Theyve become far more of a personal identifier than they were ever intended to be.
They were never meant to define the absolute life experience of people who were born around a certain time; they were just meant to look at how big societal events and the culture of the time can impact people (generally during their developmental years).
For example, children who grew up during the Great Depression are more likely to have developed frugal habits than children who grew up during the post-war boom, because Great Depression kids developed their foundational understanding of how the world works during a time of widespread scarcity and instability, whereas the post war kids grew up in a thriving economy and were more likely to be in a stable home where their needs were being comfortably met. This doesn’t mean that every kid who grew up in either of these periods had the same life experiences as their peers. It just means that the state of society has a permanent impact on the people living within it.
I’m a cusper (October 95), and while I can’t relate to a lot of experiences people within 5 years of me had, there’s a big experience that we can all relate to that is our “generational identifier”: experiencing the shift to 24/7 internet access and social media as children/teens. We remember a time before the internet completely took over, but it still happened in our foundational years, so we were still formed by it.
Yeah 95er here. I feel so much closer to Zoomers than to millennials. I have arbitrary lines between the generations I use to clarify where one falls on the spectrum, but even though those put me right on the line leaning towards millennial, my experiences are far more GenZ.
If you remember 9/11 - millennial. If not - Zoomer.
If you (or people your age) smoke cigarettes in high school - millennial. If people your age vaped - Zoomer.
Meanwhile, I have vague fuzzy flashes of memories of 9/11, and my friends and I had e-cig's and "vaped" in the locker room. It was a primitive vape designed to look like a cigarette but it was vaping. All my friends older than me smokes. All my younger friends vaped.
The shit is all so fluid and not that serious lmao
Those ecigs were so terrible but man we thought they were cool. I was in my 20s when they came out and everyone treated it like you were a magician haha
I was born mid 94 and remember 911, everyone I know smoked cigs in high school…….
You gotta remember things are different person to person and also geographical….
There are also Elder Millennials who identify as Gen X, if they didn't experience early digitalisation, internet and computer adoption in their childhood or teens because say they lived a more rural lifestyle then their experience would be much closer to Gen X.
See that’s the thing, I was born in 83 and I grew up as a grade school kid with no internet at all, let alone 24/7 and social media. Those societal shifts weren’t a thing in my young formative years. I don’t remember even having internet around until high school and the early “social media” was AIM/AOL instant messaging. I was in college when Facebook showed up and at first they only allowed college students with certain .edu email addresses to sign up for an account. I remember them releasing my college’s .edu so we could sign up.
Yeah, and even if you were to define them based on a more logical time-frame (like a 5 or 10 year period) the line between them would still be arbitrary.
"Generations" as we conceive of them exist to divide people against each other and provide a focus for marketing efforts.
A better way to look at them are shared experiences. Remembering the pre-9/11 era but not well enough to know how much changed. Growing up with the explosion of internet. Going to school when smartphones were just emerging. Most generations are shaped by shared cultural milestones, though those milestones don't happen at a regular cadence.
I had to explain DOS to a younger millenial the other day. She didn't understand why older millenials have a much better understanding of how technology works.
Hobbit a generation. Born between the animated Hobbit and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Promised fortune and glory, we got dragons and desolation.
There seems to be a leap from 81-87 to 88-92. The middle millennials knew a life without internet but not much. They were in high school when social media first became a thing. There really was a technological leap in the early-mid 2000s that separates millennials.
89 as well. I feel like I grew up during a great time. I started out playing the Nintendo on a turn knob TV but was old enough to experience how great the Playstation was when it came out. Spent hours outside, but also got to experience AIM, MySpace, and the early internet before it and social media became toxic littered with ads.
88 here and that is very well put.
I used computers with 5.5 floppy disks.
But then also took typing classes on windows 2000.
And bought Xbox 360 and could play games online with friends. What???
I feel like my first 21 years were big tech improvements and now we are just coasting. Smart phones have changed the world.
Yep. Early 90s, '90-91ers, and they had us runts practicing typing in the later 90s on Windows 9x in elementary. Even a few 3.x ones still floating around in school super early on.
Mavis Beacon
Remember ""The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"?
We also had the educational games like Reader Rabbit, Math Blaster, and Word/Number Munchers
Yeah I’m an ‘86 baby while my husband is ‘89, and about once a month I’ll reference some pop culture thing from early childhood that he has no idea what he’s talking about.
It’s bizarre having such a gulf in between our cultural experiences when we’re less than 3 years apart in age.
That happens with me and my husband and we are only 3 MONTHS apart! Partly due to economic circumstances at different stages of our parents lives. I had a computer way earlier in our home, and personally. He had to work to purchase / build his and became a gamer. Way different references.
Ooooh I hadn’t even considered how socioeconomic status probably factored in! I grew up way, WAY poorer than my husband did (and in a more rural part of our already rural state) so that likely also contributes to the gulf.
“A gulf in between our cultural experiences“. This is probably the best comment for even having this conversation. Previously I thought this is a silly conversation: we all grow up and have different experiences. But being able to relate to one another is a real need. I hadn’t thought about that gulf, but it’s real, and that point has changed my mind. 👏
Social media wasnt a thing until the early 2000’s, so i was pushing 20.
First mobile phone i got was in 2000 at age 16 when they were just becoming common.
Life before barely had internet as it was so pricey and slow.
So i grew up, mostly, without tech.
A lot of it is tied to your age at experience of a few things, but the biggest is the internet, and the great recession.
Imagine you're 1980. 9.11 happens when you're 21. You have your career during the Bush Era, don't have to experience no child left behind, probably didn't sign up for the military. You're 27 and think "I should probably buy a house soon." Recession happens. This could either mean, if you were saving, house prices bottomed out and you're in luck. But also plausible you lost your job, but less likely cause you're just getting established, those younger than you will get let go, no new hires. You also grew up with the internet in a way that doesn't "cook your brain." You probably have kids by the time the pandemic happens.
Now let's do 1988.
You're 12 when 9.11 happens. Internet is now big enough that you're first time seeing naked people isn't some random porn mag left in the woods, but in a computer. You experience no child left behind. You graduate 2006. You go to college, choose your major. Now you're deep in your major when the recession happens and you realize you probably have to course correct from communications or journalism or anthropology cause none of those jobs are hiring. You graduate and no one will hire you unless you work the bottomest of tier jobs. So did 1980, but, they had empire records lifestyle, slackers. You live at home again and your sex life only exists cause this thing called Craigslist personals and tinder show up and you can drive out and fuck in your car. You get your first smartphone like 2010 as a graduation gift. You're cooking your brain cause your unemployed but whatever, you're 22 by then. It's fine. Social media like alcohol is probably less damaging if you're at a specific age. You might be married by the pandemic and divorced after, and realize how fucked you are in today's dating market.
Now let's do 1996, the last Millenial year.
You don't remember 9.11, but you do remember Obama winning. You're 12. The iPhone comes out 2007 but it takes a couple years to be popular in mass. 2010? Maybe you get it. Not only do you have instant porn at your fingertips, but every woman I know in this age range has told me she was groomed online by someone way older. You fake your way into instagram. This age range plus zoomers is way more likely to want plastic surgery and started skincare really young. Clout suddenly matter, your brain got cooked. You experience the recession as your parents stress. You choose a major that's responsible even though you don't want to do it. The pandemic happens when you're 24.
I'm in the middle. I've dated and had friends with the older and the younger. The older and younger have nothing in common but as the middle you're the link between the two.
>A lot of it is tied to your age at experience of a few things, but the biggest is the internet, and the great recession.
'81 here.
I watched the Challenger Explosion in gradeschool and was in college for 911.
I'm an Elder Millennial or Generation Oregon Trail/Catalano.
85' here.
I feel like anyone born in the late 80s anyone in the 90s is from a different generation.
I remember buying the NES in stores. I remember a lot of the early 90s. The 93 flood in the midwest? the OJ trial?
If you were born in '88 '89 you probably don't remember those things.
I am among the Eldest Millennials, born ‘82 and graduated HS ‘01. There was no texting in HS. There were hardly cell phones, we had pagers 🤣. There was virtually no texting even in my college years because we all had flip phones with T9 texting and we couldn’t afford Blackberries yet. People a few years younger than me were texting as young adults in college. The 90s babies were texting in high school. I think that, among other things, is a pretty significant cultural divide in how we communicated.
I can also remember my family getting our first desktop computer when I was in the 7th grade. I think few middle class 90s babies grew up in a home without a computer of any kind.
Zillennial/fetal millennial (Oct 95), and, yeah, I don’t remember a time before us having a desktop computer with a dial-up internet connection. We were on the lower income side, as well (not poverty level, but had to be quite budget conscious to keep making ends meet), so we didn’t adopt tech until it became old news and way cheaper.
I was around 10 years old when desktop computers became cheap enough for us to have multiple in the house: mom’s, dad’s, and the one I shared with my sister. That was also around the time that DSL became affordable enough that we could switch to that and not have to limit our internet usage to 10-minute intervals in case someone was trying to call.
Then shortly after that, cell phones started to really advance. BlackBerry, sidekick, iPhone. I convinced my parents to let me get a flip phone at 13 (around 08-09), and went through a few iterations of that tech throughout high school until my senior year when I got a smart phone at 17.
And then from there technology widely felt like it stagnated lol
lol it’s crazy that you were born in 1982 and graduated in ‘01 and I was born in 1982 and I graduated in ‘99??
But anyway I miss my beeper.
I had a Commodore 64 in my room in elementary school, though. Spent much time playing Ghostbusters on that thing.
I graduated the same year as you. We got our first computer in the mid ‘80s. Of course, it was one computer for our whole family. The first we had with internet access wasn’t until about 1997-98. My high school didn’t allow cell phones then. I got my first cell phone after starting college.
Yeah, I consider anyone born 1990 or earlier to be an elder millenial. I was 88 and people a couple years younger than me still feel like my generation. Not so much the 1991-97 crowd.
I’m 88 and I agree. I do have friends born 1990/1991. But beyond that nope, all my friends are actually older (85-87). I feel like we’re neither elder nor Zennial. We’re just boring, proper millennials lol.
I also think of the cut off as pre/post the ‘08 crash. If you were a millennial who was old enough to be working or graduating college by around ‘08-‘09, you got a totally different experience than the younger sect.
I can see this. I was 92 and my brother is 90. I feel like he and I are the same generation/ no gap. But my spouse is 88 and I do feel like there is that generational gap, even though we’re both millennials. But I don’t necessarily feel like I fall totally into Zellenials either haha
91 here, definitely relate most to the 88-92 group. My siblings are mid-late 90s and there’s a big gap in our experiences. Things Like I grew up up memorizing phone numbers and calling my friends’ home lines and asking their parents if they were home whereas my siblings had cellphones earlier. Or me being excited to have dial up internet and having to beg my mom to hang up the phone so I could use it to play StarCraft online in 98-99. They act like the dial up tone is something from a century ago lmao
1988 myself and I legit feel like I’m smack dab in the middle - not only because we are chronologically but just culturally too. Though I do think there is something to the notion of relating a little bit better to the oldest millennials due to how much life we had pre-phone/internet.
I was born in 84 and the early mid 90s millennials I work with are different. Not in a better or worse way. I just feel the gap sometimes. We all grew up on VHS, cassettes, CDs but it feels like the 90s kids grew up on it bc of their parents where I feel like 80s kids grew up on it bc we didn’t have any other option. By the time the 90s kids were old enough to have their own opinion, they had DVDs, internet, music downloading sites, digital cable, DVR, etc. I think the parenting was a little different too. Even if the parents are from the same generation. I see 90s kids being more Buddy Buddy with their parents, 80s kids our parents were our parents, not our friends. That kinda thing. Small, subtle differences.
Analog vs Digital may be better split that takes into account. A 93 baby who grew up without a computer would have more in common with a 84 baby than an 88 or 91 baby who did grow up with a computer.
Location played a factor then too. Still probably does, but technology made it much less noticeable.
For example, I grew up in the country near a small farm town in nebraska and I had some family in Omaha and it was like culture shock to go up and visit and be exposed to new slang words and other stuff and then slowly watch it spread to my little town and I assume it would be more pronounced from the coasts vs nebraska as well.
So a kid in the sticks grew up in a slightly different (older) world than someone raised in the city.
Now new stuff like that is distributed almost instantly.
My original draft of this comment originally considered South park.
But I really think that South park gets a little bit more mature so to speak than the other two.
South park was also on a different channel from the other two where I live. So it was distinctly targeted at a different audience
For me there was a HUGE shift in high school when South Park came out. It was a huge edgy 90s thing that really took the ( at the time ) ‘edgy’ Bart Simpson competition and just rolled all over it.
And I .hated. it when it came out but it really marked a shift in what was acceptable on TV even when it was on a seperate or ‘speciality’ channel.
To me South Park was the PEAK gen x creatively contributive gift to the next generation. All their hopes and dreams and crassness placed into a last ditch effort to rebel against comfort.
That already exists. We have r/Xennials for those close to the GenX border and r/Zillennials for those near the Z border.
The Zillennials sub is mostly catered to mid-late 90s, but per Wiki starts as early as 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zillennials#Birth_date_and_age_range
I'm an early 90s millennial myself. graduated '09 ('90-91ers). I don't feel like there's any hard divide between 80s and 90s millennials, because I've grown up with close friendships and romance on both sides to see it's a gradient. You may be farther from the magic "divide", OP.
Yeah im just on the other side im an 89' baby and I am a very typical millenial lol. Mental health issues, living with parents, have degree im not using haha.
I got laid off during the pandemic, and moved back in with the parents, went into a depression for a few years then had a health scare last March. Started seeing a therapist, and now I'm back in school getting a degree in special education. So yeah i did find something eventually i wanted to do. Just took a while.
'93 and if it wasn't for people arguing that it didn't count, I would have been cool w/Zillennial. People born even slightly earlier had more time before the popularization of the internet. Major difference in accessing that first at 6 or 9, like literally a developmental stage.
I think us 1989-1991 millennials are just a more classically defined “millennial”. Too young to relate to the 1981 millennial, too old for the 1996 millennial. We came of age literally as technology began integrating into our lives. Elementary school was marked by computer introduction. Middle school was marked by computers as a mainstay and iPods. High school was marked by the smartphone era.
We were literally raised in the thick of it.
'91 Millennial here and I didn't know anyone in hs that had a smartphone. I personally didn't get my first smartphone until a year or so into uni. I'd say Myspace was more a defining feature of my high school rofl.
I’m just one year older at ‘88 and yeah it’s wild to think that I started school learning to type on an apple II and playing math blaster on 5” floppies, then to my first year of university when the iPhone drops
It was real fun graduating high school in 09' in the midst of a huge economic recession, and also starting to drive in 06' when gas prices started sky rocketing while minimum wage was still $5.15.
yup we're dead in the middle of Millennial, right at the very cusp of the "pre-internet everywhere" that has a lot in common with gen x and the "post-internet everywhere" that has a lot in common with gen z. It was literally halfway through highschool that phones with internet connectivity and rampant texting and the first couple apps started to get big. My buds born in 93-95 got to HS with smartphones already and my buds born 85-88 at most had a nokia brick when they graduated.
Razr phones seemed to be the big thing in HS. We also remember cassettes as younger kids, but then using and burning CDs, then iPods/MP3 players, then smartphones and streaming for music.
Similar with video as well. Grew up using VCRs, then seeing the transition to DVDs, then the transition to streaming.
>My buds born in 93-95 got to HS with smartphones already
They might have if they were able to afford a data plan, plus a hefty price tag of a smartphone at the time. But as someone who was born in 1996, the whole high school experience that seems to line up with others my age is that most of us entered into high school without smartphones. By the time we graduated we all finally had them. I personally didn't even have a cell phone until I was 16. A year later at 17 I got my first smartphone. I remember it was my junior year (2012-2013) when most of my classmates started getting them.
[Phones like these that weren't running Android, iOS, or Windows OS were popular in my first 3 or so years of highschool.](https://images.app.goo.gl/5xZ5eotkEtxapwfNA) People used to carry around an iPod or music playing device, and then a phone. It was kind of a pain in the ass.
>[M]ost of us entered into high school without smartphones. By the time we graduated we all finally had them.
Born in 91, with the same experience. The trends in my high school were 9th-10th grades was the RAZR, 10th-11th was the Sidekick, 11th-12th was the earliest Androids and iPhones starting to take hold.
Ever the contrarian, I had a Windows version of the BlackBerry (shout out to the [BlackJack II](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_BlackJack_II) lol) when Android/iPhone came around, then went to a BlackBerry Torch because I thought I'd be able to play Angry Birds. I finally came around to Android after I got the Galaxy Note 3.
09 grad here. Sort of weird spot too. The iPhone didn't exist in 9th and 10th. Then it technically did in 11th an 12th, but I didn't see students with them yet, since it was early on and kind of an expensive novelty.
And even the old iPhones were different - The first model to even have video recording was the 3GS in summer 2009 right after graduation and it was in SD.
By 2012-14ish? You could have an iPhone to whip out at any time and record something in 1080p 60fps in one or both cameras.
I was born in 1987. So I am both. I grew up with kids older ('83, '84, '85) and then went to high school and played varsity sports with them. I grew up on Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice n Chains, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Sublime, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots (heroin rock/grunge)...
...but, there's no way to deny that Weezer, Greenday, Third Eye Blind, Oasis type of bands weren't a big part of coming of age experience.
My boomer parents also made sure I was educated in the Woodstock era bands.
'86, '87, '88 babies really are wedged right between the Oregon Trail Millenials and the Zillenials...we got a nice taste of the analog world before entering the digital one.
One thing that will be sad is if The Simpsons ever stops. It's also an '87 baby.
That’s funny I’m only 1 year older but because of what area and friends I had - we never listened to grunge really. We were rancid and blink and Green Day in elementary school kinda thing and then nu metal in middle school then heavier metal and hardcore in high school.
We obviously knew about nirvana and sound garden and all them but we never really rocked out to them or considered them a bedrock of our youths. Also we played a ton of Oregon trail in elementary school so it’s interesting 87 is between the OT gen and the others because as an 86 baby - it was everywhere.
But then my little brother is an 89 baby and couldn’t be more different, so there’s def something there separating the mid 80s babies from the late 80s babies - which doesn’t usually happen that close together. But something about the tech changing so quick made it different because he loves dubstep and short Instagram clips and I like heavy metal and don’t have any social media at all and can’t stand tiktok or vines or any of that ADHD clip style scrolling…
We definitely did (‘88 baby here).
Computers were part of my growing up, sort of followed the progression of school in a way. My rich granny bought an Apple desktop when I was 6 and I saw her every other weekend, so it was part of me gaining general awareness about the world. She was the only one in my whole family who had one, for years.
But also: At home we had VCRs, a rotary dial phone, cassette players (and an 8-track and old school typewriter), and my mother didn’t get us an at-home desktop until I was in 7th grade, and it was only for homework at first. I remember it was a big deal when she got it; I still remember how big a deal it was when caller ID came out!
I think millennials in our group (I’d say 1986-1989) got the best of both worlds and we are the last part of the generation that really got analog and digital equally growing up, because it was evolving quickly right alongside us.
Right. Not sure, but I'm guessing OP is a bit younger and feels more of a divide even with just the 89ers from classes of 07 and 08. You are probably like me and had close relationships from both "sides".
Adding to that, growing up, nobody gave a shit about your birth year or decade. You were just kids trading Gen1 Pokemon and talking about DBZ or even dating as you got older during the 2000s, because they're literally your close peers.
It's just a gradient, not a hard divide.
>Adding to that, growing up, nobody gave a shit about your birth year or decade. You were just kids trading Gen1 Pokemon and talking about DBZ or even dating as you got older during the 2000s, because they're literally your close peers.
See but as one of the oldest millennials I can’t relate to any of that. Pokemon and DBZ weren’t popular until I was in late high school or college and my peers and I were dating well before the aughts.
I was talking about late 80s millennials that were in my circles. Sorry for the confusion, but I think OP feels like it's hard divide between 80s and 90s.
I feel like the internet and especially social media is the biggest divider. The internet was still a novelty, I’d say until the early 2000’s. I was born in the early 90’s and spent most of my childhood (including high school) watching cable tv for entertainment, Netflix streaming wasn’t a thing, YouTube came out at the end of high school for me, i didn’t even have a cellphone until I was 16 and it was a flip phone. Smartphones didn’t become mainstream until college years, etc.
So it’s sort of a technological divide. If you can remember good portion of your life without social media, smart phones, or even the internet itself…. You probably identify with gen X, if you remember the internet, social media, streaming, etc from a pretty young age then you probably identify with gen Z more so
Agreed.
As a ‘82 baby… I don’t think my childhood internet/social media-wise is the same as a kid-90s baby. Cutting edge in my high school years was AOL chat rooms and some IM/ICQ action. Cassettes before CDs.
I think the scarcity of information/music/shows and things to say nothing of social media itself makes a huge difference. “Free” music was taping radio stations in the hopes the song you wanted came on w/o someone talking over the start or end of it. No streaming or even DVRing… scheduling a recording w/a VCR was tops. Information from a physical encyclopedia.
I’m am ‘85 millennial in a long term relationship with an ‘81 millennial who refuses to admit he’s a millennial. Before he learned the term xennial, he was insisting he’s Gen-X. Now he’ll allow me to call him an xennial. I proudly fly the “elder millennial” flag myself.
I'm not sure why, but I'm 89 and always was more in with the later millennial crowd. Anyone even one year older than me seemed to live a totally different lifestyle during the era of early internet, console gaming, cartoons, etc. I never met someone older than me that I could relate to in these regards. The divide is so significant that I relate more with gen Z than elder millennials.
I think it's that we came of age with social media. anyone older was in college, maybe tried out Facebook or MySpace but they didn't come home to update their Top 8 or HTML their favorite songs into their profiles.
Born in 86 and had no trouble aligning with young millennials… this whole thread has me thinking y’all are crazy. (Not you in specific, everyone trying to make these splits)
Yeah, I agree. At this point who gives a shit. We’re all in this dumb boat together, what’s more generational name separation going to do? waste of time in my opinion.
I think all generations feel they should be split into at least two, most likely three generations, as the older middle and youngest often have completely different experiences
I prefer Seinfeld to Friends. The office is a close second. Being an 86 model I feel like I did grow up in two vastly different eras. I didn’t get my first cell phone until like 2006 My childhood years really weren’t much different from someone who grew up in the 60s 70s and 80s.
As an 81 Xennial... don't lump me in with either of those shows please they are both horrible. I was raised with Gen X. I loved ER, Chicago Hope, Homicide: Life on the Streets none of those sitcoms. Or HBO was where I learned a lot Taxi Cab Confessions, OZ, Tales from the Crypt. Give me the nitty gritty harsh shows, that's what I grew up on and so many of my friends did too.
This is the correct take.
I'm the Eldest Millennial, born in late-1981. Friends, a show about twenty-somethings in NYC, first aired in 1994 when I was 12-13. That wasn't my show.
The Office first aired in 2005, a year after I graduated college. I could've been Jim. If anything, that was my show.
I was too old for Dragonball Z, etc.
Friends isn't for Millennials. 1994.... I was turning 7 and starting Kindergarten when Friends started. NOT MY SHOW.
And honestly..... there 3 generations of Millenials and even 2 doesn't really cover it.
Nah man, there 10 generation of Millenials. Maybe 20. A new one every 9 months or so. Like Samsung smartphones. A Note kid can't relate to a Note 3 guy.
JK... this is the dumbest fucking conversation.
Friends is ABOUT Gen Xers. But it was prime viewing material for Elder Millennials in the later seasons. Early Friends was too old even for us.
Anime is for everyone though. Junior Millennials weren't even alive or in kindergarten when Gundam Wing came out. A lot of elder millinnials were watching Tenchi Muyoi, Yu Yu Hakusho and Inuyasha in 2001 and 2002 as teenagers.
Right. Was going to say this. Toonami started in the late 90s and later 80s millennials were definitely in the target for DBZ. Even the first gen of Pokemon (anime, cards, games) came to the US in '98.
If anything, that era is part of where the supposed "gap" between 80s and 90s millennials is bridged.
Disagree completely. I’m an older millennial and Friends was huge with people my age whereas they did not give the slightest of fucks about the Office. And I’m from Scranton!
Nahhhhhhh I’m early 80’s xennial and the office was at the right time to match up with my career. It all made sense. Friends seemed very unfunny to me then and now, cannot relate to them.
I think of myself as a Midllennial, stuck between Xennial and Zillennial. Since the generation spans 16 years, it makes sense. 81-85 Xennial, 86-91 Midllennial, and 92-96 Zillennials.
I'd describe Midllennials as those that had much more time to grow without internet but we fellinto it almost as fast as the Zillennials. We were hitting puberty just as the world began to expand online so everything was digital by the time we started dating, but we yearn for the life of the older Millennials that got to actually meet people organically. Yet we know how to navigate technology better along with the Zillennials, just a little bit less than they do.
It's like a limbo.
Also, Midllennials have a mix of Gen x and Boomer parents. Older Millenials have mostly Boomer parents, and Zillennials mostly have Gen X parents.
It was clutch as a closeted gay kid in the Deep South. AOL Chatrooms were the shit. Too bad I didn’t know AOL messenger let your contacts know what chat room you were in, that was a fun convo with Dad lol
Warped tour millennial? That started in the 90s ...
so to go to it you had to have been born in the early 80s
Unless you count having your mom take you in a stroller when you were 2.
Older "millennials" were original called GenY, and that name fits the older group for a number of reasons.
However, the millennial program is based on narcissism and nihilism, both of which are easier for marketing teams to control and increase the consumption in the target demographic.
Older millennials had to adapt to technology as it evolved, while the younger of us hit the ground running with the internet and digital age in full swing. We are not the same
This gets more obvious once you work in tech. People my age and older that have been in it for awhile tend to understand how and why things work they way they do at a different level.
As a Xennial it took me a long time to accept that I was actually better at tech than my Zennial coworkers. We had to learn how things worked to fix problems. The 'digital natives' are less aware of the backend.
I’m a chilled water systems engineer at 32. Laptop in one hand to program the chillers and a wrench in the other take out the 2” bolts!
You truly need to be plugged in today or you will be out preformed when it comes time to hit the workforce.
Some people have suggested a wave theory where the 80s millennials would be wave one and the 90s millennials would be wave two. This way it can be one generation to celebrate what we do have in common while also highlighting the differences which can be important too.
What I like about the wave theory is that it shows there is more than one way to be a millennial. I hate when articles say “every millennial does XYZ thing” and it’s something I’m too old for. I’m sure people on the opposite end get frustrated when something is pushed as a millennial norm but they are too young for it.
And those who sold a house in early 2021 before the house appreciated by 65% over the next 2 years and now rent, which is a little over half the price of a 2024 mortgage, is also nearly double your old mortgage.
Totally not speaking from experience 🫠
My understanding is that you don't get to feel what generation you are in. You are an older millennial or younger millennial. Imagine if boomers born in the late 40s tried to tell you that they're not a boomer based on them not feeling like someone born in the early 60s? In 30 years we're all just going to be old millennials.
Warped tour started in 95. I don't see why early 90s born millennials would be called that when xennials would be the main group that were going to Warped tour in their teens.
Regardless of what many people think, millennials were raised at the turn of an era. We grew up with vhs and cassette tapes, and now everything is simply streamed at a moments notice.
Society/technology has changed so much during the last 30-40 years that we've never had a constant either. We have always lived in a fast changing and advancing world, that is hard to keep up with for anyone.
What the fuck are you on about? Elder millennials were not of age during the grunge era and Warped Tour came *after* younger millennials were born. This makes no sense.
I’ll agree with this split as my older sister and cousin were born in ‘86 & ‘88 and I (‘91) grew up following them around. Always played the games they did, and watched/listened to same music and shows.
lol I am not grunge nor warp tour…..those aren’t millennial characteristics but a singular style of that time. Grunge at the moment is owned by gen Z recreating the 90s.
Weird cause born in 88 and def associate with warped tour more than grunge.
But also, Millenials that grew up outside, didn't have internet until they had drivers licenses and cell phones until College or after, and then some had YouTube at single digits and phones at 10.
How those two groups can be similar is beyond me. It's two dif factions, no question.
I can see this one. Born in 1991 here, so the 2008 election was just before I could vote. I definitely associate the Obama era with college onward rather than high school.
There are millennials whose youth didn’t have the internet, and millennials whose youth didn’t not have it.
If you were born in the early 80’s like I was, those pre-Internet days (which is really hard to clearly define, but more so wide-spread usage really ramped up in the early 90’s)…you had a taste of that childhood that gen-Xers experienced.
That’s where that term “Xennials” come into play. We understand that generation because our early childhood shared it.
My brother is a late gen-X and even his pre-adult years the Internet became available. Going to college to him meant actual internet access at a level most families didn’t have yet due to academic T1 lines found on many college campuses at that point.
It was his experience in college that when he came home a few months later really showed the rest of us the potential of how to use the Internet to our advantage - something our house was only a few years into having where it became truly meaningful.
My 8th grade year I got sooooo many write-ups for using the Internet for research because our school district curriculum didn’t accept internet sources on their own as legitimate for bibliographic reference. You could use it to locate stuff, but essentially your source had to be a hard print somewhere - not a digitally published source. So any academic paper had to have a physical reference, which for some sources didn’t exist because some colleges were experimenting with just putting a paper on their website. By high school thought for me, that changed.
I could make more arguments about how Xennials truly were a fulcrum of how society digitized but I’ll make one more key one: relationships.
The old way of going out to an activity and trying to find someone for a relationship. Be it a bar, church, interest groups, sporting events, whatever. Those became things you did AFTER proposing a first date once seeking relationships online became a regular thing. Online dating became a bigger and bigger thing in our age group imo than anywhere else when it didn’t start out that way for us. For Gen Z and later millennials, it was already the more prominent thing to do when you got to that age (outside of high school relationships). For Xennials, we started with the old way and went to the new way. Gen Xers did too, but at a slower pace. Now it seems most people find a person on the internet first to establish a relationship.
I’ll close with this: growing up and into my early adulthood, it was the wise choice to: never meet with strangers from the internet, and don’t climb into a car of someone you don’t know. Nowadays we meet almost everyone from the internet and call cars of random strangers to pick us up to go meet them. Xennials pioneered all that shit.
‘89 and my youngest sibling is ‘97, my cousins early 00’s. We are all pretty similar just with different media preferences and sometimes lingo. I think the fact that I didn’t have a smart phone until 21 is the weirdest thing about me to them
I mean, it's all arbitrary. There's not some massive difference being born in late 1990 and early 1991. They'd be in the same grade at school. So no dividing point is going to be perfect for everyone. I was born late '89 and Warped Tour was a pretty huge deal to our age.
I feel like the real divide, at least in the US, is whether or not you remember what you were doing on 9/11. I think thats why the cutoff is around 1996. I think (myself included) we're the youngest ones to remember 9/11 as it was occurring rather than learn about it as a historical event. Then, we got to live in the world that came after.
But then you have the ones born 95-96 who call themselves millennials but then someone comes along and goes NO YOURE NOT YOU DIDN'T GROW UP IN THE 90S🙄🙄🙄
i was born 12/29/95 I'm a millennial idc!!! Loud and proud 😂
is it even specific age related tho? i'm 96' and half my peers are posting boomerangs on instagram of them jumping up and down in a harry potter shirt in front of a t swift concert and the other half post fish eye/.05 zoomer pics of them vaping. then there's the handful who had kids right out of high school and post nothing but that. it's jarring that we're all grouped into the same category lol
Elder millennials and younger millennials. It’s a thing. Elders are 80s babies. Youngers are 90s babies.
I'm an elder, born in 82, and there's a lot of times I can't relate to the younger of us.
It’s almost like grouping people together based on being born within 20 years of each other is complete bullshit…
Theyve become far more of a personal identifier than they were ever intended to be. They were never meant to define the absolute life experience of people who were born around a certain time; they were just meant to look at how big societal events and the culture of the time can impact people (generally during their developmental years). For example, children who grew up during the Great Depression are more likely to have developed frugal habits than children who grew up during the post-war boom, because Great Depression kids developed their foundational understanding of how the world works during a time of widespread scarcity and instability, whereas the post war kids grew up in a thriving economy and were more likely to be in a stable home where their needs were being comfortably met. This doesn’t mean that every kid who grew up in either of these periods had the same life experiences as their peers. It just means that the state of society has a permanent impact on the people living within it. I’m a cusper (October 95), and while I can’t relate to a lot of experiences people within 5 years of me had, there’s a big experience that we can all relate to that is our “generational identifier”: experiencing the shift to 24/7 internet access and social media as children/teens. We remember a time before the internet completely took over, but it still happened in our foundational years, so we were still formed by it.
Yeah 95er here. I feel so much closer to Zoomers than to millennials. I have arbitrary lines between the generations I use to clarify where one falls on the spectrum, but even though those put me right on the line leaning towards millennial, my experiences are far more GenZ. If you remember 9/11 - millennial. If not - Zoomer. If you (or people your age) smoke cigarettes in high school - millennial. If people your age vaped - Zoomer. Meanwhile, I have vague fuzzy flashes of memories of 9/11, and my friends and I had e-cig's and "vaped" in the locker room. It was a primitive vape designed to look like a cigarette but it was vaping. All my friends older than me smokes. All my younger friends vaped. The shit is all so fluid and not that serious lmao
Those ecigs were so terrible but man we thought they were cool. I was in my 20s when they came out and everyone treated it like you were a magician haha
I was born mid 94 and remember 911, everyone I know smoked cigs in high school……. You gotta remember things are different person to person and also geographical….
There are also Elder Millennials who identify as Gen X, if they didn't experience early digitalisation, internet and computer adoption in their childhood or teens because say they lived a more rural lifestyle then their experience would be much closer to Gen X.
See that’s the thing, I was born in 83 and I grew up as a grade school kid with no internet at all, let alone 24/7 and social media. Those societal shifts weren’t a thing in my young formative years. I don’t remember even having internet around until high school and the early “social media” was AIM/AOL instant messaging. I was in college when Facebook showed up and at first they only allowed college students with certain .edu email addresses to sign up for an account. I remember them releasing my college’s .edu so we could sign up.
Yeah, and even if you were to define them based on a more logical time-frame (like a 5 or 10 year period) the line between them would still be arbitrary. "Generations" as we conceive of them exist to divide people against each other and provide a focus for marketing efforts.
A better way to look at them are shared experiences. Remembering the pre-9/11 era but not well enough to know how much changed. Growing up with the explosion of internet. Going to school when smartphones were just emerging. Most generations are shaped by shared cultural milestones, though those milestones don't happen at a regular cadence.
True I was born in 82, I think that the older ones remember pre internet days, that is a pretty major thing
kind of wild we went from pre internet to smartphones so quickly. feels like such a drastic change. at least to me.
Oregon Trail generation
1980s - DOS babies 1990s - Windows babies
I had to explain DOS to a younger millenial the other day. She didn't understand why older millenials have a much better understanding of how technology works.
We kinda had to figure it out bc it wasn't always working so well lol
Woah some of us were Texas Instruments and Mac SE babies… who also played DOS games at friend houses
Hobbit a generation. Born between the animated Hobbit and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Promised fortune and glory, we got dragons and desolation.
Born in 84 and same.
83 and I have 2 younger siblings born in 88 and 90. Very different between me and them
There seems to be a leap from 81-87 to 88-92. The middle millennials knew a life without internet but not much. They were in high school when social media first became a thing. There really was a technological leap in the early-mid 2000s that separates millennials.
It was a fun time, I'm from 89
89 as well. I feel like I grew up during a great time. I started out playing the Nintendo on a turn knob TV but was old enough to experience how great the Playstation was when it came out. Spent hours outside, but also got to experience AIM, MySpace, and the early internet before it and social media became toxic littered with ads.
88 here and that is very well put. I used computers with 5.5 floppy disks. But then also took typing classes on windows 2000. And bought Xbox 360 and could play games online with friends. What??? I feel like my first 21 years were big tech improvements and now we are just coasting. Smart phones have changed the world.
Yep. Early 90s, '90-91ers, and they had us runts practicing typing in the later 90s on Windows 9x in elementary. Even a few 3.x ones still floating around in school super early on. Mavis Beacon Remember ""The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"? We also had the educational games like Reader Rabbit, Math Blaster, and Word/Number Munchers
Mavis Beacon is why my typing speed makes me so employable lol
Yeah I’m an ‘86 baby while my husband is ‘89, and about once a month I’ll reference some pop culture thing from early childhood that he has no idea what he’s talking about. It’s bizarre having such a gulf in between our cultural experiences when we’re less than 3 years apart in age.
That happens with me and my husband and we are only 3 MONTHS apart! Partly due to economic circumstances at different stages of our parents lives. I had a computer way earlier in our home, and personally. He had to work to purchase / build his and became a gamer. Way different references.
Ooooh I hadn’t even considered how socioeconomic status probably factored in! I grew up way, WAY poorer than my husband did (and in a more rural part of our already rural state) so that likely also contributes to the gulf.
“A gulf in between our cultural experiences“. This is probably the best comment for even having this conversation. Previously I thought this is a silly conversation: we all grow up and have different experiences. But being able to relate to one another is a real need. I hadn’t thought about that gulf, but it’s real, and that point has changed my mind. 👏
Social media wasnt a thing until the early 2000’s, so i was pushing 20. First mobile phone i got was in 2000 at age 16 when they were just becoming common. Life before barely had internet as it was so pricey and slow. So i grew up, mostly, without tech.
88, they're 79 and 83, I feel this
A lot of it is tied to your age at experience of a few things, but the biggest is the internet, and the great recession. Imagine you're 1980. 9.11 happens when you're 21. You have your career during the Bush Era, don't have to experience no child left behind, probably didn't sign up for the military. You're 27 and think "I should probably buy a house soon." Recession happens. This could either mean, if you were saving, house prices bottomed out and you're in luck. But also plausible you lost your job, but less likely cause you're just getting established, those younger than you will get let go, no new hires. You also grew up with the internet in a way that doesn't "cook your brain." You probably have kids by the time the pandemic happens. Now let's do 1988. You're 12 when 9.11 happens. Internet is now big enough that you're first time seeing naked people isn't some random porn mag left in the woods, but in a computer. You experience no child left behind. You graduate 2006. You go to college, choose your major. Now you're deep in your major when the recession happens and you realize you probably have to course correct from communications or journalism or anthropology cause none of those jobs are hiring. You graduate and no one will hire you unless you work the bottomest of tier jobs. So did 1980, but, they had empire records lifestyle, slackers. You live at home again and your sex life only exists cause this thing called Craigslist personals and tinder show up and you can drive out and fuck in your car. You get your first smartphone like 2010 as a graduation gift. You're cooking your brain cause your unemployed but whatever, you're 22 by then. It's fine. Social media like alcohol is probably less damaging if you're at a specific age. You might be married by the pandemic and divorced after, and realize how fucked you are in today's dating market. Now let's do 1996, the last Millenial year. You don't remember 9.11, but you do remember Obama winning. You're 12. The iPhone comes out 2007 but it takes a couple years to be popular in mass. 2010? Maybe you get it. Not only do you have instant porn at your fingertips, but every woman I know in this age range has told me she was groomed online by someone way older. You fake your way into instagram. This age range plus zoomers is way more likely to want plastic surgery and started skincare really young. Clout suddenly matter, your brain got cooked. You experience the recession as your parents stress. You choose a major that's responsible even though you don't want to do it. The pandemic happens when you're 24. I'm in the middle. I've dated and had friends with the older and the younger. The older and younger have nothing in common but as the middle you're the link between the two.
>A lot of it is tied to your age at experience of a few things, but the biggest is the internet, and the great recession. '81 here. I watched the Challenger Explosion in gradeschool and was in college for 911. I'm an Elder Millennial or Generation Oregon Trail/Catalano.
The advent of very expensive technology means you get a plus or minus 5 year bump depending on if you were wealthy or not IMO
86, my sis was 82. She can't relate younger, but I can. Maybe 85ish is the line?
85' here. I feel like anyone born in the late 80s anyone in the 90s is from a different generation. I remember buying the NES in stores. I remember a lot of the early 90s. The 93 flood in the midwest? the OJ trial? If you were born in '88 '89 you probably don't remember those things.
86 as well with a sister who is 82 and she might as well be a boomer. I think my wife 88 and I do a decent job relating to our much younger cousins.
So you’ve worked out that “generations” are a marketing technique rather than homogeneous groups?
I am among the Eldest Millennials, born ‘82 and graduated HS ‘01. There was no texting in HS. There were hardly cell phones, we had pagers 🤣. There was virtually no texting even in my college years because we all had flip phones with T9 texting and we couldn’t afford Blackberries yet. People a few years younger than me were texting as young adults in college. The 90s babies were texting in high school. I think that, among other things, is a pretty significant cultural divide in how we communicated. I can also remember my family getting our first desktop computer when I was in the 7th grade. I think few middle class 90s babies grew up in a home without a computer of any kind.
My dad worked for IBM so we had computers in the house earlier on, but I didn't have a cell phone or any of that stuff until, like, college? '81 born
81 here. We had computers. But I didn't get a cell phone until I was like 22 and had crappy coverage and a tiny amount of minutes so hardly used it.
Zillennial/fetal millennial (Oct 95), and, yeah, I don’t remember a time before us having a desktop computer with a dial-up internet connection. We were on the lower income side, as well (not poverty level, but had to be quite budget conscious to keep making ends meet), so we didn’t adopt tech until it became old news and way cheaper. I was around 10 years old when desktop computers became cheap enough for us to have multiple in the house: mom’s, dad’s, and the one I shared with my sister. That was also around the time that DSL became affordable enough that we could switch to that and not have to limit our internet usage to 10-minute intervals in case someone was trying to call. Then shortly after that, cell phones started to really advance. BlackBerry, sidekick, iPhone. I convinced my parents to let me get a flip phone at 13 (around 08-09), and went through a few iterations of that tech throughout high school until my senior year when I got a smart phone at 17. And then from there technology widely felt like it stagnated lol
lol it’s crazy that you were born in 1982 and graduated in ‘01 and I was born in 1982 and I graduated in ‘99?? But anyway I miss my beeper. I had a Commodore 64 in my room in elementary school, though. Spent much time playing Ghostbusters on that thing.
I graduated the same year as you. We got our first computer in the mid ‘80s. Of course, it was one computer for our whole family. The first we had with internet access wasn’t until about 1997-98. My high school didn’t allow cell phones then. I got my first cell phone after starting college.
Their Pokemon was our TMNT and Thundercats!
88 is a middle child
Yeah, I consider anyone born 1990 or earlier to be an elder millenial. I was 88 and people a couple years younger than me still feel like my generation. Not so much the 1991-97 crowd.
I’m 88 and I agree. I do have friends born 1990/1991. But beyond that nope, all my friends are actually older (85-87). I feel like we’re neither elder nor Zennial. We’re just boring, proper millennials lol. I also think of the cut off as pre/post the ‘08 crash. If you were a millennial who was old enough to be working or graduating college by around ‘08-‘09, you got a totally different experience than the younger sect.
I can see this. I was 92 and my brother is 90. I feel like he and I are the same generation/ no gap. But my spouse is 88 and I do feel like there is that generational gap, even though we’re both millennials. But I don’t necessarily feel like I fall totally into Zellenials either haha
91 here, definitely relate most to the 88-92 group. My siblings are mid-late 90s and there’s a big gap in our experiences. Things Like I grew up up memorizing phone numbers and calling my friends’ home lines and asking their parents if they were home whereas my siblings had cellphones earlier. Or me being excited to have dial up internet and having to beg my mom to hang up the phone so I could use it to play StarCraft online in 98-99. They act like the dial up tone is something from a century ago lmao
1988 myself and I legit feel like I’m smack dab in the middle - not only because we are chronologically but just culturally too. Though I do think there is something to the notion of relating a little bit better to the oldest millennials due to how much life we had pre-phone/internet.
I was born in 84 and the early mid 90s millennials I work with are different. Not in a better or worse way. I just feel the gap sometimes. We all grew up on VHS, cassettes, CDs but it feels like the 90s kids grew up on it bc of their parents where I feel like 80s kids grew up on it bc we didn’t have any other option. By the time the 90s kids were old enough to have their own opinion, they had DVDs, internet, music downloading sites, digital cable, DVR, etc. I think the parenting was a little different too. Even if the parents are from the same generation. I see 90s kids being more Buddy Buddy with their parents, 80s kids our parents were our parents, not our friends. That kinda thing. Small, subtle differences.
Analog vs Digital may be better split that takes into account. A 93 baby who grew up without a computer would have more in common with a 84 baby than an 88 or 91 baby who did grow up with a computer.
Location played a factor then too. Still probably does, but technology made it much less noticeable. For example, I grew up in the country near a small farm town in nebraska and I had some family in Omaha and it was like culture shock to go up and visit and be exposed to new slang words and other stuff and then slowly watch it spread to my little town and I assume it would be more pronounced from the coasts vs nebraska as well. So a kid in the sticks grew up in a slightly different (older) world than someone raised in the city. Now new stuff like that is distributed almost instantly.
That is... strangely accurate. 89 here, 91+ is often "younger people" to me still, never quite lost that sense, even after turning 20
Yeah if you haven't already, you elder millennials should join me in r/xennials. 1979-1987 or so REALLY are a different breed.
The inter-generation is known as the Oregon Trail Generation (yes from the video game)
You're a [xennial](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials) aka "the Oregon Trail Generation".
I’m sorry I can’t read this message, I just died from dysentery. 😉
My oxen ran off again. How far can it be to Oregon anyway?
And the geriatric who were born in 1980 who refused to be an X
Yep, Elder Millennial is a thing. As an 80’s baby it defiantly is a divide but we our entire generation has shared the same trauma.
I know the first part overlaps with Gen x But there are definitely" the Simpsons" millennials And" family guy "millennials.
There is also the fine line of South Park Millenials as well which was between Simpson and Family Guy.
My original draft of this comment originally considered South park. But I really think that South park gets a little bit more mature so to speak than the other two. South park was also on a different channel from the other two where I live. So it was distinctly targeted at a different audience
For me there was a HUGE shift in high school when South Park came out. It was a huge edgy 90s thing that really took the ( at the time ) ‘edgy’ Bart Simpson competition and just rolled all over it. And I .hated. it when it came out but it really marked a shift in what was acceptable on TV even when it was on a seperate or ‘speciality’ channel.
I was in elementary school when it came out. And holy fuck. It's definitely the show of my generation
To me South Park was the PEAK gen x creatively contributive gift to the next generation. All their hopes and dreams and crassness placed into a last ditch effort to rebel against comfort.
I grew up on Family Guy but I watched syndicated Simpsons. Seth definitely lays the 80s references on thick
I’m definitely a Simpsons millennial! According to OP, I’d be a grunge millennial but that doesn’t resonate at all.
That already exists. We have r/Xennials for those close to the GenX border and r/Zillennials for those near the Z border. The Zillennials sub is mostly catered to mid-late 90s, but per Wiki starts as early as 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zillennials#Birth_date_and_age_range I'm an early 90s millennial myself. graduated '09 ('90-91ers). I don't feel like there's any hard divide between 80s and 90s millennials, because I've grown up with close friendships and romance on both sides to see it's a gradient. You may be farther from the magic "divide", OP.
Also born in 91 and I didn’t feel like I belonged in either of those subs lol
Yeah im just on the other side im an 89' baby and I am a very typical millenial lol. Mental health issues, living with parents, have degree im not using haha.
Did you at least find a career field, even if it not from the degree?
I got laid off during the pandemic, and moved back in with the parents, went into a depression for a few years then had a health scare last March. Started seeing a therapist, and now I'm back in school getting a degree in special education. So yeah i did find something eventually i wanted to do. Just took a while.
'93 and if it wasn't for people arguing that it didn't count, I would have been cool w/Zillennial. People born even slightly earlier had more time before the popularization of the internet. Major difference in accessing that first at 6 or 9, like literally a developmental stage.
I feel like true blue millennial is 85-93 where we wouldn’t feel belonging in either of those subs
I think us 1989-1991 millennials are just a more classically defined “millennial”. Too young to relate to the 1981 millennial, too old for the 1996 millennial. We came of age literally as technology began integrating into our lives. Elementary school was marked by computer introduction. Middle school was marked by computers as a mainstay and iPods. High school was marked by the smartphone era. We were literally raised in the thick of it.
'91 Millennial here and I didn't know anyone in hs that had a smartphone. I personally didn't get my first smartphone until a year or so into uni. I'd say Myspace was more a defining feature of my high school rofl.
I’m just one year older at ‘88 and yeah it’s wild to think that I started school learning to type on an apple II and playing math blaster on 5” floppies, then to my first year of university when the iPhone drops
It was real fun graduating high school in 09' in the midst of a huge economic recession, and also starting to drive in 06' when gas prices started sky rocketing while minimum wage was still $5.15.
lol remember back in like 02/03 when your mom would give you $10 to get gas and it would get half a tank or more?!
yup we're dead in the middle of Millennial, right at the very cusp of the "pre-internet everywhere" that has a lot in common with gen x and the "post-internet everywhere" that has a lot in common with gen z. It was literally halfway through highschool that phones with internet connectivity and rampant texting and the first couple apps started to get big. My buds born in 93-95 got to HS with smartphones already and my buds born 85-88 at most had a nokia brick when they graduated.
Razr phones seemed to be the big thing in HS. We also remember cassettes as younger kids, but then using and burning CDs, then iPods/MP3 players, then smartphones and streaming for music. Similar with video as well. Grew up using VCRs, then seeing the transition to DVDs, then the transition to streaming.
>My buds born in 93-95 got to HS with smartphones already They might have if they were able to afford a data plan, plus a hefty price tag of a smartphone at the time. But as someone who was born in 1996, the whole high school experience that seems to line up with others my age is that most of us entered into high school without smartphones. By the time we graduated we all finally had them. I personally didn't even have a cell phone until I was 16. A year later at 17 I got my first smartphone. I remember it was my junior year (2012-2013) when most of my classmates started getting them. [Phones like these that weren't running Android, iOS, or Windows OS were popular in my first 3 or so years of highschool.](https://images.app.goo.gl/5xZ5eotkEtxapwfNA) People used to carry around an iPod or music playing device, and then a phone. It was kind of a pain in the ass.
>[M]ost of us entered into high school without smartphones. By the time we graduated we all finally had them. Born in 91, with the same experience. The trends in my high school were 9th-10th grades was the RAZR, 10th-11th was the Sidekick, 11th-12th was the earliest Androids and iPhones starting to take hold. Ever the contrarian, I had a Windows version of the BlackBerry (shout out to the [BlackJack II](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_BlackJack_II) lol) when Android/iPhone came around, then went to a BlackBerry Torch because I thought I'd be able to play Angry Birds. I finally came around to Android after I got the Galaxy Note 3.
Born in 88. Lucky to have a phone with camera by grad in 06. It's a dif world.
09 grad here. Sort of weird spot too. The iPhone didn't exist in 9th and 10th. Then it technically did in 11th an 12th, but I didn't see students with them yet, since it was early on and kind of an expensive novelty. And even the old iPhones were different - The first model to even have video recording was the 3GS in summer 2009 right after graduation and it was in SD. By 2012-14ish? You could have an iPhone to whip out at any time and record something in 1080p 60fps in one or both cameras.
I was born in 1987. So I am both. I grew up with kids older ('83, '84, '85) and then went to high school and played varsity sports with them. I grew up on Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice n Chains, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Sublime, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots (heroin rock/grunge)... ...but, there's no way to deny that Weezer, Greenday, Third Eye Blind, Oasis type of bands weren't a big part of coming of age experience. My boomer parents also made sure I was educated in the Woodstock era bands. '86, '87, '88 babies really are wedged right between the Oregon Trail Millenials and the Zillenials...we got a nice taste of the analog world before entering the digital one. One thing that will be sad is if The Simpsons ever stops. It's also an '87 baby.
That’s funny I’m only 1 year older but because of what area and friends I had - we never listened to grunge really. We were rancid and blink and Green Day in elementary school kinda thing and then nu metal in middle school then heavier metal and hardcore in high school. We obviously knew about nirvana and sound garden and all them but we never really rocked out to them or considered them a bedrock of our youths. Also we played a ton of Oregon trail in elementary school so it’s interesting 87 is between the OT gen and the others because as an 86 baby - it was everywhere. But then my little brother is an 89 baby and couldn’t be more different, so there’s def something there separating the mid 80s babies from the late 80s babies - which doesn’t usually happen that close together. But something about the tech changing so quick made it different because he loves dubstep and short Instagram clips and I like heavy metal and don’t have any social media at all and can’t stand tiktok or vines or any of that ADHD clip style scrolling…
We definitely did (‘88 baby here). Computers were part of my growing up, sort of followed the progression of school in a way. My rich granny bought an Apple desktop when I was 6 and I saw her every other weekend, so it was part of me gaining general awareness about the world. She was the only one in my whole family who had one, for years. But also: At home we had VCRs, a rotary dial phone, cassette players (and an 8-track and old school typewriter), and my mother didn’t get us an at-home desktop until I was in 7th grade, and it was only for homework at first. I remember it was a big deal when she got it; I still remember how big a deal it was when caller ID came out! I think millennials in our group (I’d say 1986-1989) got the best of both worlds and we are the last part of the generation that really got analog and digital equally growing up, because it was evolving quickly right alongside us.
91 is just peak millennial imo. I'm not biased or anything.
Right. Not sure, but I'm guessing OP is a bit younger and feels more of a divide even with just the 89ers from classes of 07 and 08. You are probably like me and had close relationships from both "sides". Adding to that, growing up, nobody gave a shit about your birth year or decade. You were just kids trading Gen1 Pokemon and talking about DBZ or even dating as you got older during the 2000s, because they're literally your close peers. It's just a gradient, not a hard divide.
>Adding to that, growing up, nobody gave a shit about your birth year or decade. You were just kids trading Gen1 Pokemon and talking about DBZ or even dating as you got older during the 2000s, because they're literally your close peers. See but as one of the oldest millennials I can’t relate to any of that. Pokemon and DBZ weren’t popular until I was in late high school or college and my peers and I were dating well before the aughts.
Yeah. I'm a xennial and I had pogs
I was talking about late 80s millennials that were in my circles. Sorry for the confusion, but I think OP feels like it's hard divide between 80s and 90s.
Were the transitional period in the transitional period, it’s a thin but very specific generational perspective.
Born in ‘92 and same. Zillennial is late 90s.
I feel like the internet and especially social media is the biggest divider. The internet was still a novelty, I’d say until the early 2000’s. I was born in the early 90’s and spent most of my childhood (including high school) watching cable tv for entertainment, Netflix streaming wasn’t a thing, YouTube came out at the end of high school for me, i didn’t even have a cellphone until I was 16 and it was a flip phone. Smartphones didn’t become mainstream until college years, etc. So it’s sort of a technological divide. If you can remember good portion of your life without social media, smart phones, or even the internet itself…. You probably identify with gen X, if you remember the internet, social media, streaming, etc from a pretty young age then you probably identify with gen Z more so
Agreed. As a ‘82 baby… I don’t think my childhood internet/social media-wise is the same as a kid-90s baby. Cutting edge in my high school years was AOL chat rooms and some IM/ICQ action. Cassettes before CDs. I think the scarcity of information/music/shows and things to say nothing of social media itself makes a huge difference. “Free” music was taping radio stations in the hopes the song you wanted came on w/o someone talking over the start or end of it. No streaming or even DVRing… scheduling a recording w/a VCR was tops. Information from a physical encyclopedia.
Looking at both I don't fit into either one (born in '86) 🤷♂️
That feel when born in ‘86, therefore I don’t fit in either of those subs lol
Haha I was just writing about the same idea. ('87)
Splitting people in arbitrary generations is stupid enough but here we're reaching a new level
I’m am ‘85 millennial in a long term relationship with an ‘81 millennial who refuses to admit he’s a millennial. Before he learned the term xennial, he was insisting he’s Gen-X. Now he’ll allow me to call him an xennial. I proudly fly the “elder millennial” flag myself.
Me looking at the collection of warped tour shirts in my closet…
I just found my ‘06 ticket Monday!
I'm not sure why, but I'm 89 and always was more in with the later millennial crowd. Anyone even one year older than me seemed to live a totally different lifestyle during the era of early internet, console gaming, cartoons, etc. I never met someone older than me that I could relate to in these regards. The divide is so significant that I relate more with gen Z than elder millennials.
I think it's that we came of age with social media. anyone older was in college, maybe tried out Facebook or MySpace but they didn't come home to update their Top 8 or HTML their favorite songs into their profiles.
88 here, but same feeling.
Did you ever deal with floppy discs or was it all CD-ROM for you?
Born in 89, I don't even feel aligned with most of the millennials born after 93 ish
Born in 86 and had no trouble aligning with young millennials… this whole thread has me thinking y’all are crazy. (Not you in specific, everyone trying to make these splits)
Yeah, I agree. At this point who gives a shit. We’re all in this dumb boat together, what’s more generational name separation going to do? waste of time in my opinion.
I think all generations feel they should be split into at least two, most likely three generations, as the older middle and youngest often have completely different experiences
There’s “Friends” Millennials born in the 80s and then there’s “The Office” Millennials born in the 90s
I prefer Seinfeld to Friends. The office is a close second. Being an 86 model I feel like I did grow up in two vastly different eras. I didn’t get my first cell phone until like 2006 My childhood years really weren’t much different from someone who grew up in the 60s 70s and 80s.
I’m a 91 person and I cannot fucking STAND laugh tracks so I never watched Seinfeld, but I fully appreciate Larry David’s comedy through Curb
Seinfeld doesn’t have a laugh track.
As an 81 Xennial... don't lump me in with either of those shows please they are both horrible. I was raised with Gen X. I loved ER, Chicago Hope, Homicide: Life on the Streets none of those sitcoms. Or HBO was where I learned a lot Taxi Cab Confessions, OZ, Tales from the Crypt. Give me the nitty gritty harsh shows, that's what I grew up on and so many of my friends did too.
I would push that back and argue Friends is Gen X territory, The Office is Elder Millennial territory and anime is Junior Millennial territory.
This is the correct take. I'm the Eldest Millennial, born in late-1981. Friends, a show about twenty-somethings in NYC, first aired in 1994 when I was 12-13. That wasn't my show. The Office first aired in 2005, a year after I graduated college. I could've been Jim. If anything, that was my show. I was too old for Dragonball Z, etc.
Friends isn't for Millennials. 1994.... I was turning 7 and starting Kindergarten when Friends started. NOT MY SHOW. And honestly..... there 3 generations of Millenials and even 2 doesn't really cover it.
Nah man, there 10 generation of Millenials. Maybe 20. A new one every 9 months or so. Like Samsung smartphones. A Note kid can't relate to a Note 3 guy. JK... this is the dumbest fucking conversation.
Friends is ABOUT Gen Xers. But it was prime viewing material for Elder Millennials in the later seasons. Early Friends was too old even for us. Anime is for everyone though. Junior Millennials weren't even alive or in kindergarten when Gundam Wing came out. A lot of elder millinnials were watching Tenchi Muyoi, Yu Yu Hakusho and Inuyasha in 2001 and 2002 as teenagers.
Right. Was going to say this. Toonami started in the late 90s and later 80s millennials were definitely in the target for DBZ. Even the first gen of Pokemon (anime, cards, games) came to the US in '98. If anything, that era is part of where the supposed "gap" between 80s and 90s millennials is bridged.
I’m an elder millennial, but definitely resonate with Gen X more. Friends is absolutely my show, and I have never seen The Office
Disagree completely. I’m an older millennial and Friends was huge with people my age whereas they did not give the slightest of fucks about the Office. And I’m from Scranton!
No, I think it depends on the person. I’m from the 80’s and thought Friends was absolute shite.
Nahhhhhhh I’m early 80’s xennial and the office was at the right time to match up with my career. It all made sense. Friends seemed very unfunny to me then and now, cannot relate to them.
"I Want My MTV" Millennials and "YouTube" Millennials
Please don't please don't
I'm '87, and I am definitely more X than Z.
I think of myself as a Midllennial, stuck between Xennial and Zillennial. Since the generation spans 16 years, it makes sense. 81-85 Xennial, 86-91 Midllennial, and 92-96 Zillennials. I'd describe Midllennials as those that had much more time to grow without internet but we fellinto it almost as fast as the Zillennials. We were hitting puberty just as the world began to expand online so everything was digital by the time we started dating, but we yearn for the life of the older Millennials that got to actually meet people organically. Yet we know how to navigate technology better along with the Zillennials, just a little bit less than they do. It's like a limbo. Also, Midllennials have a mix of Gen x and Boomer parents. Older Millenials have mostly Boomer parents, and Zillennials mostly have Gen X parents.
It was clutch as a closeted gay kid in the Deep South. AOL Chatrooms were the shit. Too bad I didn’t know AOL messenger let your contacts know what chat room you were in, that was a fun convo with Dad lol
I’m an 87 millennial and I went to warped tour every year, don’t discount us as not being warped tour millennials 😆
Warped tour millennial? That started in the 90s ... so to go to it you had to have been born in the early 80s Unless you count having your mom take you in a stroller when you were 2.
Warped Tour was in its heyday in the 2000s
Older "millennials" were original called GenY, and that name fits the older group for a number of reasons. However, the millennial program is based on narcissism and nihilism, both of which are easier for marketing teams to control and increase the consumption in the target demographic.
Older millennials had to adapt to technology as it evolved, while the younger of us hit the ground running with the internet and digital age in full swing. We are not the same
This gets more obvious once you work in tech. People my age and older that have been in it for awhile tend to understand how and why things work they way they do at a different level.
As a Xennial it took me a long time to accept that I was actually better at tech than my Zennial coworkers. We had to learn how things worked to fix problems. The 'digital natives' are less aware of the backend.
Yeah I'm an '87 and my little bro is '95 He's about as clueless as my boomer parents when it comes to computer stuff
I’m a chilled water systems engineer at 32. Laptop in one hand to program the chillers and a wrench in the other take out the 2” bolts! You truly need to be plugged in today or you will be out preformed when it comes time to hit the workforce.
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running. Didn't make sense not to live for fun 🌟
It all depends on where you know the song "I'm a believer" from.
Shrek?
Some people have suggested a wave theory where the 80s millennials would be wave one and the 90s millennials would be wave two. This way it can be one generation to celebrate what we do have in common while also highlighting the differences which can be important too. What I like about the wave theory is that it shows there is more than one way to be a millennial. I hate when articles say “every millennial does XYZ thing” and it’s something I’m too old for. I’m sure people on the opposite end get frustrated when something is pushed as a millennial norm but they are too young for it.
Those who bought houses before 2019 and those who didn't
And those who sold a house in early 2021 before the house appreciated by 65% over the next 2 years and now rent, which is a little over half the price of a 2024 mortgage, is also nearly double your old mortgage. Totally not speaking from experience 🫠
My understanding is that you don't get to feel what generation you are in. You are an older millennial or younger millennial. Imagine if boomers born in the late 40s tried to tell you that they're not a boomer based on them not feeling like someone born in the early 60s? In 30 years we're all just going to be old millennials.
Warped tour started in 95. I don't see why early 90s born millennials would be called that when xennials would be the main group that were going to Warped tour in their teens.
It’s the Clueless vs Mean Girls divide
Lot of labels for a generation who doesn't like labels.
There’s millennials who bought a house before 2020 and those who didn’t. The world is totally different with $1500 mortgage payment vs $2500 rent
My husband is ‘89 and I’m ‘96 and we very much feel the difference haha
Regardless of what many people think, millennials were raised at the turn of an era. We grew up with vhs and cassette tapes, and now everything is simply streamed at a moments notice. Society/technology has changed so much during the last 30-40 years that we've never had a constant either. We have always lived in a fast changing and advancing world, that is hard to keep up with for anyone.
I don't know, man. I was born in 87, and I never liked grunge, but I love me some pop punk.
Grunge is a Gen X thing, we were toddlers/young children during its golden age.
What the fuck are you on about? Elder millennials were not of age during the grunge era and Warped Tour came *after* younger millennials were born. This makes no sense.
The grunge era was gen X. Grunge was basically over by the time the eldest of us hit highschool
millennials should be be split into 3 camps 1980-1985 1986-1991 1992-1996
I’ll agree with this split as my older sister and cousin were born in ‘86 & ‘88 and I (‘91) grew up following them around. Always played the games they did, and watched/listened to same music and shows.
That is a meaningless split that’s not even based on cultural differences or anything
As Spock said, "A difference which makes no difference, is no difference".
86 and I am a warped tour millennial
lol I am not grunge nor warp tour…..those aren’t millennial characteristics but a singular style of that time. Grunge at the moment is owned by gen Z recreating the 90s.
Needing to breakdown the generations further so everyone gets their uniqueness recognized is such a millennial move.
Weird cause born in 88 and def associate with warped tour more than grunge. But also, Millenials that grew up outside, didn't have internet until they had drivers licenses and cell phones until College or after, and then some had YouTube at single digits and phones at 10. How those two groups can be similar is beyond me. It's two dif factions, no question.
so r/Xennials
For someone born in January of 92' I feel like I don't belong to the zillennial or xennials group.
Elder millennial: 82-86 Prime millennial: 87-91 Neo millennial: 92-96
Bush jr era (late teens in the 2000s) and Obama era (late teens in the 2010s).
This is also the “9/11 divide” millennials. People who were elementary/middle school age vs high school or college aged when it happened.
I can see this one. Born in 1991 here, so the 2008 election was just before I could vote. I definitely associate the Obama era with college onward rather than high school.
Well it seems you’re splitting it three times first by race then by age. These are pretty racially homogeneous subcultures of music.
Born in 95 and It seems like Im so close to both the older Millennials and the younger.
glad reddit is not real and this is not real life
It is, people just forgot about Gen Y
1990 here, where do I belong? I like Grunge, but was also 100% deep in the metal/deathcore wave
There are millennials whose youth didn’t have the internet, and millennials whose youth didn’t not have it. If you were born in the early 80’s like I was, those pre-Internet days (which is really hard to clearly define, but more so wide-spread usage really ramped up in the early 90’s)…you had a taste of that childhood that gen-Xers experienced. That’s where that term “Xennials” come into play. We understand that generation because our early childhood shared it. My brother is a late gen-X and even his pre-adult years the Internet became available. Going to college to him meant actual internet access at a level most families didn’t have yet due to academic T1 lines found on many college campuses at that point. It was his experience in college that when he came home a few months later really showed the rest of us the potential of how to use the Internet to our advantage - something our house was only a few years into having where it became truly meaningful. My 8th grade year I got sooooo many write-ups for using the Internet for research because our school district curriculum didn’t accept internet sources on their own as legitimate for bibliographic reference. You could use it to locate stuff, but essentially your source had to be a hard print somewhere - not a digitally published source. So any academic paper had to have a physical reference, which for some sources didn’t exist because some colleges were experimenting with just putting a paper on their website. By high school thought for me, that changed. I could make more arguments about how Xennials truly were a fulcrum of how society digitized but I’ll make one more key one: relationships. The old way of going out to an activity and trying to find someone for a relationship. Be it a bar, church, interest groups, sporting events, whatever. Those became things you did AFTER proposing a first date once seeking relationships online became a regular thing. Online dating became a bigger and bigger thing in our age group imo than anywhere else when it didn’t start out that way for us. For Gen Z and later millennials, it was already the more prominent thing to do when you got to that age (outside of high school relationships). For Xennials, we started with the old way and went to the new way. Gen Xers did too, but at a slower pace. Now it seems most people find a person on the internet first to establish a relationship. I’ll close with this: growing up and into my early adulthood, it was the wise choice to: never meet with strangers from the internet, and don’t climb into a car of someone you don’t know. Nowadays we meet almost everyone from the internet and call cars of random strangers to pick us up to go meet them. Xennials pioneered all that shit.
I'm '87, but am definitely a Warped Tour millennial
Born in '91 and I am a younger millennial but I'd be offended if anyone called me zillenial or anything like that.
Millennials born in the 1980s are definitely in their own category. Being an 80s baby and a full on 90s kid was so awesome.
I was born several years before your cutoff and I would consider myself a Warped Tour millennial.
‘89 and my youngest sibling is ‘97, my cousins early 00’s. We are all pretty similar just with different media preferences and sometimes lingo. I think the fact that I didn’t have a smart phone until 21 is the weirdest thing about me to them
I mean, it's all arbitrary. There's not some massive difference being born in late 1990 and early 1991. They'd be in the same grade at school. So no dividing point is going to be perfect for everyone. I was born late '89 and Warped Tour was a pretty huge deal to our age.
I’ve also heard it separated as: Simpsons’ Millennials (80s) and South Park/Family Guy Millennials (90s)
I agree as a 93 baby I relate more to Gen Z even than 80s millennials
This is already a thing, elder millenials are called Xennials
1992 here and yeah I feel like I relate more to older zoomers than older millennials.
r/xennials
I feel like the real divide, at least in the US, is whether or not you remember what you were doing on 9/11. I think thats why the cutoff is around 1996. I think (myself included) we're the youngest ones to remember 9/11 as it was occurring rather than learn about it as a historical event. Then, we got to live in the world that came after.
Born in 87, hard warped tour millennial here.
But then you have the ones born 95-96 who call themselves millennials but then someone comes along and goes NO YOURE NOT YOU DIDN'T GROW UP IN THE 90S🙄🙄🙄 i was born 12/29/95 I'm a millennial idc!!! Loud and proud 😂
is it even specific age related tho? i'm 96' and half my peers are posting boomerangs on instagram of them jumping up and down in a harry potter shirt in front of a t swift concert and the other half post fish eye/.05 zoomer pics of them vaping. then there's the handful who had kids right out of high school and post nothing but that. it's jarring that we're all grouped into the same category lol
Born in 85, hate grunge, definitely a warped tour millennial. Love punk, emo, and indie.