Judy Woodruff, PBS News Hour takes a look at how the millennial generation — people born after 1980 — fits into the current political and economic spectrum. The Pew Center’s Paul Taylor and Amanda Lenhart discuss their new report.
They are 18 to 29 years old. There are some 50 million of them, and they’re often called the millennial generation.
Today, they were the subject of a conference at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The event, for which PBS served as moderator, coincided with the release of a comprehensive national study conducted by the Pew Research Center.
Among its findings: Millennials are the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Only 61 percent are white, 19 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, and 5 percent Asian. That contrasts with those 30 and older, a group that is 70 percent white.
The study also found that millennials are voracious users of new technologies, from smartphones to social networking sites. When respondents were asked if they sleep with their cell phone nearby, 83 percent of millennials said they did, far more than their parents or grandparents.