The Millennial Generation of Young People

A massive new generation the size of the Baby Boom comes of age

Anytime a new generation comes of age, it disrupts the media status quo because by definition the young people represent a new unclaimed audience. The same holds true for politics. The new generation represents a new constituency or voter bloc that has no party affiliation and so holds the potential to upset the political status quo.

Today’s young people more than almost all other generations hold that potential – at the very least because of their sheer size. The so-called Millennial generation, those kids born betwen 1978 and 1996, number 83 million people, larger than the Baby Boom, formally the largest American generation and one that made a huge impact on American media and society at every life stage. The Millennials, essentially the children of the Baby Boomers, promise to make every bit as big an impact if not more. If you made a rough comparison of these two super-size generations, the Millennials today are where the Boomers were in 1970. If the Boomers were all about broadcast television, the early consumers and eventual producers of it, then the Millennials are about the new media being born today.

The Millennials are the generation that grew up in the 1990s with the new media and computer tools of that decade as the norm. The lead members of this generation are leaving college and entering the work force, with the front tip at age 26 right now. These young people are completely tech savvy with high expectations for getting the media that they want, when they want it. They have little connection to traditional media brands or, frankly, respect for the traditional norms of media, such as intellectual property laws that make cheap, easy access to content difficult.

Their politics are leaning progressive, but they also hold what would be considered some conservative attitudes and values. How this generation trends in the coming years will make a big impact on politics in the years to come.

The Booming Constituency of Hispanics

The 40 million Latinos with their high growth rate will make a huge impact

One of the key stories of the 1980s and 1990s was the massive flow of immigrants into the United States. The number of immigrants in those two decades surpassed in absolute numbers the famed immigration of the early 20th century that remade American society. If the early 20th century immigration was characterized by European immigrants into Ellis Island, then the late 20th century immigration was characterized by Hispanic. The effects of that wave of Hispanic immigration is starting to profoundly reverberate through America today.

In 2006, there were estimated to be 44 million Hispanics living in the United States – an important constituency, by any standard. However, that’s just the baseline, the current snapshot. Anyone who thinks strategically about the future has to take into account Hispanics because they are poised for inexorable growth in the future – far more than the Anglo population, which is aging. Hispanics are relatively young compared to the population as a whole, with 60 percent of them under the age of 28. For that reason, combined with higher fertility rates, they are growing much faster than the population as a whole. One of every five children born in the United States today is a Latino. Even without more immigration, the Latino population is expected to nearly double to 20 percent of the U.S. population in the next 25 years.

As Latino immigrants get more integrated into American society, all signs are that they seem to follow the same upward mobility trajectory of previous waves of immigrants. There is a whole Spanish-language media infrastructure that is evolving to these new realities and the mainstream American media are also starting to seriously engage the Spanish language arena. But most young Hispanics, which is most Hispanics period, are bilingual and have media needs in both languages. And being young, many of them have the characteristics of the Millennial generation, with their propensity for new technologies and new media options.

Any majority political movement will have to include a large percentage of this growing constituency in its coalition. Historically, progressives have had strong support from Hispanics, but in the last decade conservatives have made steady, significant gains.