Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[Eric the Green]

(05-09-2019, 02:46 PM)fran22d Wrote:

(04-28-2019, 09:59 PM)NobodyImportant Wrote: I don't know whether it's because of the authors' scarce reliance on actually good data, or because they ... quite literally are out of touch boomers, but the brackets to put these generations into are nonsense.

Although you didn't phrase your critique politely, I think you make a valid point: the more recent generations, as defined by Strauss–Howe, don't seem to align with reality.  To be fair, they wrote Generations back in 1991, so this was all projection (guesswork) at the time.  The true definition of each generation can only be provided in retrospect.

That said, I think they made a fundamental error when they defined the Baby Boom Generation, and the consequences have cascaded down to our day.  As you asserted Strauss and Howe are baby boomers themselves, and they seem to have fallen victim to the boomer trope that the Kennedy assassination marked the end of an era.  Being a boomer myself, I can vouch for the huge shadow it cast for us.  But society didn't change fundamentally as a result.  Life went on more or less as before, and the demarcation between pre- and post-Kennedy assassination eras amounted to a distinction without a difference.

The defining characteristic Baby Boom Generation is in the name: baby boom.  Looking at a birth rate chart (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers) you can see a very obvious spike in the years following WW-II that declines over time.  Although the beginning of this period is fairly obvious, the end of this generation and the beginning of the next is far less so.  The United States Census Bureau defines it as 1946-1964, but one could just as easily push the ending year out to 1970 or beyond.  (The birth rate didn't bottom out until the mid-70s.)  And once the trailing edge of the Baby Boomers are no longer classified as Generation X, the latter group absorbs most of what we've traditionally defined as Millennial.  

Cutting to the chase: I think the generations from the Baby Boomers onward need to be redefined, and here's my stab at it:

Generation Strauss–Howe Alternative
Baby Boom 1943–1960 1946–1970
Generation X 1961–1981 1971–1995
Millennial 1982–2004 1996–?

I think this aligns more closely to what we've seen over the almost three decades since the original publication of Generations.

If you know Strauss and Howe, it's clear that they contend that generations are not defined by demographic factors like how many babies are born in which years. I agree with them. 1943-1960 is a good date, although I would extend the end perhaps up to a year.

1964 was definitely the start of the Awakening for all who were awake and aware, and in hindsight it's even more clear. And America fundamentally changed. 1966 was definitely the year when the consciousness revolution fully broke out, and 1967-68 were the years when it shook America to its core. No boomer could have failed to notice that an Awakening was in full force. So a nomad generation would have had to begin sometime before 1964, and from all the people I know born in the early 60s, it's clear that a nomad influence is strongly at work, even if some of them are cuspers and have some boomer traits.

PBS really nailed it with this doc




Millennials are typical civics, and there's no reason to question this, or to fiddle with dates. S&H nailed it. Let's just sit back and watch history unfold as we expect.