Are Millenials Killing the Breakfast Industry?

Context: This is part of the project I did for this term of my university. An actual news story with research and fieldwork. I haven’t been posting a lot in the past few months because of work, but I’ll try to share some of my write-ups here in the meantime.

17 November 2018

Antony L. Ashkenaz

About a third of students said that they “almost never” have breakfast before class, while only almost an equal number of students said that they ate breakfast daily.

“I don’t have time to eat in the mornings because I’ll miss my train,” one student said.

When asked, 70.2% of students said that they do not have enough time to have breakfast in the morning. The second most common reason was depression and nausea.

“I’ve had a habit of not eating breakfast since I was young as I would rather sleep more than wake up and eat. So now if I eat breakfast I feel sick in the morning,” a student remarked.

The survey also showed that while over 61% of students live within half an hour off their university, only about half of them had breakfast regularly or only skipped occasionally.

 On the other hand, about 21.6% of students commute for more than an hour. Almost all of these students skip breakfast, while 62% of them almost never having breakfast at all.

Results were divided when students were asked if they would prefer classes in the morning or evening. But it was observed that about two-thirds of the students who preferred evening classes skipped breakfast.

Students were also asked about their sleep schedules. It was noted that while more than 85% had less than eight hours of sleep, more than 35% had less than six hours of sleep.

While the correlation between students having part-time jobs and students having breakfast regularly, ended up with inconclusive results, the study showed that almost 80% of the students with part-time jobs or internships did not get adequate sleep.

This lack of sleep can also be attributed to students having to balance an ever-increasing workload from their university, social life, extracurricular activities and part-time jobs they have to take in order to survive. In order to allow enough time for each of these activities, they may try to shave some time off of their sleep.

This study contradicts the one featured in the New York Times, which accuses millennials of “killing” the breakfast industry because they’re “too lazy” to clean up afterward. It appears to be another case of resentful baby boomers accusing the younger generation of not living up to their standards, despite their being born in an economically different era.