Thirtysomethings: an age group with no generational affiliation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been noticing that people are continuing to use “Millennials” as, roughly, synonymous with “people of college age or recently graduated”. This is really annoying to me, because it was the same thing I remember happening with Generation X. In the early Nineties, when that term started being used, it referred to that same age range, or maybe a little broader (say, 16-29, so people born in the mid-'60s through the mid-'70s).

A decade later, around Y2K, or even a little later, the media were still using “GenX” to refer to twentysomethings, but by that time this meant that the GenXers born in the 1960s were no longer being included, yet they clearly weren’t Boomers, so they were “generationless” at that point. I started to wonder if people were just going to use “Generation X” as a synonym for “twentysomething” until the end of time.

But no, they finally decided that GenXers could be over 30 after all, though I think they only decided that once almost all of them were over thirty and they had a new moniker for the twentysomething generation. But as I say, this is sand shifting under our cultural feet once again. It appears that we may see a recurring pattern that the majority of the time, people who are in their thirties (early thirties especially) will not be classified as belonging to any generation, which is ridiculous since that tends to be a very creative, productive, and eventful time in people’s lifespans. (It’s the one my wife is in now, and the one I left not long ago.)

2

I think they’re called “runners”. Hey, don’t trust anyone over 30.

One of my favorite songs when I turned 30 was “Lather” by Jefferson Airplane:

3

I thought you were referring to Logan’s Run. (Or maybe you were doing that too?)

4

Yes, that’s a Logan’s Run term sometimes applied to 30-somethings.

5

I’m 32 years old. I’m not a Gen-Xer, and I sure as hell ain’t no “millennial”.

If you want to put me in a group, call me part of Generation Y.

6

The definition I’ve heard for a millennial is someone who was born in the previous millennium but didn’t become an adult until this millennium. 2015+18-33=2001, so you just barely qualify, unless you haven’t had your birthday yet.

Though I doubt you have much in common with anyone with 16 year olds (born in 1999). There’s a big difference between those of us who grew up when the Internet was just starting to be popular and when it was a done thing.

7

I became 18 in December of 2000, which, as Alex Trebek will remind you, was part of the previous millennium. :smiley:

8

Those are supposed to be two names for the same generation. Five or ten years ago you definitely would have been considered a millennial, and five or ten years from now you will be again, like it or not.

9

My personal definition of a millennial is “does not clearly remember 9/11 happening”. That would place their birth year around 1995 and make them around 20 today. Similarly, my personal definition of a Gen Y is “does not clearly remember the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

Gen Y grew up with a childhood never knowing war, Millennials grew up never knowing peace.

10

Since new people are born and die every day and “generations” are a made-up construct with no universally agreed-upon definition, does it really matter?

11

Shalmanese, are you saying GenY and Millennials are two consecutive generations, with Millennials essentially being “GenZ”?

Rigamarole, you could say the same for a lot of things. “Tall/short”; “strong/weak”; “young/middle-aged/old”; “child/adolescent/adult”. Doesn’t mean those aren’t valid descriptive categories to help make sense of the world.

12

I’m a part of the Blank Generation, 'cause I can take it or leave it each time…

I feel more like a part of the Silent Generation, because I eat on the run so often. My life is a movable feast. Or does that mean I’m in the Lost Generation, because I can’t find a place to sit? Maybe I’m really in search of lost time.

Getting back on the topic…

Generations are indeed arbitrary. So are political parties. Neither concept can be an absolute predictor of anything except age, and then only if you define them down pretty tightly. Of course, if you define them down tightly as regards time, you lose definition as regards attitudes and perhaps even life experiences, and vice-versa. It seems there’s an inherent uncertainty here.

However, that doesn’t mean they’re completely worthless. Knowing when someone was born gives you conversation starters if nothing else. Plus, it gives everyone the freedom to define these things as they choose, with no definitions being inherently worse or better than any others.

So here are mine. I live in America. Other countries have different generations. Strauss and Howe might even be smart enough to realize that.

[ul]
[li]Boomers were born in the 1940s-1950s such that they either had a draft card or knew guys their age who did. As far as I’m concerned, being a Boomer is defined by being part of the last generation for which Selective Service Registration really and truly meant something, and I don’t mean eligibility for Federal student aid and loan programs. The draft ended in 1973, so the youngest Boomer was born in 1955.[/li][li]Generation X therefore doesn’t immediately follow the Baby Boomer generation. 1956 is too old to have grown up in a world defined by computers and the later Cold War. The Apple II, Commodore 64, and TRS-80 all came out in 1977. Twelve is the Age Of Wonder. Therefore, the earliest Xers were born in 1965, which is a nice, round number. They achieved something like political consciousness after Watergate and circa Ronald Reagan and The Day After. WarGames is, therefore, the Ultimate Xer Film.[/li][li]Generation Y is as much of a generation as anything, and directly follows Generation X because why not. According to information and belief, 1993 was Year Zero for the inflection point of the growth of the Web and, therefore, the Internet as we know it. Applying the same rule as above, the first Yers were born in 1981 which sounds about right: Even the oldest wouldn’t have had much direct experience with the Cold War, but they would all have grown up in a world where computers and even computer networks were increasingly passe and VCRs and cable TV existed, both of which reshaped how people approached old films and prior cultural artifacts in general. (Basically: We can buy and/or rent old stuff! We can have a longer cultural memory!) Cable was seen as the Boogeyman Of The Age, but VCRs would be a better predictor of the future, because…[/li][li]Millennials are currently defined by not remembering 9/11 but they will be defined by not remembering television. The medium, not the band. They have a better chance of being interested in the band, frankly: The defining feature of their cultural lives will be No Schedules. Appointment media will always be as weird to them as it’s becoming to me, now, in my thirties. This Terrible New Cultural Degeneration will be marked by a reversion to how recorded media was consumed at pretty much every point from the invention of the modern printing press to the invention of radio which could carry sounds beyond Morse code. Isn’t it horrible to be able to get what you want when you want it, as opposed to being taught to patiently wait for the local media company to give it to you on their schedule? Anyway, permanent memories don’t form much before age three, so the oldest Millennials were born in 1998.[/li][/ul]

13

I don’t agree with that. I do acknowledge that the definitions are fuzzy, but I don’t think it’s just “anything goes” with no definitions being any better than any others. And I have to admit I find some of yours to be…different.

A decade’s worth of people (currently in their fifties) having no generation at all? The late '50s was the peak of the fertility boom in the U.S., so you are (a) leaving a ton of people out of your definitions and (b) refusing to include among “Baby Boomers” the people born when babies were, well, most booming!

And then “the oldest Millennials were born in 1998”. But this is in total opposition to how the term has been used in popular culture and the media. Take for instance this story that aired on 60 Minutes (the exemplar non pareil of mass, mainstream news media) in 2007:

Now, as I say, a news story today probably wouldn’t define them as being born as early as 1980, but it would probably be more like 1985-2000. Five years from now, they might be defined as “born in the '90s”. Ten or fifteen years from now, I’d bet anything the definition will retroactively add those born in the '80s again, and it will be 1980-2000 and stay that way more or less permanently.

14

False on the last two. Millennials and Gen Y are considered to be the same. I know people resist this, but this is the case. Gen X are not the ones who graduated with large amounts of debt, Millennials are. Millennials are the ones that had to move back to the homes of their parents after graduation.

I agree there is a new generation appearing, but they are post-Millennial.

Frankly, I see this because people don’t want to accept that, as all generations go, Millennials DO grow up, so they have been using the term “Millennial” to refer to someone college-aged or just out of college for the last freaking decade. Well guess what? That person you called a Millennial in 2005 is now a young 30 something to late 20 something, possibly married and/or reproducing.

The term refers to those who turned around and became adults (and thus buyers on their own) around the change of the millennium.

I’m a proud Millennial, on the older age of the scale (early 80s). I sure as hell share more traits with my cousin ten years younger (and firmly Millennial) than with my cousin 7 years older (firmly Gen X).

15

Precisely. This is my thesis exactly. And as I say, they did the same damn thing with Generation X, as you should probably remember–because around the time you graduated from high school, they were briefly moving your age cohort into that generation before the snap back a decade or so ago.

If this is an accurate explanation of the origin of the term, it must refer to the leading edge of the generation, because kids born in the early '90s have always been called Millennials, and most likely always will be (it seems like it’s only the people born in the first half of a generation that get left in limbo in their thirties).

16

Technically speaking, I’m on the front edge of Millenials, by the definition I’ve heard that it’s anyone that would turn 18 in 2000 or later, and I turned 18 in 2000. But frankly, I see all of these broad generational things as utterly pointless. The youngest Babyboomers have little in common with the oldest, ditto with GenX. I think Millenials are even worse in this regard because the massive change in technology and social media has completely changed how people even 5-6 years younger than me relate to each other. And by the same token, I feel generally unrelated to people more than 5-6 years older than me for similar reason. So, really, the very late 20s and early to mid 30s seem like we don’t meaningfully fit in either generation.

Consider that I don’t remember a time in my life when computers and video games and cable weren’t a thing. The NES came out when I was 3, but we had had an Atari before that. We also had a home PC by the time I was old enough to use one. This makes me, as I’ve heard it called, a “digital native”. This just isn’t true of any but the very youngest GenXers. Moreso, I came of age at the same time that the internet did. I, and most of my friends, were online in our early teens, and so we had this whole new way of communicating, email, instant message, message boards, personal webpages, etc. that hadn’t existed just a few years before.

But now compare the same age group to the Millenials. Go just a half dozen years younger, and the same way I had NES and basic computers, they had internet. When they were in high school, they had cell phones, MySpace or even Facebook, and other social media. Chances are, even though they were alive during 9/11, if they were in middle school or whatever, the impact that it had on the world is largely lost on them.

In short, it just seems like there was a quantum shift in the way the world works particularly in how it’s connected where people around my age came of age during that shift, yet everyone older came of age before, and everyone younger came of age after. In an odd way, it makes it so I can relate with both groups, because I have some familiarity with both worlds, but it also means that yes, I can see a distinct difference between these two generations, but those of us on the line just don’t fit in either. And yet, still, I know plenty who are a fair amount older than me who have been able to adjust with the times just fine, and some a fair amount younger who still just don’t get the new paradigm.

17

People on the borders are always going to be an ill fit. But you may be right that the quick pace of technology is making generations shorter now.

I would just like to see whatever labels are applied be consistent from when a group is in their teens and twenties to when they are in their thirties, and then forties and beyond.

18

So let me see if I have this right.

Boomer = 1945 - 1965
Gen X = 1965 - 1982
Millennial = 1982 - 2000
Post-Millennial = 2000 -

Those are birth years, and until we passed 2005 Millennials were previously referred to as Gen Y.

19

I guess technically I’m a millennial, but my mental image of one is a loser still living with Mom and Dad that spends their days sucking up free wi-fi at Starbucks.

20

The media can do whatever they want, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone currently aged 29-35 (b. 1980-1986) who comfortably identifies as a millenial. That group remembers a time when they didn’t have the internet, probably didn’t have a cell phone until college, clearly remembers a pre-9/11 world, and basically identifies in a different way from millenials on a lot of the defining cultural issues. The economic challenge wasn’t $200K in student debt (most have some, but we were on the early side of the ridiculous-tuition-growth-curve), it was going through the financial crisis in the formative years of our careers (with many losing jobs and/or having their earnings throughout their 20s and 30s crippled as a result).

You know how whenever people are talking about the boomers, and someone brings up the “1946-1964” definition, and then a bunch of people born in the early '60s jump up to say they had a fundamentally different cultural experience and they shouldn’t be counted as boomers? “Early millenials” are the same kind of thing.