(01-08-2020, 10:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(01-08-2020, 09:57 AM)Ghost Wrote:(01-07-2020, 06:32 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(01-06-2020, 12:37 PM)Ghost Wrote:(05-03-2019, 11:00 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: 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.
2006 was the year when millennial online culture became really visible. Also the Iraqi civil war happened which made the American public switch to an anti-war mood. But I agree that 2011 is the key millennial year. 2006 was the start of the millennial zeitgeist, like 1964 was the start of boomer zeitgeist.
Then the youngest boomers were 8 in 1968 and the youngest millennials were 9 in 2011.
It also seems to coincide with the Uranus cycle saeculum length (84.3 years).
Consumer technologies do not bring traumatic change as do financial panics, wars, or usurpation of power. People do not adopt any technology all at the same time. If the automobile does not divide the Lost from the GI -- and I have never seen anyone claim that the automobile separates the Lost from the GI's -- then how could something like an i-device make such a difference? The potential of participation in World War I and the raw deal for returning WWI vets made a huge difference.
I feel like the only generation that was defined by consumer technology was (to an extent) Generation Z/Homelanders, which supposedly made Generation Z begin in 1995 according to various sources because of how they are the first to be born after Windows 95 (even though it came out on August 24, 1995).
I think that Windows 95 also resulted in a shockingly early starting date for Millennials according to a small minority of sources (1974) because of how they were the first to graduate college post-Windows 95.