There was an article about a month ago called “Why Every Social Media Manager Should be Under 25.” I was not a fan of that article though fitting well into the criteria - the criteria being I was under 25.

I say this because I think it is a ridiculous idea to assume someone can perform a job simply based on how old they are.

Which brings me to my next item, earlier today Hollis Thomas’s article “11 Reasons a 23-Year-Old Shouldn’t Run Your Social Media” reached me by way of my boss, oddly enough. His exact response was “Ready, Set, Attack.” He knows how much I hate generalizations.

But, instead of attack I’d rather just prove both points invalid. I don’t think that age has any correlation to how well someone can perform their job, with the exception of basic functions. With the amount of people in this world, there is no reason to generalize based on poor stereo types for less than 20% of a population.

Point number 1:

A comment from Thomas’s article:

Nikhaar Shah · Friday at 12:17pm Correlating age with wisdom is one of the most common mistakes out there. Not only have I personally worked and enhanced the social media of a Fortune 500 client but I’ve also ensured that they have sustainable growth and fresh ideas even after my team departs. With a 4500% growth in Facebook across all verticals after targeting various channels of the marketing funnel, I was sure doing some work while the author was looking up my age. Not only that, I started my own company when I was 17 - and yes, I just turned 22.

Example 2:

This is Paul, he made a huge mistake when emails between he and a customer went public. What mistake did this 38 year old (pass the age of immaturity) make? Let me show you a line from an email to his company’s customer “son Im 38 I wwebsite as on the internet when you were a sperm in your daddys balls and before it was the internet” – can we please stop saying that being older makes you automatically wise? Everyone makes mistakes, because you hire a 23 year old does not put you at major risk. And on the flip side, hiring a 45 year old will not make your social media campaign outdated.

Reason 3:

Career advisors are actually telling you to hire millennials (of course I needed to do this plug). What is that I hear? Mouths gaping open? We all aren’t a pile of steaming laziness like our elders may have led you to believe. There are some of us (in fact a larger percent of us) who have worked our buts off to get where we are today. Whether their industry is in social media or cow farming, age shouldn’t matter. The quality of their work should.

By all means, this isn’t saying that every millennial is a hard worker, as proof of poor social media knowledge/usage we all know that to be false. However, the bad seem to have outshone the good, as in most cases. And while there are many of us who have been working in social media, be it an internship or building a brand for ourselves, throughout our high school and college careers we seem to be lumped into the same category as those without any knowledge on the subject.

I suppose the real reason I’m not thrilled about either article is due to the generalizations made about me and my peers. Yes, of course, both throw in that “I don’t mean to attack 23-year-olds specifically. Nor do I believe there are no young people capable of managing a business’s social media responsibilities.” which, if we’re being honest, is worse. It’s basically adding the “No offense, but I can’t stand anything about you.“

I do have one positive thing to say to both articles: awesome job creating very clickable titles. I hope it brings those websites all the hits and comments the editors assumed it would.