Millennials and GenZ horribly misidentified

[Bill the Piper]

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. It was like Youtube and Facebook combined. For this reason, I regard late 2000s as more culturally similar to 2010s than early 2000s.

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, we get dates very close to beginnings of turnings:
1968 for boomers
1986 for Xers
2006 for millennials
2025 for new Artists born in 2003

Bush's war on Saddam was really the last major war waged in name of liberal intervention (a concept invented by the missionary generation). It marks the end of an era, not a beginning of something new. And it was in 2006 that it started to be seen as a failure, cos a civil war broke out in Iraq.