Generation "We" not Generation "Me." Millennials on Sharing.

They call us the “me” generation. They think all we care about is ourselves.  But, I think they’ve misspelled the first letter. It should be spelled with a “w.”

I am part of the generation of “we.”

No, we aren’t selfish. We just grew up with social media that gave us a platform to feel important. Social media impacts the way we think, the way we act and the way we communicate. Just like television and cell phones impacted earlier generations.

We grew up with the idea of sharing our lives way before we learned what it was meant to truly live. So, yes, we created selfies, duck-faces, repeated awkward dance moves and posted videos of ourselves planking.

Our generation believes we share the world with others and because of that we are all part of a crowd.  And with that crowd, we share.

We’ll tweet about a normal days activity. Share a sunset on Instagram. Spam your wall with BuzzFeed articles. But, all this is meant to share things we find interesting and mundane or things that are quirky and stuff about ourselves.

We live the motto “sharing is caring.”

We’re called selfish, self absorb, attention whores and entitled. But this is how we grew up. This is how our brains became wired. A constant stream of zeros and ones displayed as images and words on posts and tweets.

But all this sharing is leading to something else. We actually do care a lot about others and the world we share. We will speak our voice. We will stand up to bullies, corporate corruption and vote those who share our ideas into power.

We aren’t disinterested as some suggest. We are just interested in a different sense.

We built the sharing economy.

Sharing posts, photos, tweets and ideas have turned into sharing stuff, living spaces, cars and money. The idea of sharing has turned into businesses employing thousands of people and contributing to the economy.

This idea of sharing gives us a different sense of values. We don’t look at home ownership the same or purchasing a car as a right of passage. We don’t think of stuff the same way as older generations.  But, that is okay.

We were taught to share and developed in ways the older generation never imagined.

We aren’t a lost cause as some suggest. We still have time to mature and figure things out.

The world we’re creating is based on sharing. This is the very idea taught by our parents. They aren’t just words to us. We’re actually working hard in making everyday life worth sharing.

photo credit