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.

- [newscaster] adderall. it's a drug widely prescribed for attention deficit disorders. - adderall hit the american market in 1996, almost the exact same year that the internet burst into american life. and these two phenomena have been on the same timeline ever since. these drugs are so often sought after by people who are not interested in getting high or rebelling. they're interested in achievement and success, right? adderall is a drug for people to work better. it's a drug for people who want a gold star next to their name. i arrived at college in the year 2000, and i did not even know what adderall was. and i went to a friend's dorm room my freshman year, and i said to her, "ugh, you know, i have an essay due tomorrow. i haven't even read the book." and she said, "try this."

i took this pill and i just had a revelatory night. i was up all night. i was immersed in the text in a way i'd never experienced. there's a rush of euphoria to this feeling of adderall focus. i wound up getting my own prescription for adderall right after i got out of college, and remaining on adderall through my entire twenties, truly believing that my natural born attention was insufficient. (synth music)

- [newscaster] today, the b-52 bomber was used for the first time against the taliban frontline troops. and the men who see themselves as holy warriors felt the full weight of american power. (guns firing) - when we invaded afghanistan, there was a popular sense that it was justified. - the terrorist camps (explosives detonating) are being destroyed.

- like, okay, you told me osama bin laden is hiding out in afghanistan. i can kind of see why we're going in there. - thank you, thank you! - very, very quickly, the war in afghanistan succeeded. the taliban was overthrown, osama bin laden fled, but the drumbeat started advocating that the war in afghanistan, that had been finished, should be expanded into a broader global war on terror. - secretary of state colin powell presented at the u.n. security council. powell was the man. mother teresa was the only person who had higher poll ratings than powell. - leaving saddam hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-september 11th world. - i saw the polls in america had climbed in terms of support for the war, and i realized immediately it was cause colin powell was the spokesperson, and i'd been part of that. later i would come to rue that greatly. (intense music) - i joined the military in 2005, 2006.

for me, there was this tremendous sense that there were huge problems in the world, and there weren't enough people to help. - i was very much against the war in iraq, didn't agree with that, but i felt honor bound to be part of that. i felt honor bound to serve. - boomers had the draft, millennials had an unofficial draft. after 9/11, you started to see military recruiters going to the high school, and they would really kind of sell us on the gi bill, and your college being paid for. and you'd look at that sort of like a stepping stone in order to create this better life for yourself. right after high school, i went to basic training, and less than six months later, i got orders to go to iraq for 545 days. - [kristen] more than a million american soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines were deployed to iraq. (soldier shouting) the vast majority were millennials. - when we went to war, i was a kid in an nyu dorm,

and national news is broadcasting it live, and they called it shock and awe. - shock and awe. - [newscaster] shock and awe. - [reporter] the air campaign of shock and awe continues. - we thought we would just go in there, bomb them for five days, and we'll show them who's boss, and we'll leave. and i remember thinking, wouldn't it be great if we got out of this without any u.s. soldiers dying? (explosive detonating) - [reporter] into the very heart of baghdad, the stars and stripes have come to town. saddam hussein's reign of terror is over. this is what regime change looks like. (crowd cheering) - the united states and our allies have prevailed. americans want nothing more than to return home, and that is your direction tonight. (crowd cheering) (guns fire)

- then 2004 it became apparent it wasn't just get rid of saddam hussein and come home. (bombs explode) it was gonna be a long-term bloody and very incompetently orchestrated occupation. (bombs explode) (guns fire) - there's no weapons of mass destruction. this is a false war. this is a propaganda. i would never think the government would be lying to us or stretching the truth or anything. just wouldn't, not us. we're the good guys. - before they hit the press, powell walked into my office and he threw a couple of photos down on my desk and he said, "these are from a place called abu ghraib in iraq and they're going to be a disaster." (haunting music) yes indeed, we did horrible things in vietnam. we did horrible things in every war we ever fought, but we never had a state sponsored, presidentially approved torture program.

- where i'm from questioning the invasion of iraq was tantamount to questioning america. you grew up with this notion that america is this beacon of democracy to the rest of the world. but their conflicts in iraq and afghanistan, how they were conducted, what was done in our name really started to dispel that idea and i ended up being quite politically formative for me because it was the first time i'd really broken with my community on any major question. (dramatic music) - i didn't realize it until i got older that i was a child watching this unfold. i was just a different person back then who was living in fear, who was traumatized, and just wanted to be protected. i had to grow up and sort of educate myself and be exposed to the real world to say, "you know, we're wrong about this." - [kristen] in the end, the war in iraq lasted over eight years and over 4,000 americans didn't come home. - i served in the unit that does the funerals

in arlington cemetery, would carry caskets and fold flags and then really see these families mourn. mostly young people my age who were lost in iraq and afghanistan. - [kristen] my generation volunteered to fight the war on terror. (bomb explodes) - take cover! come this way! - [kristen] and we were forever changed by it. many of us learned lessons we should have never had to learn about living with disabilities, about trauma, about how we see the world, and how the rest of the world sees us. - i had a license to drive a tank before i had a license to drive a car. at the time i remember just thinking terrorists are like the enemy. i didn't think of a human being. i didn't realize until i witnessed my first death and it was somebody that was on the iraq side that they were human beings and i was fighting a war that wasn't something that i believed in. - i think many of my generation,

we look back at so-called greatest generation, we see world war ii. we knew the nazis are evil and we knew they needed to be fought because there was no peaceful way of stopping them. many people who joined the military want to fight that war. that so-called, good and just war. (guns fire) this is not a just war. (somber music) when i was diagnosed with h-i-v, i didn't know who i would be. but here i am... being me. keep being you... and ask your healthcare provider about the number one prescribed h-i-v treatment, biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in many people whether you're 18 or 80. with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to undetectable—and stay there whether you're just starting or replacing your current treatment. research shows that taking h-i-v treatment as prescribed and getting to and staying undetectable prevents transmitting h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems.

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with wifi backup to help keep you up and running. wifi's up. let's power on! let's power on! -let's power on! it's from the company with 99.9% network reliability. let's power on! power on with the leader in connectivity. stay connected with comcast business internet and wifi back-up or get started for $49.99 a month. plus ask how to get up to a $500 prepaid card. call today! - i grew up in a house that had a lot of different tastes. plus ask how to get up to a $500 prepaid card. call today! when i started to form my own taste, it was at the peak of mtv that shaped who i was when i was a kid. - each video took you into a different world. ♪ work them hips ♪ run girl - you can go from a david banner dirty south music video to a britney spears pop video and it's totally different colors. it's like walking into like different lands in disneyland. - oh my god. i would love to explain to "trl" to you. - my name is carson daly. nice to have you guys all here. (crowd cheers) - "total request live" was a countdown show that relied on votes to decide

what was the number one music video in the country. gosh, now talking about it, it literally sounds like i'm talking about the '50s. - mtv and "trl" provided space for genres to coexist. you know, you have evanescence in the top 10 at the same time that justin timberlake was. - [kristen] we know what boomers and generation x say about millennial music. that it was disposable. we don't care. to us it was everything, literally everything. it was eclectic. and the way we discovered it and listened to it, changed music for everyone. (dramatic music) (clicking sound) (internet dial tone beeps) - we were a generation that grew up on the internet. we had way more avenues for music discovery than before. we started to explore music through music piracy. (dramatic music) - you'd easily spend hours

and you would just download and download. that really transformed my taste growing up. - i found so many bands that i didn't have access to before. - we were tired of paying $15 to $20 for a cd and we only really want one or two songs off of it. (dramatic music) - there's no question napster affected the record industry and it was a negative effect in a lot of ways, but not for me. my records came out on a small label. it had limited distribution. if you had found out about my band, there wasn't any place you could go get my music if you wanted to. if it hadn't been for people having had a way to share my music, i wouldn't have a career of any kind. (crowd yells) - people were illegally downloading music and there was really no way to control that. - one line. if you could all form just one line. - [crystal] and now we have the world in our pockets. - and i remember, "man, you don't have to listen to the tracks on the albums anymore.

you can mix and match however you want." - if you look at the charts, it's crazy what would be in the top 10 at that time. like there was as many great rock acts as there were incredible rappers and bubblegum pop stars and country artists. - i don't think country music had fully crossed over into the mainstream the way it did until the '90s. artists pushed the genre boundaries and they weren't going to submit to an idea of what we thought we had to be any longer. - [kristen] when our generation got access to all the music all the time, the idea of sticking to a genre, well that was hella basic. (clicking sound) (justin laughs) - bubblegum pop was the first stuff that i was obsessed with n'sync and backstreet boys and brittany and christina and mandy. (fans scream) it was just fun. like it was just music meant for young people to enjoy and dance too and scream until their vocal chords are just like completely worn out at concerts. (girl screams) - oh wow. - it's not meant to say anything more than like you're having a great time.

♪ hit me baby one more time (clicking sound) ♪ and will you tell all your friends ♪ ♪ you've got your gun to my head ♪ - the emo scene came up from a need to dig deeper inside yourself. the young people that are suddenly grappling with a world that has now changed forever. - a terrorist attack could happen at any point. you suddenly have a lot of people who are fighting a war that you don't fully understand. there's just like a lot of angst developing from that. ♪ i'm not okay - [brittany] lot of emo music is very, very anxious. fall out boy songs are just like loaded with anxiety. ♪ i'll be your number one with a bullet ♪ - the darkness wasn't going anywhere for our generation so we had to find a way to break bread with it. - the band that like brought it all together was paramore. - i freaking love paramore. are you kidding? i think "misery business" was like the main character theme song for all of us. (amani laughs) ♪ we were never meant to break

- we never really loved being called emo, but we also never loved being called pop punk. we never wanted to be called pop. we never thought we were rock, you know? and then of course paramore was on mtv and we changed the rules for ourselves. (crowd cheers) thank you. (clicking sound) - in the '90s, hip hop felt dangerous. people would have legitimate conferences talking about the dangers of hip hop and what is this doing to our kids. but by the early 2000s, instead of talking about the realities of the street. ♪ you can find me in the club ♪ bottle full of bub' - [ashley] it's actually a reflection of the american dream. - jay-z, who would've been seen as too urban or too violent, has now become this major mainstream pop artist winning grammys. - people who loved hip hop were kind of sad to see it watered down, but at the same time that happening allowed other hip hop scenes to grow. you had the south that like, was finally able to get attention.

you know, you had timbaland, ludicrous, missy elliot. (hip hop music) - we're seeing rap music and r&b become even more mainstream. mariah carey's "fantasy" remix was the first time that we got a pop artist featuring a rapper on a song. ♪ keeping it real son - justin timberlake, britney spears, and christina aguilera even integrated rap music and black music specifically into how they presented themselves. and rap and pop, they were completely intertwined now. and you got like tim mcgraw and nelly doing "over and over." you have jay-z and linkin park releasing an ep together. - we started to mix more like pop and r&b and destiny's child. - [kristen] and out of destiny's child and the melding of genres came an artist that would go on to win a record number of grammys, our queen, beyonce. - i feel good for the generations after me 'cause they don't know a world without beyonce. like we had a world without beyonce. - one of the best live performers of all time, one of the best dancers and singers of all time.

just like the epitome of everything. she's someone that we've seen in real time build a legacy that is almost unquestionable. - every single black girl my age has looked at beyonce as an older sister, as someone who we inspire to be in a lot of aspects, to write songs that were danceable, but also spoke from a good place of self. for her to talk about what type of partner she wants, what type of lifestyle she wants. as i was learning about black feminism, she was also doing it the same in real time too. - she's moved with the culture and moved with the changes in the music industry with such ease. we've literally seen someone grow into an icon before our eyes. - i think millennials, we definitely contributed to the great music of these last 100 years. i'm not gonna argue with boomers on that one very much, honestly. - music piracy ended up being a source of music discovery for kids who didn't subscribe to

the idea that you had to stick to one subculture, one way of dressing, one way of doing things. - there was a time that i probably wouldn't have admitted to listening to n'sync, but let's be real, i wouldn't have learned five part harmony or how to structure a vocal arrangement had i not grew up on pop music that had complex vocal arrangements. to this day, i think back on those memories. i'm like, "that's why i'm here." (upbeat music)

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(band plays) (background chatter) (fast paced violin music) so i was 11 when katrina hit. - this is since a large hurricane. it's going to impact a large area. - we're expecting a morning time landfall tomorrow morning. - for the city of new orleans, it is the doomsday scenario. the mayor of new orleans declared a mandatory evacuation. - when you think of hotels, gas, evacuating costs thousands and thousands of dollars. - [reporter] new orleans famous superdome was dubbed the city's shelter of last resort. - on the eve of katrina, the median black family made about $30,000. - hanging out. how am i gonna get out? - that further complicated the ability of vast majority of new orleanians to find their way to safety. eventually we saw the consequences of that play out in a really ugly fashion. - as one official told me, if you're planning to go, now is the time. if you're staying, god help you.

(hurricane wind blows) (dramatic music) - no power, no water, no food, no fuel. the extent of the destruction is just today really becoming clear and it didn't help this morning when some major levies gave way and flooded parts of the old new orleans french quarter. - my family left mostly everything assuming that we'd be back. - [reporter] from the air you can see this was the catastrophe that so many along the coast had feared. - our house got eight feet of water, completely submerging the first floor and ruined the second floor. i never moved back to that house. (helicopter flying) - i remember watching the video of these families on the roof and going into the superdome.

- [crowd] help! help! help! help! help! help! help! help! - you know, so many people didn't understand what we'd been saying this whole time. - [reporter] thousands of people stranded, refugees in their own hometown. - we're suffering here with no water. here i fought for my country for years. - things that happened to black folks, the rest of this country just simply does not care about. (haunting music) - back up. we're not going anywhere until all of you back up! - the hurricane didn't just appear. you know, it wasn't like the hurricane just like at 9:00 pm just like emerged, right. - [reporter] why has it taken so long to get more national guard troops, helicopters, and boats to new orleans? - i remember, i didn't know what a levee was. i'm doing research on the army corps. - [reporter] critics say money to reinforce the levies that failed to stop the flood waters has been cut from the army corps of engineers budget year after year. - and it's like y'all knew. like this wasn't like a,

it wasn't a secret that the levees weren't strong. the government is ill-equipped to support and it's poor black people who are left hanging. - you know your fed america goes out and we help people, we liberate people, we save people, and then you see something like this in real time and the government was doing so little, it's impossible to hold onto that belief as a kid. you know, we're not idiots. - the storm didn't target black americans. it was all of the structural inequities. we are often victimized by housing inequities, environmental racism. it's all right there. you could do a whole entire textbook on how katrina showed this country what the differences were between black folks and white folks in america and you could do another textbook on the fact that this country learned exactly zero things from that. - over 1800 people died. and we're all left watching television