(05-03-2019, 11:00 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:(05-03-2019, 10:53 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: I agree with Eric here. 9/11 was not *that* important. Obviously it was a nightmare for people who died and for their families. It was a shock for everyone. But I remember a New Yorker (my cousin's friend) saying in retrospect it was less devastating than hurricane Sandy in 2012. The financial recession of 2008 was definitely more important for people's daily lives. As for the Internet, there is colossal difference between early and late 2000s. I was born in '86, so I remember the websites of 2001. When MySpace went mainstream in 2006, it made a huge difference.
Coming of age doesn't really mean 18, in the modern context extended adolescence is the norm, so people are more likely to start living an adult life around the age of 22. Using age 22 as a proxy for coming of age works well:
1968 for boomers
1986 for Xers
2006 for millennials
2025 for new Artists born in 2003
9/11 was far more impactful than Hurricane Sandy. 9/11 is when the mentality started to shift towards "Give up your freedoms in the name of society and security. Authority good." The war in Iraq resulting from this also resulted in the deficit that caused the 2008 crash. It's all related. Your coming of age is when your innocence is shattered. For Boomers, it was 1963 when JFK got assassinated. For Millennials it was 2001 or 2008. 2006 was not very significant at all IMO.
Cases can be made for 2007, considering that was when the iPhone came out, when LCD TVs outsold cathode ray tube TVs, and when the Recession started. But I really can't see how 2006 is significant.
I think that two things that we know for sure are that the key Boomer year was 1968 and that the key Gen X year was 1989. However, the key Millennial year is somewhat up for debate because of how there could be many candidates for it (with good reasons). I might take a stab and say 2011 because that was when Osama bin Laden got killed, when Occupy Wall Street (a big Millennial event) occurred, and when the hipster culture started to become more mainstream. Please correct me if I am wrong.