As a fellow Gen Zer I feel like there is a generational gap. I want to see if I’m trippin or there actually is one.
When I was growing up, the definitions kept changing.
I was born in 1986, and while in primary school I was told that makes me GenX. So I grew up thinking I was GenX. Then in high school, my teachers said actually anyone born after 1985 is GenY, so we’re definitely GenY.
Then when year 2000 came around people started talking about a new generation of people who would “never remember the 20th century”, or “never know a world without the internet”, basically people born after 1997 so they grow up completely in the 2000s. They called them Millennials.
From then on the usage of “millennial” kept growing, starting to see it everywhere. Mostly by boomers complaining about millennials.
Around 2012 I stated seeing some youtubers around my age referring to themselves as millennials, I thought it was a joke, or a bad understanding. Then people started referring to me as a millennial. Someone who’s whole childhood was in the 90s, how could I be a millennial, it defied the definition.
So I imagine my shock when I find now they’ve removed all trace of the usage of GenY, and retroactively applied “millennial” to mean anyone born after 1985. So maybe I am a millennial? I remember staying up late to celebrate with my parents and make sure our computer didn’t crash at midnight on new years eve in 1999. I remember wondering why dragonballz wasn’t on TV when the news was showing footage of American skyscrapers in 2001. Are those the things that make me a millennial? If so then what about the original definition? Those born 1997 or later won’t remember those things, so now they’re Zoomers? All this business makes me so confused.
Thank you, someone who gets it. The definition has expanded so much it’s essentially meaningless now.
When I grew up and the term was first coined, it refered to the generation coming after mine. It was literally “what will we call this next generation? Well, they’re growing up during the turn of the millennium…”. Then suddenly years later it included my generation. Then suddenly it includes the generation before me? When really it’s just a lazy replacement for “kids these days”.
