Last Friday, a young lady by the name of Cathryn Sloane wrote an article titled, “Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25“. The post did an amazingly good job of showing her lack of insight when it comes to social media management, and further showed the entitlement mentality that is so prevalent in the younger generation.

At this point, the whole topic has been beaten to death like an Ed Hardy wearing douchebag thinking he can take on an MMA fighter. But, being that I’m 22 years old myself, thought I’d share some thoughts. From reading the post, it really reeked of “I want a job in social media but all of these other people get them”.

Could be wrong, but that’s the vibe that was given off. To make a long story short, Cathryn claims that all social media managers should be young because the younger crowd has grown up with social media pretty much their entire life.

Thing is, social media isn’t anything new and has been around well before Myspace.

But, I digress. The real issue here is the idea that having the knowledge is what matters. Wrong. There’s a lot of people that get upset because they have this knowledge, yet are denied certain opportunities because they don’t have as much experience. For that I say get off your ass and do something about it.

Can’t get a job? Make your own job. Need more experience? Work for little to no pay at all on the side. The biggest realization is knowing that 1) You are not entitled to anything just because you know, and 2) You only get what you work for. At the end of the day, knowledge is very important, but it does not surpass experience in importance.

Age isn’t a factor anymore because there are younger people my age who have both the knowledge, are steadily gaining in experience, and have the chops to do really well in the industry. And there are people who are much older that absolutely kill it. Unfortunately, they can be very hard to find.

At the age of 20 years old, I was very fortunate to land Myrtle Beach as a client and managed their Facebook page, increasing their fans more than 100% in a 5 month period, among other things. This definitely helped in furthering my experience, but just because I helped a high profile client, did not make me more qualified than say someone twice my age.

Being young, your ego is in full swing. It’s very easy to get cocky and have this entitlement mentality. The young generation of people who are wanting to make social media their full-time career, need to understand that in order to get ahead, you can’t just expect to land a job or gig or client based off of what you know.

It’s a combination of work ethic, personality, and experience. Tell your ego to screw off because if you let all these hormones get to your head, chances are you’ll end up looking like an idiot.