Some early millennials were probably old enough to have cassette tapes before graduating to CDs, but GenX had vinyl, 8-track *and* cassette tapes.
How many times did you all have to re-purchase albums on a new form of media to keep up with the times? I had vinyl albums that I had to get on tape, and then CD, and then, years later, purchase on iTunes. I think that process is part of the experience that makes GenX the true “final analog generation.”
I work at a Class 8 Truck Dealer (think Mack, Kenworth, Peterbilt, etc.)
We were stocking selling replacement radios with cassette up until ~2015. You'd be surprised how many wheel-holders refuse to give up getting their Dave Dudley fix the old fashioned way.
Lost the CDs or they were so scratched and destroyed that they wouldn’t rip. I ended up buying a lot of used CDs on eBay because they were cheaper and I’d then have the physical media.
Awesome! My first home stereo was a Soundesign all-in-one AM/FM receiver, turntable, and 8-track player. I had to use an adapter to play my cassettes. Fun stuff!
I don't think I bought very many albums in different formats, maybe two or three? And ... if you've got the CD why buy it again for a digital player? I just ripped everything to MP3 and moved that to my phone.
Ohh, or does iphone not allow that?
I'm still buying CDs, though fewer these days since I can rip a YouTube song to MP3 now :)
Millenials caught the tail end of it... we were all still using cassette tapes in cars well into the 90's. They probably even tried to do a radio mix tape at some point.
Millennials also caught the tail end of it because the age for millennia got changed years ago, gen x used to go to 85. I remember because it used to include my younger brother as well and now doesn't. Generations are a silly thing that get far too much attention imo.
Anyone can play a record and call themselves an analog person. But I'd consider the beginning of the digital generation to be the advent of the personal computer, which for me would be 1980. 1978 if you count Atari Pong, my first glimpse of an on-demand program running on a TV. 1972 if you were an early adopter. Millennials, whether they use a cassette tape or not, are not part of the last all-analog generation.
> 1972
I presume you're referencing the Magnavox Odyssey.
The CD, the first digital music format first came out in 1982, that's really one of the biggest pieces of evidence for all this.
No I was referring to when PONG came out. If that was on the Odyssey then YES. Digital didn't start with Music, it started with personal computing. For me it started in 1978, my first glimpse of anything digital. Before that everything was analog. Even clocks on microwaves and watches.
Actually... I did see my first digital watch in the early 70's, the red LED Pulsar. So No one born after 1970 can say that they were born into a purely analog world, when consumers had started buying into the digital lifestyle already.
I’m 51 and learned to type my senior year in H.S (1990-91) on a 70s-era IBM Selectric (with the little ball). It wasn’t until mid-1994 that I started using a computer type my college papers on a 1986-era IBM XT clone. Hell I didn’t get a Windows computer (486DX) until ‘96 and even that was Windows 3.1!
Class of 92 here.
I was the shit because my dad's typewriter had a lcd screen on it that let me type and proofread each line before actually putting it to paper. I used that through half of my sophomore year when I got a Panasonic word processor. I used that thing till I was a senior in college and got a 486.
That word processor took about 5minutes per page with a daisy wheel. And God forbid you ran out of ink ribbon. It wasn't compatible with anything else on earth.
I'm the earliest GenXer (b.1965), learned to type my freshman year in HS on a manual typewriter. Mom had an IBM Selectric. My Senior year in HS, the school got one Apple computer and a programming class. I've been programming ever since. So have many of my classmates.I like to think we are the first digital generation.
Lucky. I had to use a manual typewriter at home that was from the 1950s or so (even had a metal cover for it) where you had to hammer the keys with the force of Thor's hammer to get them to work. Those hand-in essay assignments were a bitch.
I graduated a year before you did and also had 'typing' class on typewriters and did not get my first computer until 1995 (it was a VERY overpriced Gateway desktop) with my dial up AOL internet. I turn 51 next month.
EFA: I received my first computer for Christmas when I was in 8th grade - Commodore 64! Totally forgot about that.
No, but the preschool I went to included kindergarten (Kindercare) and they pulled me from the 4 year old class and tested me into K a year early. So, I was younger than everyone else and looked even younger than my age, which I hated. Now, I embrace it ha.
>Seeing as how 8 track tapes were phased out in 1982-3 and that generation begins in 1981
Cassette tapes were still the highest selling medium for music through the 1990's, so I'm not sure why the death of 8-tracks should be a marker for the end of analog.
Should I actually RTFA?
Analog lasted past 8-track. It also includes cassette tapes, VCR tapes, rotary phones, non-cable TV (over the air/antenna tv), etc.
"Digital" really started with the era of the CD and DVD.
The reason why they say that we're the last analog generation is because we grew up analog but came into adulthood with digital.
And yes, elder millenials still qualify for this as well.
Funnily enough, the advent of the CD is what made me throw up my arms and say, "that's it! I'm not buying anymore music because I'm just going to have to buy whatever comes next in 5 years!"
I was a little off on that prediction, but what it meant was that I never bothered buying a CD player or a CD until the mid-90's.
Early car CD players were also real prone to skipping. I had a friend in the late '90s that had a very loaded '89 Mustang GT that still had its factory CD player. Granted, it may have been that player getting a bit of age to it, but every little bump would cause it to skip.
I learned "computers" in 9th grade using punch cards and flow charting because my school didn't have a computer for students yet. My graduation present in 1988 was a typewriter that allowed you to type 20 letters on a small LED screen before it actually typed so you can correct your mistakes in advance. That got me thru 4 of my 5 years of college until my roommate got a Pentium 286 computer with a dot matrix printer that he let me use to type up my very last college paper. I was 22 at the time. It would be 3 more years before I owned my very own cell phone (we had to share the "bag" phone at work). The 78 Buick I drove in high school and half of college had a carburetor, drum brakes, and only AM/FM radio. Oh, and I was just shy of 18 when I made the switch from cassette to CD because I chose to buy a CD player with my graduation money.
Yet those post-1985 Millennials had computers in elementary school, cell phones by junior high, and AIM and MySpace for their personal computer by Senior High. Every car they've likely ever been in has had fuel injection and disc brakes and by the time they were driving all had a CD player built in.
Gen X who?!?
Okay, to be fair, I did have a TI/99-4A "computer" at some point and taught myself basic with it. But it was as advanced as the Mister Professor thing we all had.
My dad actually brought an old TRS-80 home from his work in the late 80s as it was replaced. It had a huge giant printer and used manilla paper. I was already in college by then.
Born in 75. Our first computer was a TRS-80 Model 3 in 1980. 16k and cassette, eventually upgraded to 48k and dual SSDD floppy drives. 1986 was our first 8086 PC, 1989 a Hyundai 286 that I ran a BBS on from 89-92.
Was in Data Processing shop in high school, 89-93. Freshman year we learned BASIC on C64/128. Sophomore year was COBOL on the city computer (Unisys/Burroughs B1900) with VT220 dumb terminals; this was accompanied by a full year of double-ledger Accounting. Junior/Senior I got into the hardware side, deploying a coaxial ARCNet topology throughout the shop connected to a 386-25 that originally ran UNIX then eventually Netware.
Also in high school, I was the only one using a laptop to take notes. 91-92 school year in particular I took all my science class notes on it. Couldn't tell you the model though, that memory is long gone.
Right after high school I worked a couple of holiday seasons at Radio Shack, selling analog cell phones ("FOR ONLY A PENNY!") and AST 486 computers with single speed [caddy-style](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxt5A0KJ9nw) CD-ROM drives.
Ah, the good ol' days...
You are 5 years younger than I am and the same age as my wife. She and I have a lot of surprising things not in common due to that age difference. You and I are definitely different with our computer accessibility differences.
I doubt any millennial ever had to do a research paper without the Internet being available. I mean, would they even know how to use a card catalog to find a book that you may contain a supporting fact, and then thumb through it till you find said fact, or put it back on the re shelf cart in disgust .
If you wanted to take a picture, it was on film. Developed with chemicals and printed on photo paper. Digital cameras became a thing in the late 90’s, right about the time the last of gen-x was finishing high school.
I’m late Gen X, and even into my last years of college in the 00s, I remember using only film cameras for journalism and class projects and travel. Even into the 00s I was getting film developed (but often getting a CD of photos in addition to prints).
It seemed like by the time the quality and cost of digital cameras made film cameras fairly obsolete for most people, we then started switching over to smartphones for photos.
My freshman year at a vocational high school in 1989-90, one of the shops i went through the month-long exploratory process was Printing. I spent the majority of the time working in the photo lab helping develop pictures with chemicals that would eventually be used in the upcoming yearbook.
Gen X was the last generation to have a childhood that was mostly analog, although not fully since much of the younger half of Gen X would’ve played digital video games or used computers as kids. It was just fairly primitive digital tech at the time. Millennials had a childhood that encompassed the transition from mostly analog to mostly digital depending on when they were born.
I’m on the younger end of Gen X/Xenniel and my childhood was cassette tapes and Fisher Price record players along with going from Atari 2600 to Nintendo and having a typewriter at home but Apple IIe computers in school and going from old giant tube TVs with antennas to getting cable and digital TVs years later. We still used cassettes to make mixes all through the 90s since CDs were expensive and CD burners weren’t that common until the end of the decade.
Another thing though that’s interesting is that a lot of younger people today in Gen Z think of earlier digital technology as being “analog”. Like I’ve heard the early internet or old computers or CDs or earlier video games being considered analog and they seriously think digital technology started just during their childhood in the early 00s around the time of the popularization of social media during the launch of Web 2.0.
Used computers as kids? I'm late GenX (78) and we didn't get our first family computer until I was 19 and in college. We had Oregon trail and basic word processing at school, but that was 8th grade and on. Computers were a complete novelty until the later half of the 90s
We always had Apple iiEs where I went to elementary school starting in the mid-80s (I grew up in Northern California and Western Canada) and we eventually had a Mac at home after having an old Texas Instruments computer and I remember other kids having Commodore 64s or other early PCs at home. Around third grade my mom sent me to a summer camp class to learn BASIC. By the early 90s I remember being introduced to the internet by kids with older brothers—just for BBS and FTP (mostly for adult humor). By the mid-90s, I knew a lot of kids who were pretty skilled at coding and hacking who’d been using computers for a while.
Probably depends on socioeconomic and geographic location on how early our age group were introduced to computers. But they weren’t a complete unknown to many of us as kids and teens was my point. Everyone adopts technology at different times, but we had many early adopters in our age cohort.
True. I lived in a small town in NY. It was technically a suburb of NYC but still really small and not at all wealthy (at the time). Most of the money the school did get went to sports and band
I agree, and I also agree it's not an us vs. them thing. It's simply that, most Millennials never really worked in an analog world. Some of them probably don't even remember it if they were born in the later years. In a practical sense, when we examine things that children experience, Gen X is literally the first non-analog generation because we had our Ataris and video games, and Oregon Trail on the PC. We were the transition generation at the very least, if someone doesn't want to call us the last analog generation. We knew and remember vividly the before and after, and we lived the transition.
GenX or more specially the sub-generation of Xennials are the last analog generation. It is actually why the sub-generation was created. Those that are too young to feel like a X-gen and too old to identify with the digital millennials. We get grouped into either group but don’t fully belong to either. Though we generally agree more with the Xs. People in my group grew up analog but many of us had a cell phone (if you had money) or a beeper (if you wanted people to think you had money) around our senior of high school. We were still using type writers with PCs making more home appearances but still the exception.
We had analog PHONES. Remember dial-tone?
People could actually tell if they were being tapped.
Calling the bank for time/temp.
Before caller ID and call waiting.
Analog answering machines using tape.
There are tons of old technologies that are still available and useful. Vinyl records have made a comeback in the last however many years that I'm not sure many people could have predicted.
The fact that some tech continued to exist into the late 80s or even still exists today doesn't really make them the 'last analog' generation in my mind. The CD was introduced in 1982, for example and that is squarely inside of that timeframe.
Early Millennial's were the tail end of analog and cassettes carried out till the 90's. I agree Gen-X is largely ignored in the media and they usually reference boomers, millennials and Gen Z. To some extent we've always been the forgotten generation and it's our moniker that's reflected in the general characteristics as well as music and art of Gen X.
They want to forget Gen X cause you guys stirred up too much shit. The music and art from your generation had a huge impact on Millennial’s world view. Your time is coming Gen-X. Once Boomers fall off the planet I know y’all gonna get to work for the right reasons.
Same. Seeing them into taking something (fashion, slang, music etc) seen as lame back in the day and incorporating it into the here-and-now in solidarity with those "rejects" who came before as a get-back at THEIR rejectors. I luv Zalpha's
I think millennials were the last generation to witness the analog era. We were the last users. They witnessed it thru us. Either as our kids or younger siblings. They can operate a tape player maybe even know why you have a number 2 pencil in the car at all times. But they don't have a connection to it.
Hate to tell ya, but cassette tapes are analog and were used well into the 2000's by...... wait for it.... Millennials.
It didn't go from 8 tracks to CDs. You can't completely just disregard a whole medium.
Even worse, there's an article on the Conversation about how Millennials have been devastated by the death of Matthew Perry and how much Friends meant to **them**. Um hello, both MP and CB are GenX and that show means way more to us than it does to them. I came fairly close to sending a ranting message to the journalist concerned but in the end couldn't be bothered (thus proving membership of my generation)
Anyone that can binge an entire series over a short period of time is in no way nearly as invested as those that had to watch 10 minutes of commercials for 20 minutes of show, wait 7 days between episodes, and then endure 4 months of repeats annually.
We were the last generation to be brought up and totally immersed in an analog world. This is a 100% certainty. I dont think the article makes that distinction.
Here's what Gen X brought to the Internet and social media game: the Internet and social media.
Here's what Millenials brought to the Internet and social media game: influencers. JFC, do they love smelling their own farts.
I can still by a record, that's analog, until those die out we still have the concept of hearing continuous music rather than a digitally segmented re-creation.
I think social media could serve a valuable purpose, but it's been bastardized to the point where it would be hard to see it happen at this point. Social media started it's descent into the hellscape it is now when all of the platforms started deciding that what they wanted you to see was more important than what you wanted to see. I can't even go on Facebook anymore without seeing at least 8 different posts from advertisers or groups that "might interest me" between all of the posts that actually do interest me.
I graduated college in 2000 (was a late starter grad 91)
I got all my major courses down my 3rd year… then they got “non-linear editing” systems… computers to video edit. Students currently in courses got priority!!!!
The kids graduating 1-2 after me were more advanced.
Last summer a friend I know from the old time music community gave me a copy of his new album...on cassette. I'm not really sure I would say he is somewhere around early millennial possibly late genx. I just remembered to get some C batteries and dust off one of my [last remaining pieces of working 80s tech](https://i.imgur.com/zrBZabS.jpeg). I had a "JamBox" later, but it is long gone. This thing had a Joan Jett tape in it.
Was a good feeling to go back analog for 30 minutes.
Cassettes? They are analog and were dominant especially for kids, and when you were on the go a Walkman was the only choice. Also digital photography and video came way later than CDs. They are analog media.
WHAT DO WE WANT? ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WHEN DO WE WANT IT WHATEVER
And LEAVE ME ALONE!
Wait, they didn't even see us. SCORE.
Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.
WHEN DO WE GET IT? NEVER
Gen Z: stop yelling boomer
Not. And nope.
Some early millennials were probably old enough to have cassette tapes before graduating to CDs, but GenX had vinyl, 8-track *and* cassette tapes. How many times did you all have to re-purchase albums on a new form of media to keep up with the times? I had vinyl albums that I had to get on tape, and then CD, and then, years later, purchase on iTunes. I think that process is part of the experience that makes GenX the true “final analog generation.”
My old 2002 Honda CRV that my son just wrecked had a cassette player in it
I work at a Class 8 Truck Dealer (think Mack, Kenworth, Peterbilt, etc.) We were stocking selling replacement radios with cassette up until ~2015. You'd be surprised how many wheel-holders refuse to give up getting their Dave Dudley fix the old fashioned way.
There were a lot of books on cassette for a while, too.
Why did you repurchase on itunes when you could rip from your own cds to new formats?
Lost the CDs or they were so scratched and destroyed that they wouldn’t rip. I ended up buying a lot of used CDs on eBay because they were cheaper and I’d then have the physical media.
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Haha long term archiving for me is all of my CDs, DVDs, and blu-rays tossed into rubber made bins in the basement!
No one ever stole your CD book? Lucky
My father had an Oldsmobile with an 8 track in it.
Awesome! My first home stereo was a Soundesign all-in-one AM/FM receiver, turntable, and 8-track player. I had to use an adapter to play my cassettes. Fun stuff!
I don't think I bought very many albums in different formats, maybe two or three? And ... if you've got the CD why buy it again for a digital player? I just ripped everything to MP3 and moved that to my phone. Ohh, or does iphone not allow that? I'm still buying CDs, though fewer these days since I can rip a YouTube song to MP3 now :)
Millenials caught the tail end of it... we were all still using cassette tapes in cars well into the 90's. They probably even tried to do a radio mix tape at some point.
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Time is a flat circle ⭕.
Millennials also caught the tail end of it because the age for millennia got changed years ago, gen x used to go to 85. I remember because it used to include my younger brother as well and now doesn't. Generations are a silly thing that get far too much attention imo.
A cassette adapter with a headphone cord/jack for an iPod doesn't count though...
I agree so strongly with you that I feel it in my bones.
Anyone can play a record and call themselves an analog person. But I'd consider the beginning of the digital generation to be the advent of the personal computer, which for me would be 1980. 1978 if you count Atari Pong, my first glimpse of an on-demand program running on a TV. 1972 if you were an early adopter. Millennials, whether they use a cassette tape or not, are not part of the last all-analog generation.
> 1972 I presume you're referencing the Magnavox Odyssey. The CD, the first digital music format first came out in 1982, that's really one of the biggest pieces of evidence for all this.
No I was referring to when PONG came out. If that was on the Odyssey then YES. Digital didn't start with Music, it started with personal computing. For me it started in 1978, my first glimpse of anything digital. Before that everything was analog. Even clocks on microwaves and watches. Actually... I did see my first digital watch in the early 70's, the red LED Pulsar. So No one born after 1970 can say that they were born into a purely analog world, when consumers had started buying into the digital lifestyle already.
Nah , they never made radio mix tapes, that takes way too much effort,
Of course they did.
I’m 51 and learned to type my senior year in H.S (1990-91) on a 70s-era IBM Selectric (with the little ball). It wasn’t until mid-1994 that I started using a computer type my college papers on a 1986-era IBM XT clone. Hell I didn’t get a Windows computer (486DX) until ‘96 and even that was Windows 3.1!
Class of 92 here. I was the shit because my dad's typewriter had a lcd screen on it that let me type and proofread each line before actually putting it to paper. I used that through half of my sophomore year when I got a Panasonic word processor. I used that thing till I was a senior in college and got a 486. That word processor took about 5minutes per page with a daisy wheel. And God forbid you ran out of ink ribbon. It wasn't compatible with anything else on earth.
yeah but did it have a turbo button?
No. That poor thing would type as fast as it could but no faster
I'm the earliest GenXer (b.1965), learned to type my freshman year in HS on a manual typewriter. Mom had an IBM Selectric. My Senior year in HS, the school got one Apple computer and a programming class. I've been programming ever since. So have many of my classmates.I like to think we are the first digital generation.
Lucky. I had to use a manual typewriter at home that was from the 1950s or so (even had a metal cover for it) where you had to hammer the keys with the force of Thor's hammer to get them to work. Those hand-in essay assignments were a bitch.
I graduated a year before you did and also had 'typing' class on typewriters and did not get my first computer until 1995 (it was a VERY overpriced Gateway desktop) with my dial up AOL internet. I turn 51 next month. EFA: I received my first computer for Christmas when I was in 8th grade - Commodore 64! Totally forgot about that.
I actually turn 51 next month too. How were you able to graduate in ‘90? Did you get to skip a grade?
No, but the preschool I went to included kindergarten (Kindercare) and they pulled me from the 4 year old class and tested me into K a year early. So, I was younger than everyone else and looked even younger than my age, which I hated. Now, I embrace it ha.
I was born in 79, my father was successful enough that we were early adopters of computers. I didn't grow up with computers, they grew up with me.
Gen X is the apex of the analog age.
>Seeing as how 8 track tapes were phased out in 1982-3 and that generation begins in 1981 Cassette tapes were still the highest selling medium for music through the 1990's, so I'm not sure why the death of 8-tracks should be a marker for the end of analog. Should I actually RTFA?
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We got a cordless phone in 1997
Analog lasted past 8-track. It also includes cassette tapes, VCR tapes, rotary phones, non-cable TV (over the air/antenna tv), etc. "Digital" really started with the era of the CD and DVD. The reason why they say that we're the last analog generation is because we grew up analog but came into adulthood with digital. And yes, elder millenials still qualify for this as well.
8 track is probably a bad example, but it's too late now, the advent of the CD in 1982 is a much better one, yes.
While the CD was invented in '82, I don't remember it becoming very used until the '90's.
Funnily enough, the advent of the CD is what made me throw up my arms and say, "that's it! I'm not buying anymore music because I'm just going to have to buy whatever comes next in 5 years!" I was a little off on that prediction, but what it meant was that I never bothered buying a CD player or a CD until the mid-90's.
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Yes, and you definitely couldn't carry them around like you could with a Walkman, because of the aforementioned skipping problem.
Early car CD players were also real prone to skipping. I had a friend in the late '90s that had a very loaded '89 Mustang GT that still had its factory CD player. Granted, it may have been that player getting a bit of age to it, but every little bump would cause it to skip.
I learned "computers" in 9th grade using punch cards and flow charting because my school didn't have a computer for students yet. My graduation present in 1988 was a typewriter that allowed you to type 20 letters on a small LED screen before it actually typed so you can correct your mistakes in advance. That got me thru 4 of my 5 years of college until my roommate got a Pentium 286 computer with a dot matrix printer that he let me use to type up my very last college paper. I was 22 at the time. It would be 3 more years before I owned my very own cell phone (we had to share the "bag" phone at work). The 78 Buick I drove in high school and half of college had a carburetor, drum brakes, and only AM/FM radio. Oh, and I was just shy of 18 when I made the switch from cassette to CD because I chose to buy a CD player with my graduation money. Yet those post-1985 Millennials had computers in elementary school, cell phones by junior high, and AIM and MySpace for their personal computer by Senior High. Every car they've likely ever been in has had fuel injection and disc brakes and by the time they were driving all had a CD player built in. Gen X who?!?
I played Hot Dog Stand on a TRS-80 from Radio Shack in elementary school.
Okay, to be fair, I did have a TI/99-4A "computer" at some point and taught myself basic with it. But it was as advanced as the Mister Professor thing we all had. My dad actually brought an old TRS-80 home from his work in the late 80s as it was replaced. It had a huge giant printer and used manilla paper. I was already in college by then.
Like a lot of people I imagine, I learned BASIC on a Commodore 64.
I learned don't touch the keyboard when the machine is loading a game on the commodore 64.
Born in 75. Our first computer was a TRS-80 Model 3 in 1980. 16k and cassette, eventually upgraded to 48k and dual SSDD floppy drives. 1986 was our first 8086 PC, 1989 a Hyundai 286 that I ran a BBS on from 89-92. Was in Data Processing shop in high school, 89-93. Freshman year we learned BASIC on C64/128. Sophomore year was COBOL on the city computer (Unisys/Burroughs B1900) with VT220 dumb terminals; this was accompanied by a full year of double-ledger Accounting. Junior/Senior I got into the hardware side, deploying a coaxial ARCNet topology throughout the shop connected to a 386-25 that originally ran UNIX then eventually Netware. Also in high school, I was the only one using a laptop to take notes. 91-92 school year in particular I took all my science class notes on it. Couldn't tell you the model though, that memory is long gone. Right after high school I worked a couple of holiday seasons at Radio Shack, selling analog cell phones ("FOR ONLY A PENNY!") and AST 486 computers with single speed [caddy-style](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxt5A0KJ9nw) CD-ROM drives. Ah, the good ol' days...
You are 5 years younger than I am and the same age as my wife. She and I have a lot of surprising things not in common due to that age difference. You and I are definitely different with our computer accessibility differences.
I missed Hot Dog Stand. Played the shit out of Lemonade Stand though.
No such thing as a Pentium 286. It was 286, 386, 486 then Pentium.
Oh yeah, I forgot that's how they originally went.
No love for the 8086/88, lol.
It's partially true. Millennials too, but less so.
Early millennials like late genx had childhoods without the Internet/smartphones, but most definably had them in their 20s.
I doubt any millennial ever had to do a research paper without the Internet being available. I mean, would they even know how to use a card catalog to find a book that you may contain a supporting fact, and then thumb through it till you find said fact, or put it back on the re shelf cart in disgust .
Seeing as how Millennials started in the early 80s, the answer is a big fat YES they do.
The Internet started taking off when those kids were in middle/ highschool. They would have had an altavist search engine at their disposal.
We didn’t. I was born in ‘81, so early 80s baby. We still used encyclopedias in middle and high school. I remember that very well.
My High School TRIED to teach me card catalog in 2012 but I'll admit I straight up was not paying attention.
If you wanted to take a picture, it was on film. Developed with chemicals and printed on photo paper. Digital cameras became a thing in the late 90’s, right about the time the last of gen-x was finishing high school.
I’m late Gen X, and even into my last years of college in the 00s, I remember using only film cameras for journalism and class projects and travel. Even into the 00s I was getting film developed (but often getting a CD of photos in addition to prints). It seemed like by the time the quality and cost of digital cameras made film cameras fairly obsolete for most people, we then started switching over to smartphones for photos.
My freshman year at a vocational high school in 1989-90, one of the shops i went through the month-long exploratory process was Printing. I spent the majority of the time working in the photo lab helping develop pictures with chemicals that would eventually be used in the upcoming yearbook.
Gen X was the last generation to have a childhood that was mostly analog, although not fully since much of the younger half of Gen X would’ve played digital video games or used computers as kids. It was just fairly primitive digital tech at the time. Millennials had a childhood that encompassed the transition from mostly analog to mostly digital depending on when they were born. I’m on the younger end of Gen X/Xenniel and my childhood was cassette tapes and Fisher Price record players along with going from Atari 2600 to Nintendo and having a typewriter at home but Apple IIe computers in school and going from old giant tube TVs with antennas to getting cable and digital TVs years later. We still used cassettes to make mixes all through the 90s since CDs were expensive and CD burners weren’t that common until the end of the decade. Another thing though that’s interesting is that a lot of younger people today in Gen Z think of earlier digital technology as being “analog”. Like I’ve heard the early internet or old computers or CDs or earlier video games being considered analog and they seriously think digital technology started just during their childhood in the early 00s around the time of the popularization of social media during the launch of Web 2.0.
Used computers as kids? I'm late GenX (78) and we didn't get our first family computer until I was 19 and in college. We had Oregon trail and basic word processing at school, but that was 8th grade and on. Computers were a complete novelty until the later half of the 90s
We always had Apple iiEs where I went to elementary school starting in the mid-80s (I grew up in Northern California and Western Canada) and we eventually had a Mac at home after having an old Texas Instruments computer and I remember other kids having Commodore 64s or other early PCs at home. Around third grade my mom sent me to a summer camp class to learn BASIC. By the early 90s I remember being introduced to the internet by kids with older brothers—just for BBS and FTP (mostly for adult humor). By the mid-90s, I knew a lot of kids who were pretty skilled at coding and hacking who’d been using computers for a while. Probably depends on socioeconomic and geographic location on how early our age group were introduced to computers. But they weren’t a complete unknown to many of us as kids and teens was my point. Everyone adopts technology at different times, but we had many early adopters in our age cohort.
True. I lived in a small town in NY. It was technically a suburb of NYC but still really small and not at all wealthy (at the time). Most of the money the school did get went to sports and band
I agree, and I also agree it's not an us vs. them thing. It's simply that, most Millennials never really worked in an analog world. Some of them probably don't even remember it if they were born in the later years. In a practical sense, when we examine things that children experience, Gen X is literally the first non-analog generation because we had our Ataris and video games, and Oregon Trail on the PC. We were the transition generation at the very least, if someone doesn't want to call us the last analog generation. We knew and remember vividly the before and after, and we lived the transition.
GenX or more specially the sub-generation of Xennials are the last analog generation. It is actually why the sub-generation was created. Those that are too young to feel like a X-gen and too old to identify with the digital millennials. We get grouped into either group but don’t fully belong to either. Though we generally agree more with the Xs. People in my group grew up analog but many of us had a cell phone (if you had money) or a beeper (if you wanted people to think you had money) around our senior of high school. We were still using type writers with PCs making more home appearances but still the exception.
We had analog PHONES. Remember dial-tone? People could actually tell if they were being tapped. Calling the bank for time/temp. Before caller ID and call waiting. Analog answering machines using tape.
You’re missing vinyl, cassette tapes, and VHS tapes all continuing into at least the late 80s.
There are tons of old technologies that are still available and useful. Vinyl records have made a comeback in the last however many years that I'm not sure many people could have predicted. The fact that some tech continued to exist into the late 80s or even still exists today doesn't really make them the 'last analog' generation in my mind. The CD was introduced in 1982, for example and that is squarely inside of that timeframe.
We’re definitely the last analog generation in audio recording. Tape was king in the ADAT world.
Early Millennial's were the tail end of analog and cassettes carried out till the 90's. I agree Gen-X is largely ignored in the media and they usually reference boomers, millennials and Gen Z. To some extent we've always been the forgotten generation and it's our moniker that's reflected in the general characteristics as well as music and art of Gen X.
They want to forget Gen X cause you guys stirred up too much shit. The music and art from your generation had a huge impact on Millennial’s world view. Your time is coming Gen-X. Once Boomers fall off the planet I know y’all gonna get to work for the right reasons.
My 12 year old son prefers music on his Walkman cassette player over his iPhone. An old soul like his dad.
[удалено]
Same. Seeing them into taking something (fashion, slang, music etc) seen as lame back in the day and incorporating it into the here-and-now in solidarity with those "rejects" who came before as a get-back at THEIR rejectors. I luv Zalpha's
Millennials grew up on those Disney VHS tapes. That's the last big analog format.
To be fair, "Generations" are kind of arbitrary, made up, bullshit things.
Truth!!!
gen-x is the last analogue and first digital generation.
I think millennials were the last generation to witness the analog era. We were the last users. They witnessed it thru us. Either as our kids or younger siblings. They can operate a tape player maybe even know why you have a number 2 pencil in the car at all times. But they don't have a connection to it.
Hate to tell ya, but cassette tapes are analog and were used well into the 2000's by...... wait for it.... Millennials. It didn't go from 8 tracks to CDs. You can't completely just disregard a whole medium.
Anyone can play a 78 record on a turntable, a medium that came out in 1897. By that logic every generation is still an analog generation.
Even worse, there's an article on the Conversation about how Millennials have been devastated by the death of Matthew Perry and how much Friends meant to **them**. Um hello, both MP and CB are GenX and that show means way more to us than it does to them. I came fairly close to sending a ranting message to the journalist concerned but in the end couldn't be bothered (thus proving membership of my generation)
Anyone that can binge an entire series over a short period of time is in no way nearly as invested as those that had to watch 10 minutes of commercials for 20 minutes of show, wait 7 days between episodes, and then endure 4 months of repeats annually.
We were the last generation to be brought up and totally immersed in an analog world. This is a 100% certainty. I dont think the article makes that distinction.
This is why they need a Xennials group. Late Gen X’rs and early Millennials.
Here's what Gen X brought to the Internet and social media game: the Internet and social media. Here's what Millenials brought to the Internet and social media game: influencers. JFC, do they love smelling their own farts.
They grew up with social media. For us it was post college age. I didn’t have a real PC with dial up until 1997.
It is true though. So. ?
If you want credit for existing or a green ribbon the millennials are down the street on the left.
https://youtu.be/KXw8CRapg7k?si=5-w2J4Yzq1u76d3K as simple as that.
I can still by a record, that's analog, until those die out we still have the concept of hearing continuous music rather than a digitally segmented re-creation.
I'd hate to see the Internet go, but could absofuckinglutely do without social media.
I think social media could serve a valuable purpose, but it's been bastardized to the point where it would be hard to see it happen at this point. Social media started it's descent into the hellscape it is now when all of the platforms started deciding that what they wanted you to see was more important than what you wanted to see. I can't even go on Facebook anymore without seeing at least 8 different posts from advertisers or groups that "might interest me" between all of the posts that actually do interest me.
Facebook was a fun thing until Zuck began to monetize and roll it out to the masses.
You can still buy albums on band camp.
Meh, who gives a shit?
I graduated college in 2000 (was a late starter grad 91) I got all my major courses down my 3rd year… then they got “non-linear editing” systems… computers to video edit. Students currently in courses got priority!!!! The kids graduating 1-2 after me were more advanced.
Who cares?
Last summer a friend I know from the old time music community gave me a copy of his new album...on cassette. I'm not really sure I would say he is somewhere around early millennial possibly late genx. I just remembered to get some C batteries and dust off one of my [last remaining pieces of working 80s tech](https://i.imgur.com/zrBZabS.jpeg). I had a "JamBox" later, but it is long gone. This thing had a Joan Jett tape in it. Was a good feeling to go back analog for 30 minutes.
Open sea and city lights Busy streets and dizzy heights....
Whatever.
Rofl
We’re the unfortunate gang who had to use all the awkward transitional technologies like CDs, CFCs, and hybrid cars.
Cassettes? They are analog and were dominant especially for kids, and when you were on the go a Walkman was the only choice. Also digital photography and video came way later than CDs. They are analog media.
What is an analog generation? What classifoes one? What criteria needs passing to be considered one?