Why 2001-2003 is the cusp between Millennials and New Adaptives

[RELFantastic]

Here are the traits that would make these years cuspers:

• being born around the major politcal shift between 2001-2003, such as 9/11, the Patriot Act, the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and the establishment of Homeland Security.
  
  
• Would have never reached Piagat’s concrete operational stage (7-12) before the Great Recession, but would have gained at least some vivid memories beforehand being 4-6 in 2007.
  
  
• Are the main “2000s/2010s” kid hybrids that many tend to bring up. The 2010s was a decade that began fairly quickly and the difference in technology between the 2000s and 2010s can seem stark at times.
  
  
• Would have turned 10-11, the age where many tend start puberty and start to stray away from childhood and become more adolescent, at some point between 2011-2014, which were the years many would argue when smartphones surpassed feature phones in sales.
  
  
• Spent the bulk of their teen years at some point between Trump getting elected and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2019), or the era known as the Mumble Rap era.
  
  
• If the 2021-22 school year is a full return to normalcy, then that would make it the first full conventional college year for 2001-2003 borns, as 2001 never spent a full year of college pre-COVID-19, 2002 were never in college before the pandemic, and 2003 will be upcoming freshmen this year. However, if restrictions shall continue for 2021-22 with the Delta variant, then that could make it where 2001-2003 will experience both college during COVID in 2021-22 and college after COVID in 2022-23.
  
  
• Finally, this would make 2002 the 50/50 cusp year. There are many reasons to support 2002 being a 50/50 year.
  

Why 2002 makes sense as the 50/50 year:

• They were born after 9/11 and Afghanistan War but before the establishment of Homeland security and the Iraq War.
  
  
• They were the first to reach concrete operational stage during the Obama administration, but the last to reach it during the Great Recession.
  
  
• Going by the 3-12 childhood definition, their childhood would have been from 2005-2014. Half of childhood in the 2000s and other half in the 2010s.
  
  
• Would have been 10-11 between 2012 and 2013, the two years many seem to argue when smartphones surpassed feature phones in sales.
  
  
• Would have been in high school between Obama adminstration (Millennial trait) and the COVID-19 pandemic (Zoomer trait), the only year who can truly make this claim.
  
  
• Finally, they would have been the first to come of age during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the last to come of age under the Trump administration.
  

Why 2001 leans Millennial:

• They were born before 9/11 and the Afghanistan War.
  
  
• They were the last to reach concrete operational stage during the Bush administration.
  
  
• Going by 3-12 childhood definition, their childhood would have been from 2004-2013, so they would definitely lean 2000s kid.
  
  
• Would have been 10-11 between 2011 and 2012, the two years many would argue are the end of the “Electropop era”
  
  
• Would have spent a full year of high school during the Obama administration and spend most of their teens pre-Parkland.
  
  
• Finally, they were the last to come of age in the 2010s as well as before the COVID-19 pandemic.
  

Why 2003 leans Z:

• They were born after the establishment of Homeland security and the Iraq War, hence the term "Homelander".
  
  
• They were the first to reach concrete operational stage after the Great Recession ended and during the 2010s.
  
  
• Going by the 3-12 childhood definition, their childhood would have been from 2006-2015, so they would definitely lean 2010s kid.
  
  
• Would have been 10-11 in 2013 and 2014, the two years many would argue are the start of the “Vine/EDM era”
  
  
• Would have spent a full year of high school during COVID-19 pandemic and spend most of their teens after the TikTok release in the US.
  
  
• Finally, they are the first to come of age under the Biden administration, as well as after the Capitol Storming.
  

With all these strong leaning traits mentioned for 2001 and 2003 mentioned, how can they be cusp?
Why 2001 can still be cusp

• They are the first to be fully born within the new millennium, hence the term “post-millennial”.
  
  
• They are the first to reach concrete operational stage after the Great Recession began.
  
  
• Going by 3-12 childhood defintion, they are the first to have spent a significant amount of childhood in both the 2000s and the 2010s.
  
  
• Would have still been 10-11 in 2011 and 2012, the earliest years with reports saying that smartphones surpassed feature phones in sales.
  
  
• Would have spent most of high school during the Trump administration as well as during the “mumble rap era”
  
  
• Finally, they would have been the first to come of age after TikTok was released in the US, which is likely the first sign of the 2020s culture.
  

Why 2003 can still be cusp

• They are the last to be born before the first major social media platform, MySpace, as Gen Z is usually defined as being born in a world of social media.
  
  
• They are the last to have reached concrete operational stage a full year before smartphones started becoming widespread.
  
  
• Going by 3-12 childhood defintion, they are the last to have spent a significant amount of childhood in both the 2000s and the 2010s.
  
  
• Would have still been 10-11 in 2013 and 2014, the latest years with reports saying that smartphones surpassed feature phones in sales.
  
  
• Would have spent most of high school during the 2010s and during the “mumble rap era“ as well as before COVID-19 started.
  
  
• Finally, they are the last to come of age before the Afghanistan War ends, as well as potentially before the COVID-19 pandemic ends in the US.
  

[Cocoa_Puff]

I love this REL!

[Eric the Green]

I think it's right. For me, all that's needed is to realize that the 4T started in Sept.2008, and that usually a generation starts 3-5 years or so before the 4T starts. Exactly when takes more observation. But so far I think the date 2003 is good for the cusp, or the start date for Gen Z.

[galaxy]

I think you might be overcomplicating it. It's clear that the key divide is having experienced the year of online school, which puts the divide somewhere in the middle of 2002 (the divide between class of 2020/class of 2021).

Those of us born from 1997 to 2005 or so are very keenly aware that we are borderliners, caught between the conflicting definitions of the generational divide (with "Madison Cawthorn is the first Generation Z Congressman" headlines on one side and Generations saying 2004 is Millennial on the other).

[pbrower2a]

2001/2002 looks like a good divide. If born in 2001 one got through high school graduation without any disruption of the usual rites of passage. If born later one might have seen some event from a first communion to high school graduation. including such events as a bar mitzvah or quinceanero, among others. One might have spent some time in "virtual" school. Through age 18 one's activities are likely to be with peers from one's own community; after that (college and work) any such disruption is more strictly individual than collective. Reaching voting age by the time of COVID-19 may be a difference.

COVID-19 will certainly change political attitudes from what they were before.. and demographics. Does one trust institutions or does one not?

[RELFantastic]

(07-16-2021, 07:43 AM)galaxy Wrote: I think you might be overcomplicating it. It's clear that the key divide is having experienced the year of online school, which puts the divide somewhere in the middle of 2002 (the divide between class of 2020/class of 2021).

Those of us born from 1997 to 2005 or so are very keenly aware that we are borderliners, caught between the conflicting definitions of the generational divide (with "Madison Cawthorn is the first Generation Z Congressman" headlines on one side and Generations saying 2004 is Millennial on the other).

The key divide for online school would be the middle of 2001, not the middle of 2002 (the divide between class of 2019/class of 2020). Late 2001 borns who were in the Class of 2020 experienced online school at the tail end of their senior year in 2020.

1997-2000 are purely Millennial and are nowhere near cusp,  same as 2004-2005. 1997-2000 would have reached concrete operational stage (7-12) before the Great Recession began, and spent at least a full year in the workforce or in college before the COVID-19 pandemic even began. 

2004 and 2005 would have very vague memories of the 3T being only 2 and 3 years old in 2007 respectively, and will likely come of age in a post-pandemic world (2022+)

[galaxy]

(07-16-2021, 04:16 PM)RELFantastic Wrote: The key divide for online school would be the middle of 2001, not the middle of 2002 (the divide between class of 2019/class of 2020). Late 2001 borns who were in the Class of 2020 experienced online school at the tail end of their senior year in 2020.

I said "the year of online school," not "any online school at all." The class of 2020 had 2-3 months of online tacked on to the end of an otherwise "normal" schooling. Remember, back in April 2020 most people thought it would be over by the summer still. The realization that it would be a multi-year thing came later.

They're the true borderliners, I think, where sorting them into generations has to go down to the individual level (for example, a class of 2020 living in New York City would probably be more Z because of the extreme situation there early in the pandemic, while a class of 2020 living in Montana, where case numbers were so low that schools actually reopened in person for several weeks in May 2020, would probably be more Millennial because of it).


Just my thoughts as a January 2001/class of 2019 here.

[RELFantastic]

(07-18-2021, 09:53 PM)galaxy Wrote:

(07-16-2021, 04:16 PM)RELFantastic Wrote: The key divide for online school would be the middle of 2001, not the middle of 2002 (the divide between class of 2019/class of 2020). Late 2001 borns who were in the Class of 2020 experienced online school at the tail end of their senior year in 2020.

I said "the year of online school," not "any online school at all." The class of 2020 had 2-3 months of online tacked on to the end of an otherwise "normal" schooling. Remember, back in April 2020 most people thought it would be over by the summer still. The realization that it would be a multi-year thing came later.

They're the true borderliners, I think, where sorting them into generations has to go down to the individual level (for example, a class of 2020 living in New York City would probably be more Z because of the extreme situation there early in the pandemic, while a class of 2020 living in Montana, where case numbers were so low that schools actually reopened in person for several weeks in May 2020, would probably be more Millennial because of it).


Just my thoughts as a January 2001/class of 2019 here.

I think its possible Class of 2020 could be last Millennials for the reasons you mentioned, or they can be the first Zoomers for the reasons I previously mentioned. Thats why I put them as 50/50 so I can agree with you there. The divide probably lies somewhere between 2001/2002 (Classes of 2019 and 2020) or 2002/2003 (Classes of 2020 and 2021)

I think what still makes 2001-2003 (give or take late 2000-mid 2003) a cusp is mainly for still being 4-6 in 2007 at the end of the 3T, which at that age is mainly in between vague and vivid memories, as memories don’t fully become vivid until you reach concrete operational stage at 7.

[Anthony '58]

I have always maintained - and still do - that 1998/99 is the boundary - because '98ers would have at least some hazy memory of 9/11, which ended the Pax Americana that began when the Berlin Wall came down - while '99ers would not.

David Hogg (who I can't stand) and Greta Thunberg will be listed as "Sample Living Members" of what I have dubbed "The Activist Generation" when Generations: Volume 2 comes out.

[David Horn]

(07-26-2021, 06:58 AM)Anthony Wrote: I have always maintained - and still do - that 1998/99 is the boundary - because '98ers would have at least some hazy memory of 9/11, which ended the Pax Americana that began when the Berlin Wall came down - while '99ers would not.

David Hogg (who I can't stand) and Greta Thunberg will be listed as "Sample Living Members" of what I have dubbed "The Activist Generation" when Generations: Volume 2 comes out.

Funny, but those two, among many others, are the leading edge of the only hope we have to fix all the things that are broken.  Advocates tend to rub some people the wrong way.  That's an essential part of their job.  At the momnet, it's COVID hestiancy that's hitting the critical point, but enrionment and firearms are both on the list too ... and soon.

[pbrower2a]

(07-26-2021, 06:58 AM)Anthony Wrote: I have always maintained - and still do - that 1998/99 is the boundary - because '98ers would have at least some hazy memory of 9/11, which ended the Pax Americana that began when the Berlin Wall came down - while '99ers would not.

David Hogg (who I can't stand) and Greta Thunberg will be listed as "Sample Living Members" of what I have dubbed "The Activist Generation" when Generations: Volume 2 comes out.

9/11 did not change America's fundamental economic assumptions. The band playing the siren song of a speculative boom didn't miss a beat.

There have been days of mass death more severe than 9/11 in America -- during the COVID-19 plague. COVID-19 has forced fundamental changes in American economic life that are much more likely to continue. We have yet to see the long-term effects on American demographics (it first hit liberal-leaning blacks and Hispanics and came close to throwing the 2020 election to Donald Trump, but now that the people dying of it are increasingly right-wing white people that may have an even sharper and more lasting effect upon the electorate.

COVID-19 is much bigger than AIDS (except upon the gay population of the time and later mostly IV drug users) in demographic effects. It will reshape American culture. If wars that kill smaller numbers of Americans cause a boom in war literature (the Vietnam War has created its own volume of literature) and the similarly pointless Holocaust reshape American thought even if it happened elsewhere, just think of what COVID-19 can do. 

Much of what is macabre in medieval culture and that never really went away as an influence upon the psyche of creative people is the result of the Black Death.  The horror isn't the same,  but it will be fresh in the minds of creative people in the next few decades. 

... as the Silent generation of comedians (their culture's strongest and most lasting influence upon American culture except perhaps for the Civil Rights Movement that was heavily Silent) die off -- Jackie Mason died a couple days ago, America gets deadly serious about things that should be silly.  For now there is nothing funny about COVID-19, but once it is clearly over, Americans will find much to mock. That includes politicians and cause-pushers of the time that pooh-poohed the danger of the plague. Sure, Charlie Chaplin could mock Hitler in The Great Dictator before the tyrant could start killing on the scale for which he would become infamous... but it took considerable time for Mel Brooks to mock  Hitler after the mass death of his war and of the Holocaust in The Producers.  Mel Brooks was a comic genius at the time, but he is now very old, and we don't see much of him anymore. We all know how that goes; his creative career is likely over. At roughly the same time the crew of Monty Python's Flying Circus was making plenty of cheap jokes about the fatuous behavior of Nazis and British members of the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists.  

As a Boomer I can predict how the Homeland Generation will treat Donald Trump: figure a script much like Quo Vadis, only played for laughs. Sienkiewicz, the Polish author who wrote the novel that became the basis of the movie, had the persecution of early Christians as his focus of horror. Nero was a ludicrous character, but the late great actor Peter Ustinov wasn't playing Nero for laughs.  The Silent are now too old to come up with this, but the kids born around 2005 might see things that way. Like the Silent they will have much respect for institutions -- but not when those institutions go sour. Sienkiewicz made much of the lasciviousness of Nero as an insult to Christian values that fervently-Catholic Poles obviously saw as affront, and of the sordid practice of damnatio ad bestiae. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my? They did the dining. One can't make much of a joke out of people being fed to bears and Big Cats. 

Donald Trump is not as sordid as Nero, Caligula, or Commodus.... but those bad Emperors cannot be played for laughs. Trump can, at least once the peril of any would-be imitators is gone.   Twenty years after the war people could finally laugh about Nazis, as the ones still around were mostly ludicrous losers:

[Anthony '58]

In any event, it is time to stop calling them "New Adaptives" - since now, with their first wave old enough to drink and smoke, they are no longer "new."

I'll stick to the label I have already pinned on them - the "Activist Generation."

[Eric the Green]

(07-26-2021, 06:58 AM)Anthony Wrote: I have always maintained - and still do - that 1998/99 is the boundary - because '98ers would have at least some hazy memory of 9/11, which ended the Pax Americana that began when the Berlin Wall came down - while '99ers would not.

David Hogg (who I can't stand) and Greta Thunberg will be listed as "Sample Living Members" of what I have dubbed "The Activist Generation" when Generations: Volume 2 comes out.

Those two heroes of mine, whom I love, show the activist nature of the tail-end of the Millennial Generation. Much like the sub-generation of JFK and Nelson Mandela. The entire Millennial generation will have to step up now and lead, follow or get out of the way. Being civics, they all have the potential. The Crisis 4T that started in 2008 is ramping up toward its climax in circa 2025-27. Consciousness of the climate crisis ramped up about a year earlier with Al Gore's movie. But people often forget that gas prices also skyrocketed in 2008, which also put the climate crisis on the front burner that year, plus the huge oil spill in 2010. Since then, the climate crisis has ramped up, and now the UN has declared that we face it now or face oblivion. Both David Hogg and Greta Thunberg are heroes of the regeneracy that started with resistance to Trump in 2017.

The back-to-normal war on terror of 2001 just made sure that the Pax Americana's continuing constant-war since 1941 continued-- out of sight and out of mind. In the 4T, the war on terror may well re-appear at the crisis climax, just as the 3T's world war one reappeared in the 4T world war two. This time, the USA will do it right. Full mobilization, with limited aims; a true war on the terrorists; not a hopeless nation-building. 

At least, that is my expectation. I assume a world full mobilization to wipe out tyranny in several places could occur as well, and possible world war against the tyrants. That would be very dangerous and deadly, and perhaps Butler is right that the world has moved beyond such world conflicts, although obviously it has not moved beyond the tyranny of the most-ancient agricultural-age kinds. Maybe more terrorist attacks from Afghanistan won't happen either; we'll see. But the USA war cycles will return in 2025, and that will be hard to avoid entirely.

[Eric the Green]

(08-19-2021, 08:16 AM)Anthony Wrote: In any event, it is time to stop calling them "New Adaptives" - since now, with their first wave old enough to drink and smoke, they are no longer "new."

I'll stick to the label I have already pinned on them - the "Activist Generation."

They are not adaptives; they are activists; two entirely different things. Adaptive generations are "Silent," and they "Compromise". The Activists are anything but either. They are the activist ending-sub-generation of civic millennials.

[Eric the Green]

(07-26-2021, 08:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-26-2021, 06:58 AM)Anthony Wrote: I have always maintained - and still do - that 1998/99 is the boundary - because '98ers would have at least some hazy memory of 9/11, which ended the Pax Americana that began when the Berlin Wall came down - while '99ers would not.

David Hogg (who I can't stand) and Greta Thunberg will be listed as "Sample Living Members" of what I have dubbed "The Activist Generation" when Generations: Volume 2 comes out.

Funny, but those two, among many others, are the leading edge of the only hope we have to fix all the things that are broken.  Advocates tend to rub some people the wrong way.  That's an essential part of their job.  At the moment, it's COVID hestitancy that's hitting the critical point, but environment and firearms are both on the list too ... and soon.

Fully agreed.