The Effect of Social Media on Millennial Behavior in Workplace

Millennials (individuals who belong to Generation Y) have come to view socializing with peers through social media as a core part of their lives.  One commentator noted that, “they are constantly connected to social media outlets” and they cannot function well without checking their social media accounts while working on the job.  In order to understand why social media is so attractive for the younger generation, this paper briefly discusses youth psychology and the psychology of technological usage.  Then, this essay will elaborate upon the question of how social media have shaped the Millennials’ interpersonal skills and how the resultant Millennial’s psychologies have affected their working relationship with their coworkers.

Social media first emerged during the mid-1990s, when the Millennials entered their adolescent developmental stages.  During this stage in personal development, people’s individual psychologies become more curious and tend to year to explore and learn about new things and people.  Adolescents and young adults are more willingly to take risks than are older generations and seem to enjoy experiencing new things.  Since social media are typically free in cost and readily accessible in most locations, online communications have becoming outlets for youngsters to explore or engage in fun and exciting things via virtual platforms facilitated by social media.  In many respects, this allows them to engage in things, and with people that they could not encounter in person.  Through social media, young adventuresome users can explore unfamiliar places, discuss unfamiliar topics or socialize with strangers anywhere anytime they please.

Over time, as the conditions to use social media remain consistent, continual uses of social media can become habitual.  The habitual use of social media develop from positive experiences that young people have during their adolescence or childhood, the very moments when their psychologies have stronger needs for self-identification.  During such periods of self-identity formation, youngsters are malleable to myriad influences, particularly since their self-concepts regarding their identities are not yet matured or fully formed.

Feedback received from others through reciprocal interactions on social media can serve as an important component of adolescent understanding of self-identity.  On social media platforms, people begin to brand themselves by identifying with types of activities or people with whom they are involved.

Youngsters have a psychological need to be involved with social communities in order have a sense of social belonging and acceptance.  Freed from the limitations of location, space, time, and status, young users can easily log on to social media platforms to engage in online activities with others, thereby forming relationships and dependencies with each other.

Marketers have realized Generation Y is not like the generations that preceded it.  The younger generation requires more dynamic and engaging forms of marketing communication before they begin looking into products or services.  Noting this, businesses have developed their own social media communities to engage consumers, especially Millennials.  Marketing research investigating how social media have affected the purchasing decisions of the Millennials shows that individuals who engage in the businesses on social media platforms are 88% more likely to purchase products or services from that business.

Internet provider businesses also have developed their own marketing strategies. Internet devices and their usage price plans are becoming more affordable and more personalized to accommodate a wide range of individual user needs.  The prominence and near ubiquity of Internet and mobile devices can trigger individuals to use social media more.  In an investigation of social and traditional media interactions of Generation Y people, 100% of the Millennial respondents used Facebook, 37% had MySpace accounts, 12% had LinkedIn, and 8% had Twitter. Fifty-eight percent of them log onto their social media account three times a day; the remaining participants do it at least four or more times a day.  When asked why they used social media, 99% replied that they did so in order to communicate with family and friends, 71% in order to find entertainment, 21% for checking news and updates, and 22% for expressing thoughts, perspectives and ideas.

The process of interacting with peers on a near-constant basis can often lead Millennials to develop innovative ideas produced by dynamic online interactions.  This differs from older generations, who prefer to communicate within smaller circles of individuals in secure and restricted places, where privacies or patentable ideas are protected.  Innovative ideas are less likely to emerge in more traditional settings than in more open and less restricted settings.

That said, there are attendant disadvantages and advantages that come hand-in-hand with continual usage of social media.  Chief among them are that interpersonal skills and other human communicative “training” are lost because direct real person-to-person communication are replaced by indirect and electronic communications.  Unsurprisingly, Millennials are less competent when it comes to behaving appropriately in formal and professional settings.  Rather, the younger generation is conditioned to excel in rapid interactions that are more commonly found on social media spaces; as such, the younger generations have become impulsive and imprudent when making decisions.

Growing up in an era of massive social media marketing, and having been bombarded with exaggerated messages in commonly found online advertisements, Millennials have developed a habit of unconsciously “marketing” themselves.  Due to this internalized advertising mentality, they have an inflated sense of themselves.  They are more confident, ambitious, and opinionated than are older generations.  Due to the resultant cross-generation communication gap, the younger generation cannot fully comprehend their managers’ instruction and intentions.  The younger age groups tend to have higher turnover rates, and they constantly look out for better paying positions, which mean they are less loyal to their current companies.

Due such to differences in the way that they perceive the world, think and behave, older generations have found generation Y hard to manage.  Growing up in the age of social media has allowed young users to have a more informal approach when it comes to communications and they also tend to display a laid-back attitude.  This is often interpreted as the Millennials interacting in a manner that is less professional than other workers.  Moreover, Milennials desire more flexibility with their work conditions, a trait imbued by social media.

The younger generation thinks they can work better when they are given more autonomy; and they possess the confidence to believe that they think they have what it take to do their jobs.  The younger generation favors working with technology that has granted them more autonomy than working with their supervisors directly.  Workers from prior generations prefer face-to-face interaction and communication with their workers, because they believe that their less experienced coworkers require more direct supervision.

Generation Y has the potential to produce an excellent generation of leaders, though this group will need to develop more effective communicative skills in order to do so.  As one business leader and educator said, “Clearly, for individuals to stand apart from their competition in the marketplace, newly minted college graduates must demonstrate effective communication skills… effective communication has been directly linked to organizational success.” 

Even though Millennials possess great technological savvy, they generally do not excel in oral, written, reading, and interpersonal communicative skills that have traditionally been required in professional workplaces.  Realizing the needs of Generation Y to succeed in workplaces, managers and business educators are now expected to train their subordinates or student-workers in order to help them develop a wide array of communicative skills that enable them to work effectively with others in team settings.