#Gen Z | Millennial | Zillennial

[xtruss]

Gen Z, Millennial, Zillennial? Find Your Generation — And What It Means — By Year

— By Stephen J. Beard and Veronica Bravo | October 08, 2024

Generation breakdown Veronica Bravo, Getty Images

Where Were You When The Space Shuttle Challenger Exploded?

The answer to that question is just one example of how generations identify with a shared experience. Baby boomers may have watched from a break room at the office or heard about it on the radio. Many Generation X kids sat in a classroom and watched live on television as the first space-bound teacher, 36-year-old Christa McAuliffe, perished with six fellow astronauts. The earliest millennials may have witnessed this moment, too, but would probably be too young to remember.

Then there's the rest of us − the roughly 44% of Americans living today (and growing) − who were born after the disaster in January 1986 and did not share the impact it had on the country.

Finding Balance:Millennials, Gen Z are 'Spiraling,' Partying Hard and Blowing Their Savings. Why?

And that's how shared generational experiences work. Identifying with a generation becomes a shorthand for references to shared common cultural experiences, advances in technology and behaviors forged by witnessing collective significant historical events. Generational identity also informs policy-making, particularly around marketing, health care and retirement.

An ESRI analysis of the predominant generation by location in the country shows a higher concentration of millennials in larger urban areas like Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, while baby boomers make up the largest generational subset in vast swaths of rural areas.

Years When Each Generation Was Born

While pigeonholing someone to a particular generation based solely on birth year isn't a perfect way to determine that person's identity, it helps policymakers establish a baseline for where that person is the age range. Here are the widely accepted year ranges that define today's generations:

Another example of a generational cultural touchstone is the way we consume music. From the early days of vinyl records and radio to cassettes and CDs to streaming services and social media platforms, music listening formats are nearly baked in to each generation's formative years.

In 2023, millennials maintained their place as the largest segment of the U.S. population, a trend that began in 2019 when they surpassed baby boomers because of aging.

Generations and Race in The US

Grouping generational identities by race and ethnicity helps paint a broad picture of how U.S. demographics are changing. In 2023, Gen Alpha was the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, with whites making up less than half of the population of people born in the Gen Alpha birth years (2013 to present).

How Generational Identity Affects Retirement Outlooks

Though age, as the saying goes, is just a number, categorizing people by age can help researchers frame discussions around important age-specific issues like retirement. According to a report in June by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, nearly half of all workers across four generations from baby boomers to Gen Z either plan to retire past age 65 or not retire at all.

But the confidence in retiring at or before age 65 drops sharply with age: 63% of Gen Z respondents are confident in retiring by 65 versus only 48% of Gen X with similar plans.

— SOURCES: Pew Research Center; Annie E. Casey Foundation; Purdue Global; Transamerica Center For Retirement Studies

[tumbler-polls]

Buy us a coffee ☕️

[boudicasrage]

I believe we are all deeply sexually traumatized from being exposed to porn on the internet at a young age

[spike-and-faye]

wait not cowboy bebop?????

It’s giving

~anime~

It’s giving

~jazz~

It’s giving

~space~

Its the existentialism for me 💀😭

Slaye valentine. No notes. Send tweet

Gren go off GNC Zaddy 🗿🗿🗿

Spike is rizz-pilled and gyat coded. BDE.

Um anyone who says boogie Woogie Feng Shui is mid bouta catch this fade aight shit fuckin slaps

I’m low key big mad @ all the cheugy ass girlies who gaslight themselves into hating on Julia. like go touch some grass babe ~ I’m a Faye simp too but it’s giving pick me. Girls’ girls stan 2 qweens

Not me in my basic bitch spike and Faye ship era (pro tip the era is infinity) .. not girlboss nepo baby x beige flag sadboi snacc . Chat hear my out these two do NOT pass the vibe check iykyk. Yes queen give us nothing

Vicious is a sussy baka w réal main character energy but why he ate that fit tho

Cigarettes are ✨girl dinner✨

Ur tweakin if you think Vincent was not kinda bussin 👀 I mean biological terrorism really ain’t it but he do he kinda cute tho

ACAB

but fr Jets a réal one, his man titties have won the game, he’s based as fuck, and he’s my emotional support gruff daddy. Fax. no cap 💅🏼

[myzillennialmemories]

My old room from high school. Anyone else used to have their walls completely covered in magazine posters?

[g0tmilkx3]

That tiny gap between the youngest millennials and the oldest gen zers is actually huge

[anothergameofwickedgrace]

I'm sick as fuck at people under 22 acting like anyone older than them is the fucking crypt keeper. And like you should just expire for daring to age.

That's ageist as fuck.

Woman alone get told they're worthless after 25 and you assholes are perpetuating the same fucking rhetoric.

People in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s are not old, you fucking babies. Grow up. Fr. Because one day you will age too and I hope you're treated the way you treat others.

I'm also so fucking done with teens and younger adults demonizing people over 25 in fandom space. Because apparently when you get older you lose all your interests??? And you're not allowed to have fun? You guys know the people that run the events and all the famous cosplayers are usually over 30? That the people who make the content you like are almost always (gasp) adults over 25??

Just fucking stop with hating people older than you for the crime of being born before you. Its gross and you are a shitty person. You are not better than them because you're younger.

Also I'd also like to say that trying to prevent old people from voting is both ageist and ableist as fuck. Heaven forbid older (and usually disabled) people get a say in the society they live in. Should they just live without representation until they die? That's not ok. Its actually really fucked up!

STOP. OTHERING. PEOPLE. That is some conservative bullshit. Turning against someone for existing in a way you find lesser. Making fun of people for aging even though everyone will. Even though it's already hard enough alone. Just stop. Go to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars.

I don't ever remember anyone I know acting so hateful to people for being older when I was a teenager. So why, in a generation who likes to say they're for acceptance and equality and kindness, are you so hateful and discriminatory? Put your money where your fucking mouth is and use some empathy and understanding on people who are different than you. I shouldn't have to tell this to self proclaimed left leaning people.

You love to pretend you're better than all those "stupid old people", so why don't you fucking act like it? Why can you only see things in black and white? Why are you cruel to people who haven't done you anything, but just dared to exist over the age 22? If this is the hateful way you treat and talk about people, then I understand why you act this way. Because you are a fucking child. A baby. Teenagers are fully functioning people who have the ability to understand nuance. You don't get to plead innocence due to age. Sorry. You want to be taken seriously, so understand your words have consequence. You are not immune to criticism.

Stop being ageist. Just stop. You'll thank me later when harmful rhetoric isn't aimed at you when you get older.

[erela-tsisdu]

While I have seen plenty of antisemitic zoomers from browsing Tumblr (and other websites), I'm actually real tired of people singling them out as being uniquely antisemitic when I've seen just as many millennials & gen xers spreading blood libel & kissing Hamas & Hezbollah's asses.

In fact, most people I've had to block for supporting terrorist groups have been over 30.

The Mastodon instance I left recently for antisemitism was mostly filled with people over 30.

My mom is in a lot of leftist gen x groups & has lost friends over defending Jewish people.

Gen z is not unique for antisemitism, and I'm honestly tired of people somehow acting like it is when I've been seeing people older than me claiming Hamas wasn't radicalized until recently, Jews (((zionists))) are a plague & use zionist money to spread propaganda. Oh, and that Jews have believed in fairytales since biblical times to commit many genocides.

[mostesteemedgingeroverlord]

Owning my place as a zillennial by saying “omg slay” and “skill issue” in the same conversation

[tumbler-polls]

[emily-in-crisis]

I want to group a bunch of millennials together and ask them how old they think the oldest gen z age is because anytime they post something like "things that would put gen z into a coma" it's usually followed by a pic of a fucking CD

[augmentedpolls]

Xillennial=between Gen X and Millennial

Zillennial=between Millennial and Gen Z

[misscoolisback123]

The whole millennial vs. gen z culture war thing was bullshit. I say this as a zillennial because it was just journalists with thin skin who took the tiktok videos of Gen z making fun of millennials seriously. A Buzzfeed journalist claimed that Gen z has disowned Lin Manuel Miranda because of "Hamilton," but that's not all of what it is. It's Gen z making fun of his famous lip bite selfie. People were making fun of him for that for a long time. That journalist is way too late for that.

[simnostalgia]

This is all so well articulated but I do think I should add that this isn't as new as you may think. This has been going on for a few years now and many people who are quickly approaching 30 had similar experiences.

What's interesting about that cohort, Zillennials, is that they would have been the original 'tumblr girls'. The reason I bring this up is because the would have been the original progenitors for a lot of these ideologies.

I bring this up because what isn't touched on here is what I've seen for the last few years- and it feels like a very recent development, that these sort of conservatively liberal values are no longer de rigueur for the tuned in leftist.

I'm a little older and I can remember when the things OP are talking about started becoming standard. And while it might all sound bad, it feels like we're starting to see a turning of the tides. I'm seeing a lot more people my age and younger start to turn against this black-and-white moralism that's come to define the 'intellectual morally pure leftist'. I know this because I, and any readers of this could likely identify, watched those same leftists become disenfranchised by an ideology that seemed to do nothing but put a BLM rainbow flag over conservative policy.

I'll be interested to see the ways that we respond to the political atmosphere of the 2010s. I think the general consensus among many is that the shiny leftist moral purity culture put forth by many of our older siblings was lacking, if not intellectually and morally lazy.

here's my hot take about my generation and people younger than me (I'm 22 years old)

The reason current teenagers and people in their really early 20s are conservative on accident and have such shitty takes on the internet is because our generation was much more sheltered than previous generations and because we were raised to be ok with orwellian servailence and that is 100% the fault of our parents, Reagan Era kidnapping panics, and the rise of technology all coming together to prevent us from doing the sketchy shit that sends parents into panic mode but which is also completely fundemental to childhood development. If your parents had even a crumb of money to their name and even a shred of free time they started tracking your phone as soon as it was possible to. I did not experience this because my parents are actively trying to live like it's the 1990s and still have not gotten cell phones of their own, and did not let me have one until I was 18 years old and it was no longer their choice, but literally over half of my friends in middle and high school had their phones tracked by their parents at some point or other, and we would occasionally find this out, not because their parents told them, but when we were trying to do the aforementioned sketchy shit and their parent's car would pull up. And I would, like a reasonable person after finding this out, encourage my friends to just leave their phones at home, and their response would be "What if I get kidnapped" or "My parents are just trying to keep me safe"

This in my estimation has lead to a combination of kids being terminally online because they do have internet access and are better at deleting search history than their parents think they are, but don't have the freedom to go out and do shit without their parents' knowledge or consent, so they have the most privacy from the people who control their lives while they're on the internet, and kids not having the real world experiences they should have, not knowing how to connect with other people irl, not feeling comfortable leaving the house because of the horror story lies their parents told them to make them ok with the surveillance they were inflicting on their kids. Kids these days are growing up in the fucking panopticon when they should be out in the woods playing with knives or stealing cigarettes from their older sibling and going out to an empty parking lot to smoke them or whatever and that shit is sticking with them into adulthood. Things that were "tee hee we could get in trouble isn't this so fun and daring" in the 1990s and 2000s have become in the 2010s and 2020s things that are "If I do that without texting my parents some sort of lie to excuse where my location is my parent's car will pull up and I will get grounded for the next two weeks."

Like even when I was 19 I had a 16 year old friend who would volunteer their time at a food shelf and that's how we knew each other. We would talk about dungeons and dragons together, and the game store was 4 blocks from the food shelf. One day we left the food shelf earlier than they had told their parents they would and they got punished for that. We were literally just going to look at dungeons and dragons miniatures and dice, which was self evident if you could see where we started and how far we walked and where too. I have to assume that this isn't uncommon. It's wrong, but it's not uncommon.