To be honest, the term millennial means absolute shit.
The same attributes given to millennials have appeared through out history just with different technology.
For instance, in the case of entitlement. Do people forget once upon a time we had nobility/aristocrats/kings and queens many of who did nothing to warrant their wealth? Then their children were entitled to inherit positions just based on birth.
People sat for hours just to be painted. let's not make it seem like the selfie somehow made millennials more vain.
At one point, it was the fashion to wear a heavy wig, paint your face a deathly white and have atrociously pink cheeks. Oh and a stomach cutting corset.
I only attended high school and college in America so the participation prize is not something I've heard of. Growing up in Kenya and South Africa, your grades are publicized. In Kenya, your high school SATs are public too. Yeah, you apply for High school, you don't just get in. You apply for college too so really the best Higschool tend to have an advantage on that front so from the time you are in sixth grade, you devote the next three years to pretty much the High school SAT. Also unlike the U.S, you are tested in about six or seven subjects. You better remember everything you learned.
The funny thing is my parent's generation tell us how entitled we are just cause we didn't have to walk 10KM to school. Our generation got the bus. My grandparents told my parents how entitled they were because they didn't have to farm and weren't alive during the colonial years. I look at my aunt's kids and I'm like gosh, kids this days lack independence because for us boarding school was the norm. On and on it goes, the thing people don't realize here is the cultural and technological changes. The bus meant, no walking to school.
Not to mention, I am constantly frowning at my aunts and their big houses with garages full of clutter. They aren't millennials. However, everyone in my aunt's neighborhood is around that generation. We're talking large houses with garages and almost every drive way has an SUV. Garages are open often revealing people's clutter and I wonder how people live like that. Me, the 24 year old millennial.
I am not sure we are more wasteful than the previous generations because statistics show, that the older generations aren't saving enough. Also, isn't most debt carried by the generation before millennials?