Cereal sales are falling. Is millennial laziness to blame for the breakfast food's decline?

Earlier this week, The New York Times published an article looking at the nostalgia surrounding breakfast cereal and whether its a hallmark of a bygone era. It included this mind-blowing sentence:

"Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it."

A millennial speaks

Samoy: I have a confession to make. I'm a millennial and I don't eat cereal. At least not regularly for breakfast.

And apparently I'm not alone. I get this article. It makes perfect sense to me.

GenX is confused

Rough: This news just blew me away. I mean, its CEREAL. My entire generation grew up eating a big bowl of the most sugar-laden stuff we could find while watching Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo on Saturday mornings.

Hey, we're busy people

Samoy: Now before you go and brand all of us as inherently lazy... I feel the need to defend myself - and millennials - a little bit here. I love a good bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios or Frosted Mini Wheats, but my mornings are so busy that I usually don't get a chance to eat breakfast before leaving the house. Instead I grab a much more convenient yogurt parfait or muffin from the cafeteria at work. So do many of the other millennials in the survey.

But I will admit, sometimes the extra step of cleaning a bowl has made me resort to just snacking on cereal straight from the box.

Wait...rinsing a bowl is that difficult?

Rough: Yeah, still not getting it. It takes what? Five seconds to pour it in a bowl and just as long to rinse it out? I pour both my kids cereal for breakfast several times a week because its the easiest thing to clean up. And some mornings, gasp, I make them eggs. And I manage to clean up the pan and plates and everything. I also admit to being nostalgic. Cereal was a ubiquitous food in my youth. It also kept me alive some weeks right after college when I was living paycheck to paycheck in Texas. It was breakfast. It was dinner. Sometimes it was even lunch.

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The poor cereal companies

Samoy: Like it or not, my generation's choices are having a major impact. Maybe its that cereals contain too much sugar. Maybe its our hectic mornings. Maybe it is sheer laziness. But cereal sales have been slipping since the late 1990s. According to published reports, they were at $13.9 billion in 2000 but only reached $10 billion last year.

Social media reacts

Samoy: Some on social media are calling out millennials for their laziness. Come on now. Let's play nice, people.

While some millennials are defending themselves.

And others simply say that cereal is gross.