To say shoot me now if I ever refer to myself as Gen x

Feeling part of a 'tribe' defined by cultural and generational things you have in common is not new or irrelevant. Giving generations names isn't that new either. As a pp said, it's sometimes useful shorthand. If you find it annoying or not useful... don't use it. I'm gen X and have no issue with being defined as such.

I dislike it. People have zero control over when they're born (like their sex or race) but generational labels are frequently used perjoratively. And lumping millions and millions of people together makes me uneasy anyway.

Hahah. I have no idea why that's my username 😆 I was born many decades before then (it's not my usual one...can't work out how to change it back!)

Huh? If they are boomers today, they were also boomers 27 years ago, because they were born during the post war 'baby boom' years. The youngest boomers were born in 1964. Making them 61 years old now.

Of course they were 'boomers' 27 years ago, if you use generational classification, because it pertains to the year of their birth.

Bit ironic given your username

Your irritated bewilderment at a concept you don't understand suggests you are probably a boomer, OP.

jkjkjkjk before you all come at me (millennial)
😂😂💃(gen x)

You can say youare a Xennial and this was dubbed a micro generation born from 1978-1983 who didn't quite fit in with Gen X or Millenials. There are those who are unsure if they are Millenial or gen z and dubbed Zennials. I think I need to stop going down this generation rabbit hole sitting by the fan trying not to melt.

Okay boomer 🙄

😉

You are definitely a Gen X and a younger gen x at that being born in the late 70s. I am guessing it was a gen z who called you a boomer and class anyone over 30 as old. Gen z are just such a reactive generation who can't deal with anyone, not talking about racists, bigots etc, who disagree with them.

On reading more, maybe I am a proper Millennial as I like avocado. My partner is Gen X and hates it....

Whereas I was born in 1982 and feel way more like a millennial than gen X.. with a gen Z like penchant for Nike ankle socks 😂

I've only ever had one discussion about this with a marketing person who was talking about it in terms of market segmentation (so was relevant). Otherwise it is really wanky. I would feel like I'd want to introduce myself as 'aquarius, with an aquarius sun and moon' 😆 and watch the perplexed faces. People are made up of a multitude of things. The year you were born is just one very small thing.

There are obviously changing cultural contexts in which different generations are growing up. For instance, Generation X was the first where it was much commoner for our mothers to go out to work - hence the term "latchkey children", which was heard a lot at the time (and rarely if ever anymore). We were also more likely to have divorced parents than previous generations.

There will always be outliers of course. My sister ('81) and my mum ('60) would say they had significantly different experiences.

I was born in 81, my mum in 61. Our childhoods and early adulthood were very very similar. My sibling is 14 years younger than me. They had a very different experience. My sibling and I are the same generation but my experience of childhood and adolecence was much more like my mothers. Those born in the early 80s had very different childhoods and early adulthoods to later millennials.

I find it very useful. I am gen X and work with students, who are primarily gen z. I used to get really wound up with their attitudes and apparent lack of ability to understand what I consider to be basic information presented in a logical way. Then I realised that it's a generational issue - they're not necessarily 'lazy' or 'rude' or 'entitled', they're just looking at the world through a different lens and from different frames of reference to me. And I need to learn to adjust my delivery.

They still wind me up but at least now i understand why we're so different.

Do you share that with everyone you meet?

Its simply a way of grouping people in to demographics.
Do you read your star sign?

The Silent Generation
This is the first defined generational group. It refers to those born between 1926 and 1945, so these are people who lived through World War Two. The name comes from an article in Time magazine from the 1950s, and alludes to the fact that the children of this generation were taught to be seen and not heard. According to Dr Abramson, this group are:

• disciplined
• value-oriented and loyal
• interested in direct communication, so enjoy speaking in person as opposed to via technology

Baby Boomers
This is the only generation that’s been defined by an official government body: The US Census Bureau (which is part of the country’s Department for Commerce and is responsible for collecting data from across the US). They’re so named because of the huge surge of births after World War Two. The group starts in 1946 and ends with those born around 1964, when the birthrate began to decline again. Dr Abramson says boomers are:
committed
self-sufficient
competitive (she thinks this may have something to do with how many of them there were)

Generation X
The Resolution Foundation thinktank defines Gen X as those born between 1966 and 1980. They grew up in a time when technology was advancing fast, but it wasn’t nearly as readily available as it is today. Because of this, this generation straddles both the digital and non-digital world, and understands the importance of both. Dr Abramson says these people are:
resourceful
logical
good problem-solvers

Millennials (Generation Y)
This is the cohort you’ve probably heard the most about. It’s not entirely certain where the generation starts and ends, but it’s approximately those born from 1980 to 1995. They’re often described as ‘lazy’ in the media and that they all the money they should be saving for a house on avocado toast, but th also the first generation to be “digital natives”, as Dr Abramson describes them. She thinks this makes them extremely self-sufficient, as they no longer have to rely on others to solve their problems or teach them things - they have the internet for that. Other defining characteristics include:
confident
curious
questioning authority -
Dr Abramson thinks that this can be perceived quite badly by some of the older generations, who would be less likely to do so

Generation Z
There are a few conflicting ideas about where this generation starts. Pew Statistics says 1997, Statistics Canada says 1993, and the Resolution foundation says 2000. Wherever it really begins though, we can safely say this group is young, and has never known a life without tech. That might be why their alternative name (coined by American psychologist Dr Jean Twenge) is iGen. Some of their characteristics include:
ambitious
digital-natives
confident

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zf8j92p

Same but different
The important thing to note according to Dr Abramson is that while these separations can be useful, at the end of the day we are individuals. It’s like with horoscopes: you may identify with one or two characteristics of being a Sagittarius or a Leo, but you won’t ever fit your star sign’s description exactly.

The same goes for cohorts, although as the stereotypes are given more prominence in the media, she notes that people in the different groups can “pigeon hole themselves into aligning themselves with those characteristics”.
What they can help us with, as Dr Abramson explains: is "so that we know how and when to work differently with a group.”
In other words, you wouldn’t treat a 60-year-old the same way would a teenager, so having these cohorts gives us a rough idea of what different age groups might want and need.

In a professional context, it's probably not relevant, but in general terms, generations are marked by far more than simply "age."

It's about cultural experiences and how those unite certain groups of people who experienced it during their formative years. Things like current events, politics, music, movies, TV shows, books, fashion and in some cases, even food, can be unifying for groups of people who were coming of age within those time periods.

It's kind of a good way of understanding different generations of people and how popular culture can shape and form people. There are cultural experiences that a boomer will have experienced that I, as a millennial, will never experience and that may impact the type of people we are/become on some level.

Even down to things like how we speak-the slang/lingo used can be earmarked by the different generations. Obviously, it's not the only thing that defines people but it can be a useful framework to kind of understand different groups of people and understand how culture/popular culture can shape and form groups of people-with obvious scope for individuality.

Why are Generations Categorized by Years?

Shared Experiences:
Individuals born within a similar timeframe often experience major historical events, cultural trends, and technological advancements during their formative years, shaping their worldview.

Attitudinal and Behavioral Differences:
These shared experiences can lead to distinct attitudes and behaviors among generations, influencing their interactions with each other and with society.

Research Tool:
Categorizing by birth years provides a framework for researchers to study these differences, analyze trends, and understand how generations impact various aspects of life, from political views to consumer

In a nutshell it is used to group people together by shared experience in the world. It does help in context of experiences we have had to form connections. Not sure why it bothers you though. I'm GenX and it doesn't bother me at all, it is just a way to understand a population of people based on their age bracket. It is a classification system. It is very useful for research purposes.

@Notouchingmybhuna I’m interested to hear why the terms were used- ie what sort of event was it. There are some ways where it can be relevant, i.e the style of how something is presented and therefore received, and what sort of communication styles work better in different cohorts.

Its all a load of bollocks though isn’t it?

The blanket boomer hate is ridiculous. It would be like future generations hating on every Gen Z even though they just going about their business doing the best they can. I do think though there is a section of ‘boomers’ who are smug and self satisfied and show zero empathy or acknowledgement that younger generations are struggling and dealing with things they didn’t. I can only assume they don’t have grandchildren so don’t care what happens. I’m a boomer because of my age but I have a lot of sympathy for youngsters today who have to deal with house and rent prices, jobs taken over by AI, massive student debt etc.

It’s not an ID card😁

It has masses of relevance. For example millennial would for sure already know they’ve missed out on loads that Gen X took for granted. And secondly they would for sure just google it if they didn’t understand rather than ask a forum 🙄

I think that the ‘silent generation’ (my grandparents) and ‘baby boomer’ generation ( my parents) were very useful terms for framing different outlooks, behaviours, social norms, cultural values, aspirations and challenges within the social milieu of the two eras each generation lived through.
Now the terms as well as all the other new ones are largely used as a stick to beat with and serve little other purpose.
The generalisations can be comical if taken with a pick of salt and used in a light hearted way, but the ‘boomer’ hate is nothing more than ageist hatred and envy.

ok so the generation naming comes from sociology, before the turn of the 20th century changes happened quite slowly and so history and people were split into ‘ages’ but since the start of the 20th century there have been rapid changes in society and how people have responded and been shaped by them so it became more common to name generations who were born at similar points in societies development. It started with the Greatest Generation in 1900, a time of massive technological and societal change, then the silent generation, named as they were born around the times of the two world wars and basically just had to get on with things. Then baby boomers (which I remember references to from early childhood in the 80’s) and so on.
it’s certainly not a new thing in academic circles but I suppose it’s in the past 30 years that it has become much more common in everyday lexicon.
hth