As part of our ED Decodes The Indian Millennial series: we bring to you part 2 here. Don’t forget to read the other posts in this series. mentioned in the end.
Hi, we are the Indian millennials.
I am sure we have met, but not really. You see, you know us but you don’t. Let us help you out.
We are the 0.8 billion people in India falling under the age group of 16-30, so you have to sit up and take notice of what we are all about. There is no better way to know us than to take a closer look at how we spend a regular day.
Well, a regular day should be like waking up, showering, breakfast, work/school, unwind to whatever combination of music/tv/internet & social media/ hobbies/hanging out/etc, dinner, sleep. Weekends spent doing some more things fun. Go out, socialize. Travel sometimes. Just to sum up.
Therefore, my rudimentary approach was to ask how much they conform to this, ask my fellow millennials, “Hey, what do you do on an average day?” And the responses were… similar…
“Sleep, eat, tv series.”
“Tv/Laptop/Mobile, #peoplesay.”
“Read stuff, read stuff online, text.”
“Youtube, Instagram, Facebook if I am not working or hanging out.”
“Sleep, cook, eat, read. Social media, not so much. I like to read blogs, you know. Travel blogs, cooking blogs, DIY blogs.”
So, here is what you need to know, to begin with: the average Indian millennial spends more than one-third of their day using some sort of media, mostly digital.
That’s a minimum of 8 hours a day. Which can shoot up to 18 hours at a maximum!
Assuming that we need 7-8 hours of good sleep to avoid crippling our health severely, we are left with only 8 hours to eat, travel, engage with people, work, study distraction free.
But the average millennial sleeps for 6 hours a day, the minimum cave-man requirement being 4. So, 10 hours? (And many of us sleep really late. Like after 12.)
No.
We are not hogging the internet all day, we are multi-tasking. So, we all have several tabs open on our browsers while we are talking to someone and working on a project. Listening to something and thinking about something else. Music when travelling, Instagramming with friends. Our lives are ‘synced’.
Now, folks at TOI, Goldman Sachs, WSJ, Deloitte point out some more interesting trends among Indian millennials:
- Millennials, on an average, spend one in every four minutes online, on a social networking site. Teens spend a staggering 70% of their time on social media.
- Listening to music is the most popular form of media consumption.
- 50% watch at least one video a day.
- An average of 1.2 hours is spent watching TV. (But, much more for TV shows on other media, thanks to a very popular trend of binge watching.)
- Indian millennials spend 2 hours on an average on Mobile phones. This is again less than the world average.
- 50% play video games regularly.
- People check their phones at least 50 times!
To mention a few. Media populates every moment of our lives.
But truthfully, gargling media is not the pivot of our existence. The Indian millennial should pat their self on the back because they clock the highest average work hours globally at 52 hours a week.
That is almost 10.5 hours per day on a 5-day week and 8.6 for a 6-day week at work!
Between work and play, our lives are not as self-centred as you might think it to be. We love to spend time with friends and family. Though media consumption has negatively impacted social relations, family and friends bond much more over digital media, we like to talk about what we are watching, listening to, reading share/like/tweet about everything to everyone!
Now when we simmer all of this down, you may judge that we live the most conceited and unhealthiest lives. But we are the most AWARE generation; social media itself is a testimony. As much patterned our lives look like, the millennials are the most individualistic generation, we are all different, we capitalise on self-expression in our regular lives.
There is, after all, exercising, planning days, eating healthy, etc. we haven’t ditched the stereotypical good habits over the media mania. The millennials think ahead, have big ambitions and work hard for them.
So, you can like how we live, or hate it, but you definitely cannot dismiss it!
To know us even better, read this:
Decoding Misunderstood Millenials: The Contradicting-Ironical Gen: Part 1
And Part 3:
http://edtimes.in/2016/07/millennials-normality-older-gen-abnormality/
Then, there is Part 4: ‘Beta Tumse Na HO Paega’: How Indian Millennials Have Created Their Own Social Media Lingo
