Sharalyn Hartwell: The Vanna White of Gen Y on giving thanks and generational self-awareness

It was very much my pleasure to have had the opportunity to chat with Sharalyn Hartwell, a freelance writer and a nationally syndicated columnist for The Examiner on millennial culture and issues. As her Twitter profile suggests, she has been dubbed "The Vanna White of Gen Y," and she has been using her column to offer to millennials a constructive voice which serves - in part - to combat some of the persistently hyperbolic, negative stereotypes regarding the generation.

Mike, Morley and I stumbled upon the column back in November when Sharalyn was running her Gen Y Gives Thanks series, a collection of a series of posts from Millennials on what they are most thankful for. This ultimately serves as an illustration of her take on the generation's values, as well as a deconstruction of ill-informed, negative stereotypes. "Conversations in the media [about millennials] can be quite negative, really reactive. There are a lot of fingers pointed at us," she explained. Hartwell says the "Thanks" series was something that she had initially done for exposure, but as she began receiving responses from members of the generation, she realized "what we were grateful for, and it flew in the face of stereotypes." From there, Hartwell began to write for the the audience, and it became a process of getting to know her own generation.

Sharalyn and I also discussed, among other things, millennials' awareness of its own generational categorization. I asked Sharalyn: "Do most millennials even know that there is such a thing a the 'millennial generation' or 'Gen Y'?"

"No," she responded. "There is very little [generational] self-awareness. In observing and interacting with various social media channels, you see that people are extreme in one way or another. Young people are either very in touch with these types of conversations, or they're completely out of touch with them. The dichotomy is pretty stark, too; there are very few people in the middle."

I found this particularly interesting, as this is a conclusion that I came to when I went on the Millennials Changing America tour in late 2008. The genesis of me deciding to go to 35 cities to talk with Millennials about their take on the generation why my thinking, "OK. Here are all of these older people talking about this so-called 'Millennial Generation', but how come I've never heard of it?" And as I traveled around and spoke with members of the generation, I found that far more often than not, members of the generation had not heard of the terms "Millennial" or "Gen Y," and apparently this persists. I might suggest that now that Pew has released its How Millennial Are You quiz, and that since it appears to have proliferated the social media scape, that perhaps more Millennials have become familiar with the term. However, in my experience, all of those that I have seen report their "Millennial" results are early Millennials (late 20s), Gen Xers, or older.

Do find some time to take a look at Sharalyn's column if you have not already, and definitely spend some time with her Gen Y Gives Thanks, series. We look forward to talking with her some more soon.