Generations are granfalloons – there’s no real reason to suppose that everyone born in a certain decade are any more alike than people with the same zodiac sign.
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Wait, so that means the first American generation was 1695? Not sure how that makes any more sense than all the other arbitrary labels.
If you change it to 20 year generations it makes a bit more sense. The first American Generation is then born in 1785. X from 1965 to 1985, Boomers from 1945 to 1965, etc. I think that is the more standard definition.
That would make millennials 1985 to 2005. Huh, guess my kids would be in the yet unnamed 12th generation.
Parents of millenials: too bold, never satisfied.
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There is a demographic reason for ending the baby-boom generation in 1964: in 1965, the birth rate in the USA went into a sharp decline. It’s striking
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I’ve heard him refer to himself as a Gen Xer, but that was before the national spotlight.
Not sure why the study of diseases would lump people together by calendar dates instead of by similar childhood environments.
It’s not a question of brand identity; Boomers grew up with different medical care, food choices, and leisure activities than Gen-Xers, which was based on the age of their parents, not on their own age.
This is not to say that one is somehow “better” than the other, just that they’re very different childhood experiences.
They can’t retire because 1) their pensions have been taken away or their 401k went belly up in the recession and 2) they are still supporting their children because they can’t find work in this economy.
@ColecoSmurf: you are Gen X. Your username proves it.
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I think I agree to an extent here. I do think that it can give people a certain set of cultural experiences, broadly speaking. People who were older children and teens in the mid-70s probably remember Watergate for example, or those of us who were young in the early 80s remember MTV.
This is why we need someone to actually start manufacturing the M.A.R.K.-13 “population management” robotics system from the movie Hardware. Oh wait, didn’t Google just buy a military robot company one week, and then an AI company the next…
YAY JOBS!
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Theatre just hasn’t had the same appeal since the actors stopped wearing oversize prosthetic dongs.
Of course, that was all Attic comedy, not just The Clouds.
It is interesting to think about what type of societal event might be a worthy contender for a genuine trigger for a new “generation” that is clearly differentiated from Gen Y/Millennials, who I will submit are defined as having not grown up without the internet and ever-present information and communication systems.
• The Greatest Generation lived through WWII and saw nukes actually get used in wartime – they essentially faced a genuinely existential threat in the course of their lives
• The Baby Boomers were largely defined by the cold war, Vietnam, and the large “counter-cultural” shifts that took place in the 60s and 70s
• Gen X I think was really defined in the 1980s, with the rise of corporatism of a new order, along with “globalization”
• Gen Y/Millennials never knew a world that wasn’t hyper-connected, with almost every other person or piece of information being a click or call or text away
So what are “culture-shift” candidates for “the next generation?” Here are a few possibilities that I see:
• The fall of the USA as the primary global super-power, and perhaps even the fall of the USA as a clear-cut first-world nation. Seems we’re right on the verge of this, and that by the 2020s we will probably be at this point. So people being born soon might not ever know a world where the USA was even considered “the global super-power.” That would be interesting.
• Global climate shift – if the climate does get worse and worse and less predictable, there may be a generation of people who grow up assuming that weather patterns and climate at large are quite unpredictable and can mean very bad things on a regular basis
• Global pandemic illness breakout, maybe the collapse of effectiveness of antibiotics? The generation that grows up never having known how bacteria can be easily stopped by taking some pills for a week or so. Freaky, and it seems like this could be close as well.
• The VR generation – seems like 2014 or 2015 is going to be the timeframe when actual honest-to-goodness high-quality “cyberpunk-esque” virtual reality will become commercialized. Sure it’s a followup from the advanced video games of Gen Y, but all of the reviews of things like Occulus Rift and the Valve testbed VR platform seem to indicate that this is different, and muuuuch more immersive than traditional gaming. So maybe the generation that never knew a world where people didn’t spend huge swaths of time logged in to completely alternative realities?
• We find actual, genuine evidence of life somewhere other than Earth. Maybe it’s just bacteria on Mars, or something more advanced elsewhere in our solar system, a blatant signal from the beyond picked up by SETI, or hell, the aliens park a mother ship over NYC. That would be interesting, the generation that never asked “are we alone in the universe.”
Would love to hear about other folks’ ideas about what might constitute “the next generation.” 
Nope. Wikipedia is often wrong. The Boomers ended in 1954, as both the post-WWII and post_Korean War baby booms came to and end.
And I am calling quasi-bullshit on the article. Not because it doesn’t contain some true facts or a fairly good pov, definitely. I am accusing Beschizzle of being a Gen X-er himself, because his knowledge of those generational generalisms is far too detailed for anyone else to know (or much care) about.
But look - kids, and teens in particular, are, and always have been, a royal pita who cause their parents and grandparents much concern. It doesn’t even matter what the period culture is like, because that’s just part of the human experience. Kids rebel (or lag), parental units worry. It’s a thing.
Otherwise, though? Yes - the labels are somewhat valid and useful. For me, it was all about sex,drugs, and rock-n-roll wrecking my morals. On the upside? Thinking for yourself was highly valued, and the music produced was sublime. It scared the bejeezus out of those Depression babies who raise us, and for whom just having clothes off the rack and meal of their choice was considered absolute privilege. The Gen Xers were having a very different experience, often. In their rebellion, most failed and refused the social and political activism their parents espoused. They seemed less-directed, less-committed, more slacker…in that sense of the word. But - we are also living in a constantly-accelerating techno progression that does change how kids see the world around them! I said things in front of my own kids, and allowed them to say things that would have gotten me slapped into last year and grounded forever. But I had television. I wasn’t as trapped in my local community as the ‘rents had been. It’s standards didn’t tie me down. And the Gen Xers’, even less so, and the Millennials, even less than that. It’s not just a way of insulting people - it’s a way of describing more of of what they’re seeing. Like the fear of children being kept children, because they live with or near their parents! How very, very, Western/Nuclear Family! My Grandparents will lived together - because it took a lot of people to keep agricultural stuff running well. My parents didn’t - because urbanization and industrial jobs instead. Keeping your kids so near isn’t a ‘new’ thing - it’s a very old thing.
And just maybe, the Gen Xers are more prone to being more…cling-y(?), because they saw all the prices paid for our experimental indie ways and sky-high divorce rates. I’m always still semi-surprised at how many became so much more conservative than we’d perhaps wished, even though I could see why and mostly agree. And, because few of the mostly urban/suburban Millennials even know where the hell their food comes from. They think it comes from supermarkets, apparently. They’re cool - but way more tech-savvy, and usually way less survival-savvy, in some ways. They’ll figure it out, but I’ll always be slightly bugged that so many lack some basic survival skills. I can fish and raise chickens and crops and a gun is not a thing you saw on the internet in a news item. That doesn’t make me a superior human - just one who can get through more dire situations, should they arise. To worry that your offspring aren’t entirely self-sufficient is just basic mammal-thought. Cats and dogs tech their young to hunt…same reasons.
Anyway - no, everybody doesn’t fit in the generational bags perfectly. They never did. And the quickly-advancing tech influences are absolutely real things. But, if they don’t know anything about good music or art? That’s totally on you, dude!
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Yeah, arbitrary. But, 1695 was their start point. But don’t forget the first American citizens were born before the American Revolution. And American history and culture started before that.
I’m '78, and I feel more gen y/millenial than gen X. But I was a late burner as a kid, then very fast into new stuff as a teen. But it’s interesting being in the ‘space’ between these perceived generations. There’s definitely something to it.
More tomorrow at boing boing!
Interesting datapoint: cheap, low-end personal computers were abundant in the UK a few years earlier than in the US, for whatever reason, and I think this accounts for why British “late 70s births” are more likely to consider themselves millenial computer-born types than Americans, which see the millenial generation beginning in 1980 or thereabouts.
Thanks, Sir Clive!
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My degree was in sociology, so I didn’t really have much of a choice!
Generational labels are good for understanding the people who apply generational labels.
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Nice one, B.
Doesn’t directly answer…but I appreciate the slick anyway, lol.
Edited to retract: Did answer above, I just didn’t see it. Slick still approved and appreciated.
My daughter is eighteen, AND I WANT HER TO GET A JOB AND MOVE OUT SO HARD…
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Well, fuck.
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Epidemiologists know that there are cohort effects, as well as age effects. (Sure childhood environments are important, also. No one credible ever said two things can’t be true at the same time.)
Haha! You happen to be wrong in this case. From the US Census Bureau:
“The Baby Boom includes people born from mid-1946 to 1964. The Baby Boom
is distinguished by a dramatic increase in birth rates following World War II, and is one of the largest generations in U.S. history. For more information, see: Hogan, Perez, and Bell, 2008, Who (Really) Are the First Baby Boomers? In Joint Statistical Meetings Proceedings, Social Statistics Section, Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association, pp. 1009–1016.”
May I just be the first to say to you: Nope!
