Although most of them believe that they are God’s gift to the world, millennials are far from perfect. Defined as anyone born between 1982 and 2004, millennials are generally proficient when it comes to using technology, and many of them are actually very book smart. But as for street smarts and just plain commonsense? Not so much.
According to researchers in Britain, 20% of young people under the age of 35 still turn to their parents for help with common household tasks. For example, the study found that more than half of millennials today are unable to put up wallpaper by themselves, and one in eight admitted to not knowing how to change a light bulb. Additionally, a study by British maintenance company Corgi HomePlan found that 80% of young women rely on their partners to fix things and keep up with basic home maintenance.
The problem, according to Dr. Sandi Mann, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, is that young people are no longer seeing the importance of being hands on. “Millennials are being brought up to be tech-savvy and their skill is in electronic manipulation,” Dr. Mann explained. “Whilst their parents might be better at changing light bulbs, it is the older generation who often turn to the younger ones for help when their computer or phone crashes.”
Indeed, more statistics revealed by this study and others prove Dr. Mann’s explanation to be one hundred percent accurate. In October of last year, for example, a survey found that one in four people between the ages of 25 and 34 weren’t capable of boiling an egg on their own. Nineteen percent of these young people admitted to thinking that an egg can be hard-boiled in less than two minutes. Sadly, the survey showed that young people are losing the skills that their parents and grandparents possessed years before their time – 77% said they can’t fix a bike puncture and 68% can’t wire a plug. (RELATED: Here are 40 shockingly simple skills that millennials don’t know how to do.)
Indeed, technology is a wonderful thing. It generally makes our lives much easier and convenient, and young people will be the first to tell you that. The Robotwist Hands Free Jar Opener, for instance, is a product that has recently been advertised online and on television. The device is able to clamp down on a jar lid and then automatically twist it off, thus saving people the trouble of using their own hands and strength. But like most other things in life, there is a downside.
With all of this technology, and less of an emphasis being put on hard work and hands on activities, upcoming generations are increasingly losing their ability to take care of themselves. Worse, what happens should society collapse one day and suddenly smartphones and other forms of technology are rendered useless? What happens if the world instantaneously requires physical strength, commonsense, intuition, and just plain street smarts? Would millennials have the ability to survive day-to-day life in an environment such as this?
In a survival situation where there is no more government, no more power and no more Internet, young people wouldn’t be able to simply pull out their smartphones and look up how to boil an egg that they found the day before perched up in a tree. (RELATED: These are the best foods to grow and store for survival.) Similarly, they wouldn’t be able to do a Google search for how to change a light bulb, assuming of course that they were first able to power up a generator for power.
While technology is convenient and makes our lives easier in thousands of different ways, it should never be a replacement for street smarts and commonsense. After all, there is no app for that.
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