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Every few weeks, another one drops. A trend piece. About millennials. From the New York Times.

This weekend, the paper blew the lid off the TV viewing habits of those born within the very large generation ranging somewhere between 1978 and 1996, depending on who you ask. What did they find? Kids these days — kids anywhere between the ages of 18 and 36 — aren’t really watching TV anymore. Sure, they are watching “television shows,” but with the proliferation of streaming video, the definition of TV has changed drastically in the last few years, and more and more people are only watching television on their computers, tablets, and mobile devices.

Of course, the demographic of cord-cutters — or, even, people who did not have a cord to cut — are skewing younger. And they’re as confused when they see a TV as a five-year-old might be when presented with a rotary phone. The first subject of the trend piece recalls seeing a TV set in a friend’s dorm room. Her reaction? “It was little bit weird… When I walk into a dorm room and see one, my first thought is, it’s unnecessary…”

Millennials, of course, are still watching a ton of TV — they’re binge-watching, because in this day and age practically everything is made available to us in one big lump. And that’s something we like! But television-watching as a solitary activity doesn’t seem like a super revolutionary thing, especially, as the article asserts, social media has made water cooler conversation happen almost immediately during a show’s broadcast rather than the next morning. And it’s not just Scandal or live TV events that are fueling Twitter conversation; it’s a big world out there, and surely someone else is watching the show you’re currently hooked on. A simple search or a click of a hashtag, and boom: you’re instantly able to engage in an online viewing party.

That’s something the New York Times piece acknowledges, therefore making its own headline — suggesting “the end of the TV-viewing party” — a bit of a lie (although a pretty clever hyperbole to strike fear into the hearts of, say, those who gathered with friends and fondue to watch the original iteration of Dallas).

It also gets something else a bit wrong: Millennials are only watching TV on their laptops and iPads because, as many of them assert, a physical TV isn’t essential. That’s definitely true. I had one in my post-collegiate years, and even had a cable subscription. Eventually I gave it up; my social life kept me pretty busy, and I found myself not watching TV all that much. Later, I moved into a place that came with cable long after I stopped moving my 19-inch TV around with me from apartment to apartment; again, I rarely watched TV, but rather spent the little time I was at home in my room watching Netflix on my laptop or catching up on a few shows on Hulu.

I still don’t have cable; the shows I do watch are available to stream online, either via legitimate sites like Hulu or, yes, courtesy of a shared HBO Go password. But buying an actual TV — this one much larger, and ironically lighter, than that 19-inch set I’d been lugging around — earlier this year has been great. Cable’s still not a requirement; instead, I have a Chromecast and can stream anything I want on a much larger screen. Not essential, sure, but it’s a nice luxury, and one I probably wouldn’t have considered if I were in my early twenties and making barely enough money to keep from overdrawing my checking account once a month.

I know I’m just one dude, and one subject does not a trend piece make, but I have a strong feeling that the current generation of twenty-somethings isn’t bringing about the death of the physical TV. A laptop or a tablet works in a pinch, especially when you don’t even watch enough movies to warrant owning anything to play all those DVDs (remember those?) you’ve been carrying around with you for years. But the older one gets — and the more money one earns — there comes a realization that owning a TV (again!) is a sign of growing up. After all, imagine sharing an apartment with a partner, both of you struggling to balance a laptop on your legs as you’re perched in bed. Now, instead, imagine watching that on a TV set. Seems more comfortable, no?

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