Born in the early 80s? Which generation are you a part of?

These "generations" based on arbitrary groups of birth years are such utter horseshit. They have spawned a pop-sociology cottage industry of assigning characteristics to millions of people based on their "generation". Horoscopes are much more scientific than this nonsense.

You're an Oregon Trail Gen Xer, with all the more-or-less same formative experiences for navigating the world as those born in the 70s. Landlines, CDs, malls, broadcast TV, radio, etc., before the tech changeover that gave those born in the later 80s a completely different youth.

These news sites keep trying to make that term "The Silent Generation" happen. It's BS. No one calls them that.

R2 - that's hilarious. "Oregon Trail" Gen-X'er. I definitely remember playing that game in school on those ancient, lumbering PCs.

[quote]These "generations" based on arbitrary groups of birth years are such utter horseshit.

There's nothing wrong in theory with designating generations based on birth year. The problem is that everyone's becoming increasingly sloppy about it because they have no sense of history whatsoever or don't understand the logic behind the reason why historians started doing it in the first place.

For example, the Boomers were originally called that because they were part of the large "baby boom" after WW2. So, that designation makes perfectly good sense. But over time, people started deciding that anyone who was part of the 1960s Youthquake was a Boomer, when practically none of the people who created it were. Because of all this, millions of people who were in diapers or in grade school when the 1960s happened are getting credited for Woodstock, Summer of Love, British Invasion, etc., while the generation that was responsible for that is getting called"The Silent Generation."

"The Silent Generation" is another example of people ignorant of history trying to use this system of designating generations. The Great Depression happened between 1929 and 1945. Why not use that period to designate the people born in this era as "Depression Era Babies" or something that references that event? Nope. Because they idiots have no idea about The Great Depression or could be bothered trying to figure out what cultural impact they had, they're getting written off as "Silent."

I was born at the very end of December 1980. I'm technically Generation X but if I'd been born just a few hours later I'd be a Millennial. Confusing.

[quote]The Great Depression happened between 1929 and 1945.

No.

[quote]I'm technically Generation X but if I'd been born just a few hours later I'd be a Millennial. Confusing.

Be whatever you want to be.

[quote] I was born at the very end of December 1980. I'm technically Generation X but if I'd been born just a few hours later I'd be a Millennial. Confusing.

I'm a 1982 Millennial, and I sometimes tease my 1979-borne [Gen X] partner that he is from a different, older generation. :-P

Classic gen X here. I even moved to Europe the year before of the film “before sunrise”.

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

Born in early 1984, and I identify as being part of the Xennial generation. I'm too old for many traditional Millennial markers; for example, I graduated college before the great recession.

R5, initially the designation of Baby Boomer was purely a demographic description - there were a lot of babies born postwar. The problem is that these so-called "generational" descriptions have expanded to where they don't really have any meaning. What exactly is the purpose of dreaming up all of these "generations"? What information do they provide? What is their scientific validity? They mainly seem to provide fodder for endless click-bait articles drawing ridiculous conclusions based on birth years. I know kids with their Junior Sociologist kits really love this stuff, but I honestly see zero validity in any of it.

Now if you were to ask me where young millennial ends and Gen Z begins, I would have no clue, as they are indistinguishable to me.

Why do they keep changing the dates? So moronic. Every 18 years. That's all you need to know.

I thought that is referred to as Generation Y

Generation Y seems to have been mostly replaced with the term “millennial.” Post-millennial is also Generation Z. Interchangeable terms.

It's interesting that Gen Xers don't walk around saying "Look at me, I'm a Gen Xer" the way millennials constantly talk about being millennials.

That's because they are busy talking about millennials, R18.

So if there is a Gen X, Y, and Z, were Baby Boomers Generation W?

R19, true yeah, but even before there were millennials, Gen Xers were never preoccupied with being Gen Xers.

I disagree that 1945 and the early 60s belong in the same demographic. 40s post depression, WWII. 60s, television, space travel, Cold War. Totally different societal factors. 18 years is too large a sample.

I blame the boomers.

1983 here, so a millennial/Gen Y, although I’ve seen a couple articles arguing Gen X can stretch to 1984. I feel no closeness with Gen X. I fit in better with those born into the early 90s, so I conside myself a millennial I guess. There is also an overlap with Xennial; one can choose Xennial if one on the cusp doesn’t identify with either Gen X or Gen Y.

"I don't have a generation." "Then I think you should get one!"

Millennial, born in '89. I feel pretty much identified with my generation tbh.

I'm a millennial!

Can't wait for Generation Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

If you were born in the early 80s you are indeed a millennial. An older millennial, but a millennial nonetheless.

I'm unambiguously a GenX'er (1969), but I get pissed off when people talk about us like we're any less "digitally-native" than millennials.

Video games? My dad bought a Magnavox Odyssey before I was in kindergarten, a Coleco Telstar when I was in 2nd grade, and an Atari 2600 when I was in 5th grade. My parents got my brother a Colecovision for Christmas the year I was in fifth grade (keep reading, to see what I got).

Computers? My dad built a kit computer when I was in third grade, bought a TRS-80 Model a year later, got an Atari 800 when I was in fifth grade, bought me a Vic-20 for Christmas in 6th grade, and my dad & I *both* got Commodore 64s for Christmas when I was in 7th grade (for copy parties, I'd steal my dad's 1541... he rigged it up with a toggle switch from Radio Shack so I could easily change it from device #8 to device #9). I got an Amiga 1000 the summer before 9th grade, got an Amiga 2000 for Christmas in 11th grade, and upgraded it to a 68030 (GVP accelerator card) in 12th.

I wrote my first program when I was in fifth grade. I wrote my first 6502 assembly-language program when I was in sixth grade. I took German in high school because all the cool Amiga stuff came from Germany (frankly, American Amiga software mostly sucked... most of it was just warmed-over ports of PC versions).

Online? Bitch, pleaze. I was online at a younger age (courtesy of QuantumLink and GEnie) than most millennials would have even been allowed to TOUCH a modem without adult supervision -- 8th grade. In high school, I had two fun summer vacations spent using a cool service called PC Pursuit all night that allowed you to make unlimited calls to bulletin board systems in 25 cities (you'd call your local dialup number, connect to the city of choice, then call numbers that were local in that city as if you were IN that city).

Oh, and the Internet? I used "the Internet" for the first time in *1989*. Jealous, bitches?

Put another way, MY childhood was every bit as fucking digital as any millennial's... possibly MORE. Admittedly, there weren't a lot of kids my age with access to the hardware I casually took for granted... but we definitely existed.

Incidentally, for anyone who thinks I'm making up the part about PC Pursuit, Wikipedia mentions it in their article about GTE TeleNet

You have aspects of both, cuntard.

[quote]Put another way, MY childhood was every bit as fucking digital as any millennial's... possibly MORE. Admittedly, there weren't a lot of kids my age with access to the hardware I casually took for granted... but we definitely existed.

Bitch, please. You had a not-that-rare hobby. They have an entire way of life.

You're still " less digitally-native than millennials", whatever you had millennials had more and more advanced. Also that was maybe your particular case, but we as a generation are more digitally natives, is a fact idk why you'd be upset about it.

If you were born in '69 I very much doubt you did your papers for grade school on your computer, or looked up some definition on Wikipedia, you didn't chat with your friends after you came home from school, play games online with 3 other people or have social media. At what age did you have you opened your first blog or a Facebook account?. This are all things you had to do later in life, as an adult, therefore the term 'digital immigrant'. What you are is digitally savvy.

[quote] Prensky did not strictly define the digital native in his 2001 article, but it was later, arbitrarily, applied to [bold]children born after 1980[/bold] , because computer bulletin board systems and Usenet were already in use at the time.

˄ That was for r30

Actually, I WAS "doing papers" in grade school on my computer... my dad bought his first printer when I was in 4th grade. My first actual paper was in 5th grade... mainly, because I never actually HAD to do "papers" (at home or otherwise) before then.

I had a brief holy war with my 7th grade English teacher... she HATED dot-matrix printing & wouldn't let me turn in papers printed with one. My dad complained to the principal, who reamed her out. The next day, she grumpily told the class that were were allowed to start turning in printed papers.

Wikipedia? Facebook? Bitch, pleaze. Wikipedia *barely* existed for all but the youngest millennials as a school-age resource, and the majority of millennials were in college by the time Facebook & Twitter became household names.

There IS one big difference between my teenage online life and that of an average millennial... I could do pretty much anything I wanted, without parentally-imposed limits (as long as it didn't involve billing to a credit card). In contrast, the parents of millennials were obsessed with "protecting" their kids from "dangerous" online content. So in that sense, I was a very typical "free-range" GenX latchkey kid who got to spend most of his day "off the radar" of adult-imposed rules.

I would never assume someone older is automatically not adept at internet, tech, electronics, particularly because my dad (Boomer age) has always been an electronics and computer geek, fiddling around with gadgets and computers since I was a child. Think the dad from "Small Wonder," lol. He certainly has more interest and knowledge in all things digital than I ever will. I'm rather tech-averse.

Why is Gen X so much smaller in numbers than the Millennial generation, if they both span about the same number of years? Were heteros just not into having as many babies in the 70s as they were in the 80s?

More women going to college, more families having children later r37.

I’m Gen X. My early Boomer mom was the first of her family to go to college and both parents did graduate degrees, hence kids coming later.

I was born in 78, so definitely Gen X... but towards the end of it. I always felt I had more in common with those older than me, but there were definite cultural changes happening among those just a couple years younger than me.

So it’s hard for me to imagine that those born in 1980 or later have much in common with Gen X. They are definitely Millennials.

It makes sense,I'm a millennial born in the 80's and I share more with someone born in 96 than someone born in 77 even if the age gap is wider with a 22 yo kid....my parents had me 20 years after my brother, who is now 50,who has more in common with my 70+ years old parents than my 30something generation; I feel like I'm talking to my young father actually. On the other hand I have more in common with people in their early/mid 20's, as we use the same communication channels,we share the same technology and use it the same way, I also share my work space with people way younger than me and we faced the economical crisis together,we were effected the same way and had to deal with it the same way.

r37, Generation X is much smaller because there was a sort of baby bust in the middle of the 70s. If you look at birth rates, they dropped quite a bit between 73-76. It probably had something to do with more Boomer women entering the workforce and delaying pregnancy (until their late 20s or 30s in the 1980s), Roe vs. Wade in '73 making abortion safer and legal, and probably due to the after effects and casualties of the Vietnam War. I'm not an expert (obviously), but those are my assumptions. There were simply more babies born in the 50s/60s and 80s than there were in the 70s.

Oh, there go those stupid millennials again, painting a picture that Boomers and GenXers are so herpa derp about digital technology, when we were the ones who invented the whole thing and the only thing stupid millennials have ever contributed were social media platforms, which were basically rip offs of the platforms Boomers and GenXers created. That's all millennials can do. They can't create anything new, they can only ride off the backs of what the previous generation created.

Here is, off the top of my head, everything that both Boomers and GenXers invented:

the personal computer, and later the laptop, netbook and tablet and all the tech that came with it (USB, flash drives, graphic cards, etc.)

digital cameras, including the web cam and video conferencing

cell phones and later smartphone and apps

video games, including both on console and PC, and every single genre, including MMO, MMORPG, simulation, FPSes, and social (Second Life)

the internet and all the platforms and content that we now take for granted (search engines, web sites, blogs, social media, online streaming, video sharing and uploading, etc.)

all forms of internet and smartphone communication, such as email, instant messaging, texting, chat rooms, video conferencing, etc.

GPS and "smart" technology

all computer languages, including the ones that the entire internet is completely based on (HTML, java, javascript, CSS, ASP, etc.)

digital media (as in photo and audio--jpeg, gif, png, mp3)

digital streaming

360 panoramas

text to speech

wireless technology, Bluetooth

file sharing (P2P)

every single major website and platform, EXCEPT 4chan, Reddit (rip off of Digg), Facebook (rip off of MySpace), Instagram (rip off of Flickr) and all the other shitty millenium-created social media sites that have made the internet a worse place

The list goes on and on. The point being is that millennials like to beat this drum that Boomers and GenXers are so digitally behind or incompetent when it comes to digital technology because it shames and embarrasses them to know that they had absolutely nothing to do with creating any of it. It makes them feel better to write everyone off as being a pathetic "grandpa" and "grandma", when it was the grandpas and grandmas who invented everything in the first place.

You sound angry, R42. You should smoke a joint and get laid.

What you are not understanding is that millennials are digital natives because we were born in the so called 'digital era' not because we're all technical savvy or something.

r42 = Typical boomer

[quote] A digital native is an individual who was born after the widespread adoption of digital technology. The term digital native doesn't refer to a particular generation. Instead, it is a catch-all category for children who have grown up using technology like the Internet, computers and mobile devices. This exposure to technology in the early years is believed to give digital natives a greater familiarity withand understanding of technology than people who were born before it was widespread.

r8 - free to be

you and me!

R39 The great cuntess has spoken, fuck off.

[quote][R42] = Typical boomer

I'm not a Boomer, you dummy. I was born in 1973. Why do millennials think everyone in the world is a Boomer?

And you didn't get my point. The whole "digital native" garbage is just another tactic of millennials, in their typical snowflake way, of trying to make themselves feel smug and superior to older generations about something that isn't exceptional to them, in this case, digital technology.

And nothing about that term or the reason for coining it in the first place makes any sense. What makes millennials digital native because they were born into digital technology, as opposed to everyone else who'd been using this technology and developing it for far longer than they have? Boomers were the ones who were emailing each other and participating in newsgroups decades before millennials posted their first tweets; both Boomers and GenXers were fully participating in and developing digital and internet technology for as long. (As a GenXer, we used computers throughout the 1980s learning BASIC and later typed our papers using WordPerfect at computer labs in school.) But millennials want to snowflake out and coin this term "digital native" to imply that when it comes to this technology, they're in "their element" but everyone else is not. Everyone else is a "digital foreigner."

If millennials want to be special snowflakes and distinguish themselves as "digital anything", they should be called Digital CONSUMERISTS because they are the first generation to just passively consume all this digital technology without doing one damned thing to contribute to it in any meaningful way. Or maybe digital "EXCLUSIONISTS" in that they're the first generation to obsessively use digital technology at the exclusion of everything else. But digital natives? Don't make me laugh. If they were really "digital natives", they would be actively contributing to digital technology like the rest of us did, instead of passively waiting for someone else to do it.

r47 Oh yeah, digital native, the term coined by Mark Prensky, totally a millennial "trying to feel smug and superior to older generations"

And OMG you're dense, do a little of research and you'd find the answer to all your questions. But if it's so important to you, I'd give it to you, yes you are a digital native, you're special too!!

Also what is it with all the name calling "dummy", "snowflake", you're a grown ass dude, can't you argue without resorting to all that condescending bullshit?

Millennial!

R29, I hear you. I'm a GenXer, too (born in 1973). Digital and computer technology was part of our childhoods. I had computer classes at my shitty Catholic School in the 80s being taught code on a TRS-80. In high school, we had computer labs. We were taught both BASIC and computer graphics. And yes, like you, we had to type our papers on the computer at the lab using floppy discs and print them out. The late 80s was when the digital revolution was just getting underway; my freshman class was the first one to ever have a digital/computer course in computer graphics and videography.

The funny thing is that even though GenX was the first generation to be introduced to this technology as kids, the computer and digital world was completely the domain of middle-aged people because they were the ones that were developing it. Back then, ALL the computer and digital geeks were Boomers and older. Remember the show, Computer Chronicles? Below is an episode from 1985, where they're talking about modems and bulletin boards. Look at the age of everyone on that panel.

Millennials are stupidly trying to narrow the definition of "digital technology" to "Web 3.0" in order to mark themselves out as being "exceptional" to digital technology and everyone else as having lived in the Stone Age. Well, yeah, if we limited digital technology to all the shitty Web 3.0 social media apps that have come out within the past 10 years, they'd be right. But like everything else, they are dead wrong about any of this. They're not even close to being exceptionally digital savvy or "native". They're actually the least digital savvy because they're the first ones to not actually be contributing to this technology, whereas everyone else before them was doing everything they could to help transform it. They don't contribute because they don't know how.

R3 On Silent Generation. What do you mean "trying to make it happen"? That term has been in use for decades. I and my friends were using it 35 years ago. It's a perfectly apt expression.

[quote]And OMG you're dense, do a little of research and you'd find the answer to all your questions.

I don't research meaningless buzzwords. I research facts.

But you got me. Fair enough. But it's still a bullshit term trying to make millennials "exceptional" when they're not.

[quote]But if it's so important to you, I'd give it to you, yes you are a digital native, you're special too!!

Oh, brother, ROFLMAO!! What a typical millennial response!

This isn't about ME wanting to be called anything or being seen as "special". This is YOUR hangup as a millennial (to be seen as "special"), not OURS. (That's why you're interpreting my comments as wanting to also be seen as special, "too." You think everyone thinks like this.)

It's about the flagrant lack of respect that millennials keep showing older people in terms of digital and computers technology (the snarky comments, the condescending memes about how we're confused about everything) while at the same time puffing yourselves up as the ones who are the end and be all of of all of this stuff.

We INVENTED this technology, you Know It Alls. We SHAPED it. We used it longer than you did. We grew up with it longer than you've been using it. Yet you want to go around calling yourselves "digital natives" and then demean anyone over 40 as being oh, so out of touch about the internet, computers, smartphones, etc. But who the hell created all of this technology in the first place? And who the hell do you all think you are, anyway?

The latchkey thing is a Gen X phenomenon. Growing up 1970-85 meant much more independence as a child/teenager than Gen Y. Probably left us a little lost - but also more independent thinking and acting. It’s one thing I’m grateful about for being a Gen X-er. The downside was hitting puberty and starting sex in the midst of the plague - which left deep scars.

[quote]The downside was hitting puberty and starting sex in the midst of the plague - which left deep scars.

Scars are not the typical symptoms of HIV, r53.

r52

[quote] But if it's so important to you, I'd give it to you, yes you are a digital native, you're special too!!

The sarcasm was lost on you but ok..

What part you still don't understand, it doesn't matter if yours or previous generations invented the technologies we use, we are NATIVES because we were born with that technology. Is really not that hard to understand, man.

I doubt you even read the links I posted but here:

[quote] Digital immigrants may have invented the technologies that digital natives use but didn’t accurately anticipate how they would use them. For example, text messaging (SMS) was developed in the 1980s as an easy way for service engineers to quickly communicate regarding outages and replacement parts. It would have been unimaginable then that young people would chat and twitter using the service instead of talking on the phone. I

R55 don't waste your time with that loon, following his logic every engineer who conceived a car model is the best driver and whoever invented IG takes the best selfies because...they are the creators,the engineeeeers.

[quote] We INVENTED this technology, you Know It Alls. We SHAPED it

Yes, and then we were born and grew up with all that technology and more. You had to invent it, we already had it. And that's why they call us [bold]natives[/bold].

My biggest objection to "digital native" as a "millennial" concept is that it fails to get at the essence of the REAL difference between GenX'ers and Millennials who grew up "with computers".

If you were a GenX'er whose family had videogames & computers since early childhood, it generally meant three things:

1. You were at least slightly more intelligent than average... and probably persecuted for it by your classmates. Computers were a way of life that defined your identity & how you were treated by others.

2. Your family was at least comfortably middle-class, and at least one of your parents was probably college-educated & had a career that involved technology.

3. For the most part, your childhood computer-usage was largely unchaperoned... partly because the adults around you who WOULD have tried to rein you in didn't have the slightest fucking CLUE what you were up to. It was a very, very easy era to do all kinds of mischief as a teen hacker & get away with things that would probably get a kid who did the exact same thing NOW expelled from school and/or criminally-prosecuted. I mean, fuck, my middle school had a "computer club", and the main activity we engaged in at our monthly meetings was large-scale software piracy (with the teacher who sponsored the club being one of the biggest and most eager pirates in the entire group). Our club T-shirts actually had a skull & crossbones on it (5-1/4" floppy as the head, 3-1/2" floppy as the jaw, two Atari-style joysticks and cables as the crossbones). Just imagine trying to get THAT design past any middle-school principal today...

In metaphorical American History terms, genX kids with computers grew up in the Wild West gunslinging with adults who saw us as sidekicks. Millennial kids grew up in a neat, orderly Mormon settlement where the adults were unambiguously in charge (and mostly in control, or at least appearing to be).

r58 But that's the only difference though, if you as a gen Xer were what we'll now call 'digital native', that is grew up with computers/other technologies since childhood, you were the exception not the norm. Millennials as a generation were born and grew up with technology all around, the exception are those who weren't.

[quote]It’s one thing I’m grateful about for being a Gen X-er. The downside was hitting puberty and starting sex in the midst of the plague - which left deep scars.

Another downside was realizing you were gay during the raging homophobia of the Reagan years.

[quote]For the most part, your childhood computer-usage was largely unchaperoned... partly because the adults around you who WOULD have tried to rein you in didn't have the slightest fucking CLUE what you were up to.

This is very true. For a Gen-Xer, discovering the internet was like suddenly finding limitless freedom. Our parents and teachers had no fucking idea what it was about or what was possible.

All Millennials should bow down and thank this man for creating the internet.

LOL at the millennials clinging to this term, "digital native" as if their lives depended on it.

Anyone remember the Depression era generation demanding to be seen as radio and vacuum tube natives?

Anyone remember Boomers demanding to be seen as television natives?

Anyone remember GenX demanding to be seen as telecommunications natives?

Yeah, I don't remember that, either. No one walked around feeling special for being born into a technology because it's more important to contribute to a technology than it is to be born into it.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and do more "research" into this whole "digital native vs digital immigrants" nonsense. And what did I find? Exactly what I suspected when I first heard the term. The notion from the posters above that "digital native" is an innocuous term that simply means someone born into digital technology is FALSE. There is the underlying sentiment that those who were born into it are more digital savvy while those who weren't are "slower" and "less adaptive."

Here is a quote from an article:

[quote]The label attached to those born during or after the digital age are the digital natives. They have always lived in a world of digital technologies. We think of them as the whiz kids with programming, the ones always attached to a cellphone or other device, and the ones who are younger by definition.

[quote]By contrast, the digital immigrants are those who have slowly adapted to web surfing, emailing, texting and the instant world of social media and on demand entertainment. In the education world, you can have a mix of immigrants and natives and it may seem that a generation gap exists. But as more and more immigrants immerse themselves in the digital world, the gap is closing, and perhaps disappearing.

There you are, straight from the horse's mouth. Even though GenX and Boomers were the first ones to use cellphones, web surf, code their own websites, email, text, surf MySpace and enjoy on demand entertainment, according to this article, we're the opposite. We are the ones who've been "slowly adapting" to all this technology. The same technology we invented, LOLOLOL!!!!

Anyone who is exposed to something since birth is naturally going to be proficient at it... whether it’s a certain technology or a language.

It doesn’t mean that older people who were exposed to it later in life can’t become just as proficient.

But you have to admit, there are definitely Boomers and Xers out there who struggle somewhat with technology. There are NO millennials ( in developed nations) who are uncomfortable with it. It’s just reality.

[quote]We are the ones who've been "slowly adapting" to all this technology. The same technology we invented, LOLOLOL!!!!

Because that is how things work, the younger generation embraces new technology more.

This data is a little old now, but that is why it perfectly proves the point. Look at smartphone usage, it directly correlates with age with the older you are the least likely you are to use a smartphone.

On a generational scale, the younger generations are more adept with the technology of the time. So yes, millennials are "digital natives". As a whole the generation started using the internet from an early age and more versed in it than the generations before them.

By Prensky's arbitrary and silly definition, Linus Torvalds & Steve Wozniak are both "digital immigrants".

Let that sink in for a moment.

IMHO, the majority of people who enthusiastically embrace the native/immigrant meme are the GenX'ers who WEREN'T into computers while growing up... the ones my friends & I made fun of in high school when they asked the teacher where the "Any" key was :-D

Trust me... there are PLENTY of Millennials who are utterly, utterly, COMPLETELY paralyzed when their computer or phone stops working as expected. I shouldn't make too much fun of them, though... I'm the one who usually buys their old, "broken" laptop or phone for a pittance & "fixes" it by reinstalling Windows or doing a factory reset before flipping it on eBay. The very IDEA that someone who can't tell the fucking difference between a micro USB connector and a lightning connector deserves to be generationally-regarded as somehow more "comfortable with technology" than someone who can diagram & label the pins on an IEEE-1394a cable by function is just laughable.

Fact: GenX middle/high school kids were making fun of dumb classmates who couldn't find the "any" key 20 years before "meme" even HAD an actual name.

[quote]But you have to admit, there are definitely Boomers and Xers out there who struggle somewhat with technology. There are NO millennials ( in developed nations) who are uncomfortable with it. It’s just reality.

Maybe Boomers sure- though I grew up with a Boomer dad who was a software designer so it was always a thing in our household. But fellow Gen Xers “struggling” with technology? Nah. Not sure where that observation comes from.

The point a few posts back about Gen X latchkey kids, independence, and being unsupervised is spot on. The early 80s was when child abduction and murder cases suddenly became national, not local, news: Adam Walsh, Johnny Gosch, Etan Patz. The whole kids on milk cartons and “stranger danger” phenomena really changed things.

US boomers are greedy motherfuckers.

R47 Millennials are quite possibly the lamest, most fucked up generation. They somehow think they are so special and unique when they absolutely are nothing of the sort. I am a Gen Xer and have always loathed them. Some of them are smart and superior as chance would dictate but not many of them. I would definitely say they are very ADD or Aspie in the way they relate or communicate. They only want to chat through social media or texting. So meeting in person is impossible. And if you did they would not be able to stay off their fucking phones.

Some Baby Boomers and Gen Xers ITT:

A lot of you need to read this: 5 MYTHS ABOUT MILLENNIALS THAT BOOMERS AND GEN XERS NEED TO LET GO

[quote] So who raised Millennials to be the way they are? Baby Boomers! You’ve raised your kids to be confident adults who know how amazing they are. You’ve encouraged them to express their feelings, to follow their passion, and to speak up and speak out – even with those more senior to them. If they don’t like the grade they received on a midterm, they’ve been encouraged to question their teachers. And now they have entered the world of work, and Baby Boomers are mystified by Millennial behavior?

[quote] Millennials have been raised with a new set of rules (some might say “no rules”), without traditional boundaries, resulting in a generation of young adults who are extremely independent in their thinking, and have little interest in honoring the past or preserving the “respect your elders” meme that we grew up on.

[quote] Millennials, on the other hand, grew up in a very different and more complex world of helicopter parents, cell phones, and continuous connectivity. They had coordinated and supervised “play dates,” were driven to soccer practice and dance lessons, and Mom and Dad micromanaged everything like personal assistants to their wunderkinds. This created a shift in the role of parenting; from authority figure to friend and adviser…and chauffeur. In brief, parents became peers to Millennials.

[quote] On top of shifting parenting roles, Millennials grew up looking at multiple screens and doing multiple things at the same time. They learned to work in bursts. To work smarter, not harder. To binge in order to meet deadlines. And to not strive for perfection, but for happiness. In the way that we crammed for midterms and finals while in college, Millennials have been doing things this way their entire life…and continue this way of being at work. It’s gotten them this far. And, regardless, they don’t know any other way.

Interesting read. Full thing in the link

[quote] I am a Gen Xer and have always loathed

Jesus Christ, is there anything or anyone who Gen X doesn’t loathe? Those bitter damn fucks have easily overtaken Baby Boomers in the angry, bitter old hag category. Boomers are actually much more laidback than they are. Look at all the hags getting caught on social media misbehaving like total cunts - Gen Xers - men and women in their 40s/early 50s!

We even loathe our former Gen-X icons like Winona Ryder.

R37, the low birth rates of Gen Xers are connected with the hyperinflation globally from the mid-60s through the 70s.

Baby Boomer here, but actually Generation X in dog years.

It’s nice that the pew center assigns those years but they contradict many other conventions for assigning generational lines, and the pew center doesn’t get to decide.

For instance, I was born in 1963, a gap period between boomers and gen x. Several generation conventions call me gen x, but others boomer. I can say I have exactly zero to do with the boomer mentality and fit perfectly into gen x, no matter what pew has to say.

R77... there will always be people around the border years that feel they fit more closely with one group rather than the other. Nothing wrong with that... identify as the generation that most fits you.

Who knew some DLers would get so triggered by the obscure term 'digital native?'

All of the social media and cellphone stuff came after I had already turned 18 years old. I certainly don't feel like these are things I came of age with, and for that I am grateful. I imagine social media during high school to be torture.

R79, posters here get triggered by potlucks and lasagna...

[quote]LOL at the millennials clinging to this term, "digital native" as if their lives depended on it.

I think it's just the one guy here, Mary. Simmah down now.

Born in 1975. So I guess that makes me Generation X. I absolutely loved growing up in the 80's Such a fun, carefree time. I'd do it all over if I could.

I was born in 1982 and feel I have stuff in common with both Millennial and gen xers.

R84, there’s a term for people born in that era: Xennials. And it makes sense: we grew up with video games and computer, but the internet wasn’t in widespread use before adulthood. Someone probably posted this earlier, but I had to skip the endless umbrage over who is considered a digital native.

I empathize with their frustration, R73. It isn't easy always being totally forgotten, overlooked, and ignored.

Knowing computers in the 80s and having social life defined by social media apps in the 00s are extremely different views of the world. At risk of sitting the “digital native” obsessives. As a Gen Xer, I do t pretend to live in the same world as a millennial who grew up watching Will and Grace and had a full internet life.

Born in 83. I didn't get my first computer until 94 although I had friends with older siblings who had one in 92. I didn't really give up VHS tapes until 2000 or so. There were no computers in my high school but they were starting to appear when I started going to college. I grew up with Nintendo but had no idea what a Commodore 64 or Atari was or why people would even care about it. If any one from my generation says they got into computing in the 80s then they are full of shit. Kids from that era had no used for those things. Even today, I find little kids who play with their smartphones weird.

R50 makes several good points. Xenials, or people born in the early 80s, are among the least tech savvy which is odd as they are lumped in with millenials. I really don't mind though since my friends and I prioritized real life experiences and found joy in simple things. When we were in high school, we treated the internet like a library and not something that replaced human interaction.

[quote] There IS one big difference between my teenage online life and that of an average millennial... I could do pretty much anything I wanted, without parentally-imposed limits

I will argue that most children and teens of the 90s were still left mostly to their own devices, though probably not as much as children of the 80s. Adults were caught up in their own dramas and whatever trashy tabloid news was on the TV (Tonya Harding. OJ). I think it was Columbine that produced the death-knell to child/teens navigating things for themselves. All of a sudden parents became very concerned and overly involved in their child's life.

Being born in the early eighties, I can say that Disney Afternoon, Nickelodeon, Nintendo, Sega, TGIF, and grunge era MTV (back when MTV still played music videos and reality tv hadn't reached its saturation point) are what defined my childhood. Yes, AOL had chatrooms back then but associating or meeting people from the internet was considered extremely taboo up until 98. When Myspace blew up in 2004, that pretty much fucked up everything and led to where we are now.

The idea of billions of people across the globe acting and thinking completely alike, based on age, is the height of stupidity.

[quote] [R47] Millennials are quite possibly the lamest, most fucked up generation. They somehow think they are so special and unique when they absolutely are nothing of the sort. I am a Gen Xer and have always loathed them.

Gen X will [italic] never [/italic] be president.

I will gladly continue voting for Baby Boomer presidents just to trigger them, until we flip the carpet right out from underneath them.

Fortunately, nobody is saying that billions of people across the globe act and think completely alike based on age, R92. Even the most fervent believers in just how influential generational experiences can be would never claim anything so absurd. So why would you?

[quote] Fortunately, nobody is saying that billions of people across the globe act and think completely alike based on age

Datalounge believes this, R94.

Just saying a lot of Gen Xers have hopped on the millennial trend of being instagramhos and showing nearly naked pics of themselves.

Gen X did not "hop on the train" of being vapid, attention-seeking Hos, R96. They wrote the very first volume on it with Real World and all those early reality TV shows. Only now are they trying to hide that part of themselves from their kids I guess.

The human race, op.

Is not about acting or thinking alike because of age r92, is having to face the same problems, living under the same circumstances of an era that the previous generation did not, etc. And don't underestimate globalization especially bcs of internet, I'm a non american millennial and believe when I tell you me and my generation in my country (Argentina) fit the characteristics all the same.

Just on the top of my head: all the stuff related to technology, the ultra PC culture, SJWs, the mentality change about work, sexuality, etc. Same with past generations apparently, we also have to face those same old farts telling us about how better they did it at our age, or how everything is a mess now because of us.

Oh Papa Tooney, we've got a Looney!

It is a generational problem. People are interacting less in person and not developing essential social skills that would help them get by in life. They don't place as much value on actual experiences. They spent countless hours consuming entertainment and spent a lot of their communication online. There's also far less career stability today then there was then but those who came up in this era thinks that the way it's always been because they don't know any better. I'd happily give up all the technological innovation from the last 15-20 years if it means we can go back to what life was like back then.

How many buttons did you push growing up?

Now?

It’s sad to watch so many people get worked up over fake groupings created by marketing executives, not historians or anthropologists, to sell you crap in a targeted way.

I was born in the mid 70s and am categorized as X, but I don’t feel any loyalty or even connection to that tribe.

I also agree with those upthread who noticed how everyone who enthusiastically identifies as ‘Gen X’ is a massive cunt, always angry and bitter and boring as fuck.

If I didn’t have peers, colleagues, and of course siblings and cousins who were also born in the 70s and don’t care about the X label, I would assume ‘Gen X’ to be nothing more than a smattering of rancid, toxic emotional vampires.

I was born in 1982. I consider myself an "Xennial." I was a teenager into a lot of Gen X stuff when it was still popular.

Millennial born 83. I have always felt like I am a baby gen x since I liked a lot of pop cultural reference from the 80s and 90s. Hate post millennial generation to the extent I begin to sound like an old school middle-aged woman. I dislike most of their pop culture stuffs especially the need to live ones life on social media. It took me a while to sign up for Instagram. I have witnessed a lot of young people with very limited social skills to the extent one might think they have mild autism. If they are not on their phone they have no idea how to talk to strangers.