Millennials were still in grade school when the internet really took hold in a big way. Intelligent people can learn at any age. As a Millennial, I was trying to find AOL online free trial disks to chat with school friends over dial up, staying up late at night talking to my first GF, had a GeoCities page, downloaded bad music over Napster, and was on the first big wave on MySpace. This was my life in highschool, and when all these things really got started. We were the first kids to make the internet ours. Even if we didn’t all have computers at home with internet. Schools had computer labs set up almost like old internet cafes. There was a big push to get kids access to the Internet. I spent a lot of time in those labs. I think it is that democratized access combined with the culture that only exists in grade school that really defines us at this kind of cultural level. Gen X was just too early for the real mainstream public internet. Most people didn’t even have a cell phone until I was just out of highschool. I still remember when I was really young, my folks had pagers for work. Pagers would have been cutting edge tech for Gen X in grade school. Few people really adopt new tech stuff outside of a competitive social environment. You’ll never have another time in your adult life where you are exposed to so many people, like in grade school, and when you are generalists open to new things and experiences like you are at a young age.