(upbeat orchestral music) (crowd cheering) - i'm a millennial. - i'm a proud millennial. (upbeat orchestral music) - i'm a millennial. - solid millennial.

- i'm a millennial, definitely. (laughs) (upbeat orchestral music) - i am a millennial. - i'm a millennial. - i was born in 1988, i'm 33, so i feel like i'm safely inside the bounds of millennialism. - i was born in 1980, i am either the oldest millennial, or the youngest gen x member. so i claim both, for advantages. - you cannot talk about being a millennial without talking about malls. - you could not get on the internet and the phone at the same time. (dial-up modem beeping) - as soon as you ask me about my generation, the only thing i can think of is the stupid tamagotchi eggs. (chuckles) we were obsessed. - playing with pogs. - [millennial] i remember cds. - [millennial] i think we are the generation that really sits between that line of analog and digital, before social media, and sort of the way modern content is made. (upbeat orchestral music) - our generation is very much influenced

by the wars that we have been engaged in and fighting. (explosive detonating) - there's something unique about the millennial experience. we were coming of age at a time where because of war, because of the recession, the myths that america told about itself were being debunked in real time. - we got named millennial. it's always a little derogatory, 'cause whoever did that, they're older than you, (chuckles) and they probably kind of look down on you a little bit. - we're in this period where you're not quite your parents, even though you might have kids, but you're also not like, the youngest, prettiest thing at coachella. so we're talking, you're in your mid to late thirties, very, very late thirties, like the latest of thirties. - that means you're like a full adult. you might have a kid, you might be married, you might be buying a house. - go get a job. - there's this idea that millennials are perpetually children. - there's a sense of entitlement, and everyone gets a trophy.

- you do have to speak to them a little bit like a therapist might speak to a patient. - i do like avocado toast. i don't know, i'm probably entitled. - these millennials are spoiled, they're coddled, - they have climbed mount everest, but they've never punched a time clock. - millennials don't like to work. they need a lot of praise. - millennials might be more likely to live with their parents, - hey mom. - [millennial] than to kind of delay various points of their lives. - many of us are probably gonna go our whole lives without buying a house, because no one can afford that. - quote, unquote, "adulting" became really cost prohibitive. - we're struggling with the crushing cost of housing, and healthcare, and higher education. - millennial has now just become like a word people use to describe young people that they don't like, (chuckles) you know? - and in some case ignorantly, they'll call you boomer, which is insane. i was born in 1983, not 1949. so if you're gonna insult someone, get your timeline straight.

youngster. (inspiring music) (person slurping coffee) (ipod clicking) (phone dinging) (whooshing sounds) (inspiring music) (contemplative music) - [kristen] we are millennials, the 70 plus million americans born between 1980 and 1996. our story actually begins with our parents. you know them, the baby boomers. we covered them two episodes ago. they were the biggest generation, until we came along. they were the wealthiest generation, and they still are. - [newscaster] the dow is up almost a thousand points this year. - [kristen] and once they had built a prosperous and secure world for themselves, they focused on their next big accomplishment, ♪ a b c d ♪ e f g - [kristen] us. - baby boomers really were the first like, therapy generation. they're a real self-improvement generation.

and so all of that got folded into baby boomer parenting of the millennials that they raised. - when they were young, they put young-ness on the map. they demanded that teenagers and young adults have a voice, and be heard. they took on the systems, whether it was the vietnam war, or women's rights, or civil rights, they demanded to be heard. they questioned authority. and then very ironically, they became the people who undermined the voice of their own children. they were the first helicopter parents. they were the first to question authority on behalf of their kids, rendering their kids helpless at advocating for themselves. - boomer parents were told by pretty much everyone that they needed to promote self-esteem in their children, and they took that to heart. they came up with the idea of, you know, when our kids play soccer, everybody should get a trophy, whether they win or lose. - that doesn't come from us.

that comes from boomers, who felt insecure that their kids weren't winning, and decided to create the participation trophy in order to feel good about what their kid was doing. ♪ one little, two little... - [newscaster] after graduating from gymboree and mommy and me, they've been shuttled to play dates and soccer practice with barely a day off, (cheering and whistle blows) by parents who felt their kids needed structure and a sense of mission. - there is something that was really lovely growing up and having my parents so invested in what my sister and i were doing, in our future, too invested, invested to the point where you're like, please, i can't breathe. - [kristen] they told us we were special, and we believed it. (inspiring music) - (interviewer) why do they consider themselves special? - because they came along at a time when we started revaluing kids, the culture vaunts kids, it celebrates them.

- [kristen] after generation x, a smaller generation that was skeptical of marketing, came millennials, the biggest generation yet, and we said, give us all the things. - i think that in the '90s, it was very much about the kid experience, and like toys. - run, run, run. (laughs) ♪ crossfire. - [river] i feel like the '90s was just like the toy explosion. - [announcer] more furbies, more fun! ♪ the toy you can wear on your feet ♪ ♪ skip-it, skip-it that was cool. i just like the... i like the... it was so hard. skip-it is really hard, and it really hurts your ankles. - i remember watching these commercials, toy commercials, clothing commercials, and it wasn't just, oh i want that because it's fun. ♪ pretty princess crown ♪ to place upon your head - it was, i want that because i'll be like that girl, - the crown! - [ashley] or oh, i can live that life and have that experience.

- [kristen] we were the first generation to have cable channels, multiple, with programming just for us, to enjoy sitting crisscross-applesauce in our oshkosh b'gosh, we had snacks and lunch foods customized for our fickle palates. crust-free, chock-full of preservatives and attitude. empty strip malls got retrofitted with padded walls and foam floors, just so we could have a special place to be, you know, special. every industry and corporation, each thread on the fabric of american life made it crystal pepsi clear that our tastes, interests, and our parents' income were priority number one. - you know, millennials have a reputation for being obsessed with nostalgia, for talking about the television shows of our youth, and you know, the message board culture of our youth,

and i wonder if some of that has to do with the last time there was a monoculture, this sort of, you know, prelapsarian, pre-internet. the last time the world was old-fashioned. (light music) - had very doting parents that sort of took care of a lot of things for us, and there was such an emphasis put on education, and specifically higher education, and going to college, and sats. but i don't know that the same emphasis was put on life skills. like this is how you make a budget, or this is how you fix a tire, or something. - as older millennials like me were coming of age, we really were in boom times. you had the tech boom, you had a really, really healthy economy, you had this pretty great sense of optimism, and i certainly never questioned that i was gonna do better than my parents. as long as you follow this path, you go to college,

you get a degree, you get a good job, then you too can live in middle or upper middle class comfort. and that sense of optimism really did filter through the childhoods and adolescences of millennials, which i think made it an even ruder awakening when things didn't quite work out that way. - in the very title of our generation is this promise of seismic change, and sort of epic, era-shifting fulfillment. and instead what we got was like 9/11, and the great recession, and then facebook. life has twists and curls. but you define them and make them bounce. tresemme flawless curls defining mousse. 24 hour. hydrating curl definition. style your life the way you want. ♪♪ tresemme, style your way.

when you have kids, you get opinions. i'd have them in bed by eight. if it's under 65 degrees outside, they need a coat. i can't turn off those comments, but i can turn off comments on my teen's tiktok videos. comment settings on tiktok.

pete g. writes, "my tween wants a new phone. but i cahow do i notomments on my break the bank?"deos. we gotcha, pete. xfinity mobile was designed to save you money and gives you access to wifi speeds up to a gig. so you get high speeds for low prices. better than getting low speeds for high prices. right, bruce? -jealous? yeah, look at that. -honestly. someone get a helmet on this guy. xfinity internet customers, ask how to get an unlimited line free for a year. plus, a free samsung galaxy s24 fe. - i mean i think for me, you know there was this kind of halcyon period of the '90s, where things were like, okay. (calm music)

(kids laughing) the world seemed like it was headed in the right direction, the economy was booming, the internet was starting. there was a real sense that things worked. i remember, you know, watching tv. - [kids] she played with her goat in her house. - and president bush is reading a children's book with like a bunch of very young, either kindergarten or elementary-age kids, and, - get ready! - must. - [teacher] yes, must. we'll see if we can read lesson 60 on page 153. - andrew card, i believe, goes and whispers in his ear, and you just see his face (camera shutters clicking) just has no idea really what to do with the information, is processing it. - [kids] the girl had a pet goat. - at the time, the children had all been raised in a very peaceful time, it looked like nothing serious was gonna happen to them.

and then suddenly, (tower exploding) (siren wailing) (crowd shouting) - at the time of 9/11, i had just turned 21. that morning my roommate and i both wake up to this loud explosion. a bomb just went off in the the world trade center. it's like, it's unbelievable. i just happened to have my camera. we were goofing off the night before and filming each other and i just had it right there and i said, i think i'm just gonna film this. and ended up filming the entire morning. - [roommate] what is that falling? is that a person? - where? - [roommate] falling. - and for me, even after my roommate said there are people jumping out of the building, my first thought honestly was that it was the bermuda triangle over new york city, and planes were being sucked into it,

you know like that was a fleeting thought that i had. (witness screaming) - [witness] oh my god! - [witness] oh my god. - for better or worse, that lens finder, that literal clip that comes out that you can view things through was protecting me from the reality that was happening six blocks away. (students screaming) (sirens blaring) (crowd shouting) - i remember the news anchors not having answers. i remember people being like, we're hearing there could have been another attack. - we just heard one more explosion. - they say there's a bomb in the school here. i was told by firefighters. - it was the uncertainty for me that made me realize like, why don't people know what is happening? like how can they not know? - [newscaster] most of the nation's schools stayed open through the tragic day, students watching terrorism on their own shores for the first time. - not only had planes crashed into those two buildings,

they crashed into the field in pennsylvania, they crashed into the pentagon. and i think there was a tangible sense of fear that has not existed since. - you start to think, is this happening? because you saw a plane, so you're like, is this happening to every plane? is this happening to us? are we unsafe? and you, for the first time just as a suburban kid, like felt like rattled, like what's happening? (somber music) - this was our pearl harbor moment. and then when president bush got on the rubble, 'cause he kind of had an uncertain start, but then he gets on the rubble of the world trade center and there's this indelible moment where he's speaking, and people are yelling, "we can't hear you." and i remember this moment well, when he says, - i can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people... (crowd cheering) and the people who knocked these buildings down

will hear all of us soon. (crowd cheering) - [crowd] usa! usa! usa! - that moment electrified the nation, he emerges from that with this incredible sense of national momentum and national unity. it's morbid that it's uniting, 'cause it is a tragedy. but the silver lining is that you can still feel something that happened to your country that you care about. - [newscaster] from coast to coast today, there were demonstrations of patriotic fervor. - and that happened to all of us, and we can feel that together. ♪ oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave.. ♪ - [kristen] in the days and months following the attacks, young americans saw the adults around them make concerted efforts to seek and usher in comfort through volunteerism, benefits, and community alliances.

anything they could do to salvage the promise that our home was one nation, indivisible. - there's a sense i think in that reaction to the fear that if we stick together we can get through this, but obviously that proved short-lived. - [newscaster] he is one of the most dangerous terrorists on the planet. - i want him, hell, i want, i want justice. and there's an old poster out west, as i recall, that said, "wanted: dead or alive." - i remember going to a gas station and i bought this, which i'd probably buy again, and it was a picture of osama bin laden with a crosshair over him and it just said like, "locked and loaded." this was a huge part of our culture, and it really emboldened a lot of people who already probably wouldn't like someone that didn't look like them. (gun firing) i knew that the world was gonna be totally different, for all of us, it changed. but for muslim and arab americans, it changed a lot. - [newscaster] as a nervous nation

goes on guard against terrorists, there's growing concern about discrimination and acts of violence against innocent people of middle eastern descent. - the first hate crime after 9/11 was against balbir singh, a sikh indian man in arizona. - [newscaster] his temple fears anyone who even looks like america's new enemy is a target. - bigots aren't nuanced. i'm 20 years old, i'm at uc berkeley, i get hate mail for the first time in my life, and i get told, why did i bring down the towers, and why do i hate america? i'm like, why did i bring down the towers? i'm 20 years old, i'm born and raised in this country. - [voice on phone] hello muslims. why'd you kill at least 5,000 people at the world trade center today? you just woke up a sleeping giant with the americans who are gonna kick your (bleep) ass now. - you overnight become osama, you become al qaeda, you become the country's boogeyman. - [newscaster] the backlash against muslims, arab americans, and anyone thought to be middle eastern now so extreme, even murder cases are under investigation.

(children talking) - a lot of families were advising their daughters to take off their hijab. there were a lot of men who were cutting their beards off. a lot of people were trying to change their muslim-ness, so that people wouldn't attack them, and they wouldn't experience hatred. - i do, do give it a second look when i do, you know, get on a flight myself. - if some degree of profiling was necessary, i mean, i think it makes sense. - it became the see something, say something era, where it truly started to feel like muslims were an exception to the rule. - [newscaster] the fbi confirms that after 9/11, the government secretly tested for nuclear devices at hundreds of mosques. - we were an exception to the constitution, we're an exception to due process rights. and we had to take it and not even complain about it, and just fall in line and be a good muslim. - they still think of us as, even though we're americans, and you know,

they still think of us as foreigners. - we were terrified. and you realized just like that, the country can turn on you. so at that time, at the age of 20, i kind of figured out, i'll hit them with something different. if i'm cool and i'm calm and collected, and i give 'em some humor, that might be the most subversive thing i could do. i'm gonna be the muslim cultural representative of 1.7 billion people. and the question then is why do you keep doing it? because i don't want my kids to go through what i went through. that's why we keep doing it. (intense music) for people who feel limited by the unpredictability of generalized myasthenia gravis and who are anti-achr antibody positive, season to season, ultomiris is continuous symptom control, with improvement in activities of daily living. it is reduced muscle weakness. and ultomiris is the only long-acting gmg treatment with the freedom of just 6 to 7 infusions per year, for a predictable routine i can count on.

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ask your neurologist about - to allison, can you explain what internet is? no, she can't say anything in 10 seconds or less. oh, allison will be in the studio shortly. what does it mean? - [crew member] it's a giant computer network made up of- - [kristen] this is the part of the documentary where we show you old news reports about this brand new thing called the internet. - in the brave new world, fantasy and the future come together.

- [kristen] it all seems very quaint now. - we can duplicate reality on the internet in just about every way. - [kristen] but the thing you have to remember is, millennials were the last generation to remember a time when the internet was new. - everyone has access to this new revolution called the information superhighway. - [kristen] and we made it our own. sure it was available to everyone, but we knew the truth. the internet was made for us. (inspiring music) - i think the first computer i had was when i was in 10th grade, my dad got us a dell computer. - dude, you're getting a dell. - that was the family computer that everybody shared. we got those aol disks to get on the internet. - you had to wait for dial up, you'd hear all these crazy sounds. (dial-up modem whirring) (imitating dial-up modem)

- [jimmy] and then people can't be on the phone at the same time. - [ashley] i remember my mom being like, "get off, i need to make phone calls." (laughing) - [newscaster] what do president clinton, conservative radio personality rush limbaugh, and rockstar billy idol have in common? they've all got electronic mail addresses on computer systems linked to the internet. - i remember the first time i ever sent an email, like a friend of mine was like, you know you can get an email address, and like send electronic messages. i was like, what? - what's the little mark? with the a, and then the ring around it? - at. - see, that's what i said. katie said she thought it was "about." - yeah. - oh. - i had unfettered internet access, and i remember like loving this communal aspect. i could actually like get in aim chat rooms and talk to people. - the internet was this place where you could develop your sense of like teenage interests, and hobbies, and identity. i was a tween fan girl of the band no doubt.

and i remember that i could go online and find out everything you could ever wanna know about no doubt, about gwen stefani. and it was just a very independent diy world at that time. - this is a news group, which would allow you to post a message, and there's people all over the world putting their two cents in about these topics. - i remember when i kind of started to realize i was queer, because i was like going in these lesbian chat rooms where i'd be like, why am i interested in this? why do i wanna see what these people are saying? and i found community that i wasn't finding in my little northern illinois, midwest town. - i was raised a conservative evangelical in southern appalachia, where everyone pretty much looked like me, talked like me, and thought like me. and on the internet, i learned about books that i wanted to read. - [presenter] you just click on impressionism, go to claude monet. here's a whole description of the impressionist movement. - i learned about places i wanted to go when that was completely foreign to the way that i grew up.

i don't know that i would be the person i am, for better or worse, without the internet. - chat rooms forever were these like salacious places where perverts gathered. i met my husband on an app now, but for the longest time, we remember it was a place that creeps went, and weirdos went. - there is wide disagreement on how to protect children from the dark side of cyberspace. - i mean, people say they'll give you what you want, they just want one thing and that's just, they want you. - at the time, it seemed a lot more innocent and safe than it probably was. i was probably always on the verge of being sex trafficked or kidnapped or something. - now everybody online is the creep and the weirdo, as opposed to before, you were scared of the creep or the weirdo. now we are all the creeps and weirdos. (upbeat music) - [kristen] still, for the most part, the early days of the internet were, at least compared to today, pretty innocent. now i don't wanna imply that millennials mapped out what the internet could be.

we totally did. but we were the first generation to experience what the implication of constant, unfettered access to every piece of information to ever exist would have on our developing minds. for this generation of students, it felt like we were dropped on a treadmill, running at full speed. in a sense, the internet broke our brains. - we now expect immediate results. we expect an immediate reply, we expect immediacy. this is all tied into our technology, where we are not on that slow change schedule anymore. we are out for the quick fix. we're living in a very, very distracted state. you are bombarded every day with constant distraction, and expectation that you can switch from one thing to another. it's completely understandable to think i need help paying attention.