The millennials are arguably the connection between the past and the future. Most of them come of age during the internet explosion; they have a cursory experience of the traditional and cultural industrial age and an evolving knowledge of the information era. Often stereotyped as the ‘entitled generation’ they hold remarkable confidence in their ability to achieve whatsoever their mind conceive. By the half of this decade, roughly 75% of them are expected to make the global workforce. As such serious attention is expected to be invested in their drives, ambition and energy which will eventually fuel global economic, social and political engine in the immediate future. They are bound, by the virtue of their vantage, to raise connective and revolutionary questions and agitation to balance the past with the future.
Information technology evolution has significantly shaped the attitude and lifestyle of the millennials, they are compelled by the evolution in this regard to tackle most of their pressing problems technologically, and this includes social, economic and political problems. It is not gain saying that in 2008 American presidential election where the voice of the youth shaped the outcome of the election and paved way for the first black American president, the millennials are of voting age and most of them contributed to the cultural and racial shift in American history.
The advent of social media has also enabled most of them to find their voice, strident or soft, to criticize emerging government policy and politics. They are more inclined to brazenly scrutinize every spectrum of politics and to call to question those areas that fall short of their expectation. They have an increasing expectation on the government and how they should be governed. Equipped with technological advantage they have at their disposal growing weapon to shape their political future to a great extent. To that effect governance professionals need to be able to understand the shift in public sentiment, driven in part by demographic changes, and think literally about how social issues might intersect with more traditional aspects of governance if they hope to proactively identify areas that could become more relevant – and regulated – in the future.
Our society serves as a prototype of what is to expect. Never before had government officials been put under microscopic public scrutiny as they now experience. Social media as a political tool has been used to criticize and ostracize politicians that fell short of public expectation. The technology advantage has been employed to shape many government policies and politics that resonate badly with the masses aspiration. It is imperative to also note that this technology evolution will still influence and completely shape other sectors of governance in the foreseeable future.
There is an unprecedented paradigm shift in the prevailing atmosphere of governance championed majorly by the millennials, most of who have already infiltrated every sector of human endeavors with their insatiable thirst for change. They saw to the technological transformation of banking, academics, marketing, social interaction etc, it is expected that they will leave nothing untouched by this storm of change.
James Useghan write from Lagos
