The Millennial Generation dates just seem so wide open…82 to 2004?
I don’t know what the right date would be but 2004 seems like a random year.
9/11 has to fit in there somewhere it would seem.
I agree. I think Strauss-Howe really whiffed when it came to picking an end date. Personally, 1999 seems like a good enddate to me.
I could see that.
Short answer: in my humble opinion, yes.
Long answer: my rant on the generations that I frequently go off on when I see journalists write things they clearly know nothing about.
Ever notice how which years of birth belong to which generation seems to constantly shift, especially as it concerns Generation Y, which begins in 1979 or maybe 1980 or maybe 1982 or maybe 1984 or whatever arbitrary year some writer has picked for the sake of current discussion (or alternatively, “the under 25s” which therefore changes every single year). This is because the generations as they have been popularized are purely products of marketing companies to cater to their latest cashed-up demographic.
Back in the early-mid '90s, when books on the different generations first became popular (mostly for sociological studies, not marketing demographics), the later generations (I will ignore the pre-war generation here, often known as the Builders, as the length of their generation tends to remain stable) were as follows:
Born 1946-1964 Baby Boomers
Born 1965-1983 Baby Busters (because declining birth rates created a baby “bust” as opposed to a “boom” as had happened after the war)
Anyone born after 1983 wasn’t yet old enough to count in terms of purchasing power so they were the unnamed generation of the future that weren’t worth writing books about yet.
Then, someone decided Generation X was a brilliant name for this Buster generation (I believe the name was borrowed from some guy’s novel) and Pepsi thought it was awesome so they could start the Generation NeXt ad campaign to get all these young things drinking Pepsi, and the name caught on. Naturally, once the younger, unnamed generation that followed them got old enough to buy stuff, they in turn became Generation Y. (And now, of course, the marketing companies have moved on to Generation Z as well.)
The most common divisions I’ve seen are something more or less like this:
Baby Boomers 1946-1964
Generation X 1965-1979
Generation Y 1980-? (varies enormously from 1992 all the way to 2000, depending on whom you ask)
You may also observe this isn’t even consistent. How can one generation last for 18 years and the next for only 14 years? The argument, of course, is that it’s not a matter of chronological generations so much as cultural generations - in other words, the events and pop culture of the time that influenced that particular generation. But here they fall short again. Life insurance, investment and tourist companies targeting the Boomer generation often attempt to draw their demographic in with nostalgic images of Beatlemania, Woodstock, and everything else in that turbulent period of the mid-late '60s that we associate with the Boomers. Now, correct me if my math is wrong, but what does this have to do with a “Boomer” born in 1964 who was in the cradle when the Beatlemania took off and in kindergarten when the older Boomers were off smoking dope in a field??
So, in the humble opinion of someone with an interest in history and zero interest in marketing, here’s how I define the generations:
Each generation lasts for roughly 20 years. However, to take into account that so much happens culturally within just a couple of decades, each generation then needs to be split up. I have chosen the approximate half-way mark as this point, being around 10 years into a generation. While still ultimately part of the same major generation, the two subsections of a generation experienced different things while growing up, essentially corresponding to the two decades in which someone did most of his or her growing up.
The first cohort of a generation were old enough to properly experience the things we associate with that generation. The second cohort is a cusp generation, whose members often feel as though they are caught in between the generation before and after without fully fitting into either (trust me, if you are one of these people, as I am, you will understand the feeling exactly). They are the people who were a little late to the party for one generation, and a little early for the next. As a result, they may display characteristics of either or both generations or even waver between them at times.
Baby Boomers (c. 1946 - c. 1965)
-
Early Cohort: c. 1946 - c. 1955 (grew up in the '50s and '60s)
The “typical” Boomers -
Later Cohort c. 1956 - c. 1965 (grew up in the '60s and '70s)
The cusp Boomers, sometimes called Generation Jones
Generation X (c. 1966 - c. 1985)
-
Early Cohort: c. 1966 - c. 1975 (grew up in the '70s and '80s)
The “typical” Xers -
Later Cohort: c. 1976 - c. 1985 (grew up in the '80s and '90s)
The cusp Xers, sometimes called Generation XY
Generation Y (c. 1986 - c. 2005)
-
Early Cohort: c. 1986 - c. 1995 (grew up in the '90s and '00s)
The “typical” Ys -
Later Cohort: c. 1996 - c. 2005) (grew up in the '00s and '10s)
The cusp Ys, who are too young to have been endowed with any other names yet
The key to understanding this model is that what really matters is the two decades in which you largely grew up. This is why years ending in a 6 become the dividing line - for example, someone born in 1956 was not really old enough during the '50s to have been heavily influenced by it, whereas someone born in the early '50s was around for long enough to have experienced some formative influences during that decade. But as everyone is different, I use circa for the dates, so if you are within a year or two of one of the dividing dates, you may fit into either category depending on your personal experience.
Whilst agreeing nearly wholeheartedly with the rest of your post, you know journalists write about things they clearly know nothing about because their editors make them, right? They (journalists) don’t like the situation either and are (generally) doing the best with what little resources are available to them.
Arbitrariness is not the point. Most of the units of time we use have a reasonably precisely, sometimes very precisely, defined length, and many also have well defined start and end times. Neither of these is true of a “generation”. Depending on one’s rhetorical purposes of the moment, generations can be treated as lasting anything from about 20 to about 50 years, and can be said to begin and end at any time you like. It is nonsense to expect any definite answers (for people born more than about a year apart) about who belongs to which. By contrast, we can usually give quite definite answers about the year, month, day, and possibly even minute or second that someone was born (or died or whatever). The issues are completely different.
All talk of generations (except, sometimes perhaps, within an individual family) inherently consists of extremely vague and wooly (and usually very subjective) generalizations, and in most cases it would probably be better left unsaid. No argument that relies on the notion can be sound, and many of them are misleading, often intentionally. I don’t trust people who make a big deal of generations and their differences. You shouldn’t either.
Just pick one, its ambiguous anyways as there is no concensus on when Gens X or Y begin and end. I too was born in '84 and have been labeled as both. I know I am closer in ideology to my gf born in '77 than I was the typical millineal born in '92. If a generation is 20 years it all depends on when we choose the end of the baby boom to be. Plus, like most Xers I had Baby Boom era parents, NOT early X’er parents, which would have to be the case to be a generation behind them. In the end, it depends where your parents fall to determine where you fit in the uneven generational pantheon.
These are all pretty American-centric divisions. Here, those would both be members of the “Apartheid” generation, and the switchover only happens in the 90s, to the post-Apartheid generation (the “Born Frees”)
…ETA: Oh dear, it appears I alredy said most of waht I just typed last year, just three posts up. I have removed most of it now I realized. …
As a general rule, though, anyone who says anything of any real substance about generations, their characteristics or their dates, is talking bollocks, and may well be trying to deceive you, or persuade you of something that is against your interests.
Since you appear to be in reasonable agreement with my comments in your post above, I would add the amusing task for anyone to engage in, which is to decide for yourself “what defines the year I was born?” to your own satisfaction.
In my case, a December person, I prefer to think of my year as being centered on December (the 4th if you must know) and expanding six month in both directions. That is, June 1941 - June, 1942. That “logic” can be applied to longer stretches of time, including generations. Your opinion may vary and thus we have salt and pepper. 
FWIW, in their book 13th Gen Strauss and Howe also split Generation X (which they referred to as the 13th Generation) into older and younger Xers (13ers). I don’t remember if they gave specific years for these two groups, but they called the former the “Atari wave” and the latter the “Nintendo wave” which I think works pretty well.
No, I think people born in the 80s have more in common with people born in the 90s, than they do with 40 year olds.
Currently, someone born in the 80s can be 34 or 24, it’s a big enough gap to make your statement likely inaccurate.
In high school or before, I would have said “Of course not”. People 10 years older than me were ancient.
Now that I’m 31 and have several ~40 year old friends, of course we’re in the same generation. I think the age of the individual makes a difference.
I’ll go along with you on this, perspective is relative in matters like this.
I am one of the early Gen Xers, and I certainly don’t identify with the baby boomers and all their nostalgic swill about the 1950s or worse, their stupid hippie revolution.
I was too young to enjoy the disco era, and although I came of age in the MTV era of the early 80s, I never felt like I clicked with my peer group.
I identify more strongly with the 1990s when I was in my late 20s and early 30s.
Now that I’m fast approaching 50, my concept of time seems to be expanding at frightening rate.
I still listen to Top 40 radio, not in a feeble attempt to stay relevant, but I’ve always used pop music as way to mark time.
If Gen Xers are supposed to feel like they don’t fit in, and that they shun sentimentality, I’m definitely a Gen Xer.