People have different opinions when talking about the millennial generation. Some say that Millennials are often spoiled, ambition-less, lazy, and more. This is because of how much they are relying on modern technology. However, a recent study actually revealed that this is actually quite the opposite of what other people think. It turns out that a huge percentage of Millennials strives for perfection, especially when it comes to working. It was also discovered that Millennials are more hungry for knowledge are willing to take risks especially if they know that it will be for their own advancement in life, continue reading to find out more.

Striving for excellence

A new research was published in the Psychological Bulletin, wherein it concluded that Millennials are perfectionists compared the previous generations and this is actually starting to affect their mental health. The research have gathered date from 40,000 college students from the late 80s up till the year 2016 from the top three nations such as The United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The participants of this research are asked to complete a test that would measure general changes when it comes to perfectionism known as the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. It basically looks into not just one but three types of Perfectionism such as being self-oriented, having the irrational desire for perfection, and having excessive expectations from others that leads to unrealistic standards.

Because of this scale, the researchers managed to find out that college students from the recent generation got a ten percent higher score on the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale compared to the previous generations, there is a catch of course. Having the desire to be perfect affects the mental health of a person, which then leads to them having mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and even suicidal thoughts because they would rather die than to fail or not achieve perfection. This was also based on the recent report from the World Health Organization. Today’s young adults are found to be pressured to be better than their peers as well as judge because of their incredibly high standards not just to others but to themselves

Social media as a factor

There is only one thing that makes the previous generation different from the Millennials, and that is the rise of social media. The authors of the study, Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill believes that the social media age has got to have a big impact on how Millennials think and act. Social media definitely has a huge part of the social emphasis when it comes to meritocracy.

Social media has a way of making people believe that they are not good enough making other people compare themselves to others especially what they see on their Instagram or Facebook feeds. Striving for perfection to be able to adapt to what the high standards of the society is somewhat unrealistic making it impossible for people to keep up which then leads to mental health issues this is all according to Dr. Thomas Curran who is one of the authors of this study.

He also mentioned how Millennials turned out to be afraid of failure since it could affect their scale to success.

The big question now is that van Millennials be able to accept that perfection is impossible to achieve and living just to continue striving for it may make them regret not living in contentment. Curran believes that this is a culture that no one can escape anymore because it is happening right at this moment. However, he also believes that Millennials could definitely tone things down a bit by actually pursuing self-betterment instead of harmful perfectionism.

The danger of perfectionism

Based on the study they have published, Dr. Curran encourages Millennials to simply strive to be a better version of themselves instead of trying to achieve perfection because they would only continue to lead themselves to disappointments. People are indeed in control of their lives because they make their own decisions, however, we cannot control what happens around us. So having to expect perfection in your everyday life is indeed impossible and if a person simply cannot accept that things cannot always go their way, then their mental health is definitely at stake.