For what Millennials are killing in 2018, head here.

Millennials are responsible for the cold blooded murder of many an industry and item – or so it would seem if you spend much time reading online articles.

The Brandwatch React team thought we’d take a look into this. As Millennials ourselves we struggle to swat flies, but apparently we are to blame for the deaths of all kinds of things. We wanted to find out exactly what is at risk from our murderous lifestyle choices.

Since the phrase “Millennials are killing ___” has become a meme in itself, we imagined we’d find a fair bit of conversation, and we did.

Methodology

We searched for mentions of “Millennials are killing” on Twitter (excluding retweets) between 1st January and 30 July 2017. Overall, there were just over 1,500.

We then downloaded those mentions and ran them through Excel to find and retrieve the 25 characters that followed the phrase. So, for example, if someone tweeted “Millennials are killing coffee shops”, we’d collect the term “coffee shops”. Then we plugged that list into a word counter that identifies the most common words in a list.

We removed a few that didn’t make sense (e.g. unfinished words consisting of one letter) or weren’t referring to things being killed (for example “articles” was one of the top-mentioned words, but referred to articles about things millennials had killed – not that they had killed articles).

And then we were left with a list, and what a weird and wonderful list it was…

Things Millennials are killing

Here it is, in all it’s glory.

So Millennials are killing off all kinds of traditional American money makers. Let’s take a closer look.

A foodie theme

According to our list, Millennials are killing off chain(s), Buffalo Wild Wings, Applebees, restaurant(s) and lunch.

Their impact on the food service industry is well documented, and lots of these mentions consisted of titles of news articles in big publications like Business Insider and The Next Web.

Millennials’ assault on the restaurant industry is two-fold.

Experience

Millennials care about how Instagrammable an experience is. Eating out isn’t so much about the pigging out as it is the likes.

Restaurants that don’t provide the correct decoration, garnish and even lighting are not catering to an audience that likes to snap photos of their plates and make all their friends jealous.

Eating quick and staying home

Buffalo Wild Wings’ CEO Sally Smith told Business Insider, “Millennial consumers are more attracted than their elders to cooking at home, ordering delivery from restaurants, and eating quickly, in fast-casual or quick-serve restaurants.”

Firms like Deliveroo are widening take-out options massively, but not all casual dining restaurants are exploiting delivery services just yet. With more and more millennials eating at home for the simple reasons of convenience and affordability, it seems like an important step for these restaurants to get on board with.