Millennials were supposed to be history’s intermission.
Born after the Cold War and before whatever comes next, they were expected to inherit a world that was richer, safer, and more predictable than any before it. Instead, they became the generation of firsts.
The first generation to grow up with computers in the home. The first to come of age on social media. The first to carry the internet permanently in their pockets. The first to experience dating apps, algorithmic newsfeeds, and a life increasingly mediated by screens. The first to watch artificial intelligence move from science fiction to daily utility. The first to eat food designed in laboratories rather than farms. And perhaps most consequentially, the first generation in human history able to decide whether to have children not because society, religion, economics, or survival demanded it—but simply because they wanted to.
That final “first” may prove more important than all the others combined.
For most of human history, children were not a lifestyle choice. They were labour, security, inheritance, and continuity. Families had children because civilizations required them. Today, for the first time, large numbers of educated adults can live full, socially accepted lives without becoming parents. Stats form all over the world proves that. In countries such as South Korea, the fertility rate has fallen at 1.08 child per woman while Italy and Japan face similar demographic challenges. The question is no longer, “How many children should we have?” but “Should we have any at all?” This is not merely a demographic shift. It is a civilizational one.
Is the “Horse Dilemma” of Matthew Lowenstein beginning to unfold before our eyes?
At the beginning of the twentieth century, horses were indispensable. They moved armies, transported goods, powered agriculture, and connected cities. Then came the automobile, the tractor, and the truck. Within a few decades, the horse went from economic necessity to cultural accessory. Horses did not disappear. They became hobbies, companions, sporting equipment, and symbols of a vanished age.
One cannot help wondering whether humanity faces a similar fate in the age of artificial intelligence.
For centuries, human beings justified their centrality through work. We calculated, remembered, analysed, translated, designed, and created. AI is beginning to perform many of those functions faster, cheaper, and often better. Just as the engine replaced the horse’s muscle, the algorithm may replace the human mind in an increasing number of domains.
Yet this is where the comparison with the horse breaks down. The horse had no say in the arrival of the automobile. It did not invent the machine that made it obsolete. Millennials invented artificial intelligence and have the option to embrace or resist it. The evidence suggests they are doing both.
On one hand, they are the architects of the digital world. They built the platforms, adopted the technologies, and normalised online life. On the other hand, ironically, the generation that built the digital world is also beginning to question it. After years of streaming, some younger consumers have returned to physical media. Vinyl records, once considered obsolete, have experienced a remarkable revival, with global sales reaching levels unseen in decades. DVD and Blu-ray collecting, once declared dead, has found a new audience among people who want ownership rather than endless subscriptions.
This tension defines the generation. Millennials are simultaneously pioneers and critics of the future.
Perhaps that is their historical role.
The generation of firsts may also become the generation forced to answer humanity’s oldest question in a new form: what is the purpose of human life when survival no longer demands reproduction, and intelligence is no longer uniquely human?
The answer will determine whether humans become like the horse, cherished but peripheral, or whether they discover a new reason for being indispensable.
That is the challenge confronting the generation of firsts.
*This opinion piece is part of To Vima International Edition’s Next Generation opinion column. Grigoris Patsakis is project manager at Greece’s leading think-tank ELIAMEP.
