Will Gen. Y Rock the Vote?
Dec 13th
The streets were overflowing as a brisk November air rushed through New York City. Car horns blared, music boomed and all around eager 20-somethings, many sitting on each other’s shoulders, cheered wildly: a veritably frenzy perhaps only matched in intensity by the sheer chaos that is New Year’s Eve. But the thousands huddled in Times Square that night, basking in the glow of neon lights and flash bulbs, were not there to ring in the New Year. Rather, it was election night.
In 2008, then Senator Barack Obama was propelled into the White House largely on the backs of young voters. Sold on the idea of change they could believe in, Generation Y voted in record numbers and dispelled the notion that it was apathetic when it came to politics.
But now just four short years later, with the unemployment rate dauntingly high, this generation’s youthful enthusiasm has come face to face with a bleak reality. While in 2008, it seemed that Obama held a monopoly over this generation’s votes, that may no longer be the case. Millennials are still a highly sought commodity but now considered a more available one, with candidates on both sides of the political spectrum vying for their attention. So the question becomes: What role will Generation Y will play in this election cycle? Read the rest of this entry »
A Real Morning Person
Dec 13th
Weekday mornings, Arwa Gunja is up at 2:45 a.m. She jumps in the shower, gets dressed and by 2:55 a.m., she’s out the door. A short car ride later, she’s at the WNYC studios in downtown Manhattan — most days, she’s the first one there.
Gunja, a 2007 NYU graduate, is the line producer for WNYC’s early morning radio program “The Takeaway.” And though she thought her prospects for a journalism job after college were bleak, with hard work, dedication and a little bit of luck, Gunja is now running a nationally syndicated news show with an audience approaching one million. She readily admits it’s further than she imagined being just four short years ago. And though the hours are taxing on the young producer, she knows that news never sleeps. Read the rest of this entry »
Nostalgia Hits the 90s Babies
(One More Time)
Dec 13th
For a generation that’s barely lived a quarter of their lives, millennials seem prematurely nostalgic for their youth. But thanks to the Internet and modern media, icons of yesterday are in the palms of Generation Y hands.
Youngsters of the 1990s had it easy. Days were spent delighting in Nickelodeon’s “Doug,” snacking on Fruit-By-The Foot, collecting Beanie Babies and crooning along to the latest tune by The Backstreet Boys. For many 90s kids, the biggest struggles adolescence presented were choosing which Goosebumps book to read next, parenting those pesky Tamagotchis, and deciding if Sugar Ray was, in fact, a better band than Matchbox 20. Flash-forward to the present day and those same 90s kids, now college aged or recently graduated, are still infatuated with their icons of yore.
1-800-ANXIOUS
Nov 22nd
They're convenient and helpful but cell phones are driving Gen Y crazy (Image Via: Daveibsen.typepad.com)
During a summer vacation in 2007, Cristina Pansolini’s cell phone kicked the metaphoric bucket and with it went her ability to enjoy a stress-free trip. Sans cell phone, how would she make plans with friends? Would her boyfriend think she was ignoring his text messages? What if she needed to contact her family? Although Pansolini was back in cellular business a few days later, the now 21-year-old college senior winces at the thought of being without her beloved iPhone for even a moment. “The thing is my life, I don’t think I could function without it,” she says.
Like an arm or leg, the cell phone is a modern day appendage that millennials have come to depend on. With the ability to talk, text, send emails, and correspond over social media, cell phones are communication’s ‘round-the-clock nucleus and, simultaneously, society’s hopeless addiction. Lisa Merlo, a clinical psychologist at the University of Florida, told “Cellular-News” that cell phone users oftentimes feel anxious when they accidentally leave the device at home or are forced to turn it off. But why are Generation Y hearts so uneasy when their digital counterparts aren’t in hand?