One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

Kennedy’s reflection on growing up in the nineties and aughts highlights the unique experience millennials have had with technology and how it has affected their interpersonal relationships. Using cultural references, personal anecdotes, and social allusions throughout her essays, Kennedy conveys the ways in which technology can simultaneously foster, inhibit, and complicate interpersonal dynamics. With this examination, Kennedy remarks on how this relationship is unique to millennials and what this means for her generation.

Kennedy establishes how media and technology impacted how she saw herself in the context of others in her introduction. By “tak[ing] cues from popular media and popular kids in school,” Kate sought out “ways to get people to like [her]” (5). She learned to curate her tastes according to pop culture trends in an attempt to “acquir[e] social capital” and become “socially acceptable” to her friends and peers (5). She references popular band names, romantic comedies, online trends, and television shows that she latched onto in an attempt to gain popularity. Kennedy particularly considers how technological advancements and fads influenced her social sphere in essays like “You’ve Got Male,” “God Must’ve Spent a Little Less Time on Me,” and “Are We Going Out? Or Out-Out?” In “You’ve Got Male,” she argues that she “learned some of life’s greatest lessons” about romance, dating, and friendship from “AOL Instant Messenger” (61).