape each generation differently on a fundamental level, with a lasting effect on their collective personas.

The argumentative and values-obsessed Boomer generation (today squarely in midlife) started out as children during an era of postwar complacency, and then came of age during the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, an era of social turmoil and youth anger. The pragmatic and survivalist Generation X (today in their mid-20s to mid-40s) started out as children during the Consciousness Revolution, and came of age during the 1980s and 1990s, an individualistic era of market-driven free agency.

Millennials, too, have a distinctive location in history that has helped shape their collective persona. They started out as children in the 1980s, a decade that brought a new emphasis on family values, from magazine articles to books about the better treatment of children. Children were newly valued, and child protection became a social priority. "Baby on Board"...

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