What Are Millennials Guilty Pleasures?
A few weeks ago I talked about all the industries Millennials have killed off. This included wine, which truly was a shocker to me because according to Mint I spend 60% of my funds on that delicious grape juice.
I was correct to be doubtful of this fact because the wine industry is now praising us. Yes, it turns out that Millennials are big drinkers. That got me thinking, what other guilty pleasures do we have? Turns out their limited, likely due to our budgets, but pretty obvious.
*Image Note: Rihanna has been used for all images in this piece because she clearly is a millennial who indulges, with no shame, in all our guilty pleasures. Plus I really love her for just being real.
Pour It Up, Pour It Up
I don’t know about other millennials but when I drink wine I like to pretend I’m a sommelier. My obsession with wine runs deep; I have a wine journal, I hired a sommelier to take me around Tuscany, I can tell you the best wine on a menu, and I have about 50 wines in my apartment and another 20 in Italy waiting to be shipped. I like going to Total Wine or Wineries on the weekends for tastings, when Netflix has a wine documentary I sit down with my friends and pop open some wine with cheese pairings, and if there’s wine, I’m ordering it.
Wine = life
I’m not alone in this, millennials love wine. In 2015 we drank 160 million cases, that’s 42% of the wine consumed in the world. There are many theories to why, like it’s an “emotional fulfilling drink” said one expert or it’s healthier, we drink more organic wines than any other generation.
However, I think it’s because it’s easy accessible. Wine is sold, quite literally, everywhere. Almost every country produces there own wine so you can get in on your travels and in the U.S wine can be purchased at a gas station, at the supermarket, at a liquor store, and hell I have even seen it at hobby stores. On top of that there are tons of apps, wine can now be delivered to your door, it is sold in cans/to go cups at places like CVS, and you can even subscribe to wine lists that ship you wine based on your tastes.
We don’t drink cheap wines either, we spend an averaged $20.00 for a bottle of wine. That means we care more about the taste, the brand, and the story that the wine is telling. We’re not drinking trendy wine brands, we’re going after sophisticated wines that tell us a story about history with each sip.
Anyways, I’m pretty sure in college no one said anything bad about wine where as beer and liquor got the bad rep for making you ‘sicker’.
But First, Let Me Take a Selfie
Selfie became a recognized word in 2013 and where it actually came from is still up for debate. What I know for sure is most millennials love them, 55% of selfies on social media comes from millennials. Personally I’m not a fan of selfies, I’ll take one now and then, yet I do follow tons of IG that are selfie themed.
For those who love selfies, a study done by Now Sourcing and Frames Direct, found that millennials spend an hour a week taking, re-taking, and editing selfies. How many selfies is that? Around 25,700 in a millennials lifetime which is almost one selfie a day.
I find this number to be incredibly low. Now, in the rare case that I do take a selfie I don’t just take one and post it. No. I take at least 10 to find that perfect angle and lighting. I know, and have heard, that some people take up to 50 selfies and then scroll through them all until they find the best one.
So if you take 50 selfies a day, for your whole entire life time that roughly puts you around 486,000,000 selfies in your lifetime.
So why is this a guilty pleasure of ours?
Millennials may tell you it’s because we are:
- expressive and silly. Not all selfies have to be pretty.
- curios about how we change and grow over time.
- defining ourselves and figure out who we are.
- unapologetic about our bodies and our looks.
- bored and selfies are an easy way to kill time.
Psychologists will say we take a lot of selfies because:
- Narcissism: You’re a millennial who likes attention and adores being admired by others.
- Psychopathy: You’re an impulsive millennial who lacks empathy and posts selfies to make others feel bad about themselves.
- Machiavellianism: You’re a manipulative millennial who takes demoralizing selfies to get what you want.
- Self-objectification: You’re a millennial without basic respect to your body and objectify yourself, sexually in your selfies, to base your self-worth off of likes.
Now what’s interesting is that there have been studies done to figure out why we take selfies. Here are the results:
- Millennial men have low self esteem and are crazy: When surveying 1000 men between the ages of 18 and 40 years old (already this study is off to a bad start because millennial men can’t be older than 37), results found selfies were taken due to narcissism and self-objectification. Those who spent more time editing their photos had psychopathic personality traits, so the more you care about how your selfie looks, the crazier you are and the more selfies you take, the more insecure you are. Awesome!
- Millennial women feel entitled: 1300 people underwent two separate selfie tests, although the amount of women was not specified. The results were interesting finding that women posted more selfies than men and typically posted selfies to show that they were superior, or more special, than others.
- It’s the Social Norm: Lastly, another study which accessed 84 Instagram accounts for six weeks, found that although selfie posting was typically narcissistic , it also was a socially acceptable behavior. If your friends are posting selfies, you will post selfies and vice versa.
Okay so overall though, these studies sample sizes were pretty small meaning not every selfie taker has issues. Also, all the studies did note that there are a few positives to selfie taking, like if you don’t have any self-identity issues selfies can help make you feel more positive about your life, connect you to others, and create friendships.
My take one it is pretty simple:
Tom from Myspace created the most epic selfie of all time. We all followed in suit to be cool like Tom. Next thing you know Myspace selfies took a life of their own and created social media fame. When Facebook appeared you only could have a bio picture, like wth is up with that? We were addicts and we needed a selfie outlet.
Instagram answered that calling but it wasn’t enough. Too many IG selfies looked vain. Snapchat was the answer to our selfie prayers and since then we’ve been snapping away like the selfie addicts that we are.
Puff, Puff, Pass
Back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger (better known as AIM) everyone had a instant messaging profile. People typically put semi-personal information there like; relationship status, high school abbreviations, clubs/sport teams, and the random song lyrics that related to our teen lives.
There was also, every now and then, a quote that said:
“99% of teenagers have tried pot. If you’re part f the 1% that hasn’t, put this in your profile”
Who knows if the fact was true, but it was true that a lot of kids who smoked pot in high school still put that in there profile.
Why does this matter?
Although marijuana is a millennial guilty pleasure, we do not like to discuss it. Many studies have found that millennials are hesitant to discuss pot, they play it down, and/or won’t discuss it at all. Simply, since we were kids we learned that pot was “bad” and even though it has lost it’s “cool” factor, we don’t like to say if we use it or not.
However, we support it’s legalization and we support it more than any other generation. According to other studies, millennials make up 20% of the “regular” marijuana users. That means 1 in 5 millennials light up daily, which is a pretty big deal since weed is not legal in the whole U.S of A.
What’s interesting is that millennials are not the largest ‘stoner’ generation. No, that award goes to you Baby Boomers. Shocked? Don’t be. Baby boomers kicked off the pot trend decades again and as older parents and grandparents, most of them support the use of it medically.
Back to the millennials…
So there’s no point, in my opinion, on pulling more numbers here and stats because we already know that millennials play mum on this subject. However, if I think of 10 friends I can easily say that all 10 have tried it at least once and at least 7–8 smoke once a week and guess what, they aren’t stoners. They have careers, own homes, have kids even, and are successful and happy in life.
We are the generation of information and availability. We have more weed, and I am going to assume (I’m not a smoker), better weed than other generations. We also don’t have to take someone’s word for something bad, we can look it up online and talk to doctors about it if we are worried. There are also tons of studies done on weed now siting positive side effects and on top of that, it’s legal in a few places in the U.S and around the world.
With it so available and the mentality around it changing it’s becoming like selfies, socially acceptable. It’s not quite there yet, but with millennials continuing to push it, it will get there.
What’s Your Guilty Pleasure?
I only listed the top three guilty pleasures, for millennials, from some quick reading and research. However, if you’re a millennial what are your other guilty pleasures or are any of these yours at all? Leave it in the comments!
