They are reviled and loved. They are heralded as the remedy to all the worlds ills and bedeviled for being lazy and apathetic. They are constantly being defined and redefined.
They, in short, are millenials.
No one can seem to decide on one way to describe this generation. For every Barack Obama praising them as the generation “we’ve been waiting for” there seems to be an equal number of headlines like “I’m a Millenial and My Generation Sucks” from the New York Post.
Whatever the perception of this generation is, it is the best educated generation on record, with 22.3 percent of millennials (defined as those born between 1982-2004) equipped with at least a bachelor’s degree, according to The New York Times.
As a result, cities like Colorado Springs are working hard to understand this demographic and hopefully attract young talent, which local politicians, including county commissioner candidate Electra Johnson, see as an issue in the Springs. This was the spirit that led the El Pomar Foundation, partnered with Colorado College’s Innovation Institute and Tourism Heritage Series, to create and evaluate a survey about how Coloradans rate their home and what they see as their strengths and weaknesses.
The survey, built and studied by CC Professor Emeritus Walter Hecox and senior James Rajasingh, focused particularly on outdoor leisure and recreation to find out if millennials could be more or less attracted to Colorado’s dense collection of parks, trails, and natural scenery.
According to the results, millennials greatly appreciate the accessibility of the Pike’s Peak region. As one participant described it, the area is “a gateway to outdoor adventure, community.” 45 percent of millennials surveyed said it was the area’s greatest strength; just less than 20 percent of non-millennials agreed.
Emily Naranjo, a CC alumnus from the class of 2015, who resided in the Springs until just three weeks ago, exemplifies this. “This past summer I spent almost all of my weekends camping and hiking in the nearby mountains,” she said.
Non-millennials approach the outdoors from a more “look-but-don’t-touch” standpoint. Nearly 40 percent of them said the area’s greatest strength was its “natural features” (whether they are accessible or not doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot to them).
At the same time, around 30 percent of the millennials surveyed believe management of the outdoors is a key challenge to the area, versus around 25 percent of whom were concerned with “managing growth” and the other 20 percent who were worried about “infrastructure.” In general, millenials surveyed believe that the Pike’s Peak region should focus on improving accessibility.
And, in perhaps a nod to this generation’s narcissistic nature, millennials are almost twice as likely than non-millennials to be concerned about the “reputation” of the area—15 percent to 6 percent.
Overall, as Rajasingh noted, “there isn’t much proof that millennials are more active or concerned with the outdoors than other generations,” a finding that, he believes, goes against common perception.
Naranjo, however, is not quite as surprised.
“While there were a group of us who did love camping and hiking whenever possible, there were an equal amount of alums living in CS who rarely, if ever, made it to the mountains,” she explained. “I believe this is due in part to lack of interest, but also lack of time and funds to spend $10 worth of fuel and 3 hours of precious free time and energy on an activity that they’ve been told they should love as CC alums.”