1981 millennials

[PeanutButterSmoothie]

I was surprised to find out the other day that my sister (born Jan '81) is technically considered a millennial.

She won't accept this as she, like myself, regards millennials as the hipster generation, revelling in wokeness etc. She remembers renting VHS tapes, owning a Sony cassette walkman, watching MTV, and the introduction of the world wide web.

Gotta say I was surprised and my first thought is that lots of people in their early 40s probs don't regard themselves as millennials.

I'm '81, I thought it was Gen Y?

1983 and an Elder Millennial 🤣

I was born in 1995 and remember everything except the launch of the World Wide Web that you mentioned in your OP.

I do find these 'titles' a bit unnecessary as they're just used by people to insult other generations.

Yeah, 82 onwards is millennial.

She is Gen X, albeit the 77 - 82 subset as PP says

It's all a bit weird because being born in 1964 some people say I'm a Boomer

Check 'Generation Jones'.

Boomers were never invited to that party 😎

I don't think your sister understands what a millennial is, or perhaps even what generations are by the sound of it.

What does "revelling in wokeness" mean? She rejects the assertion she's a millenial because she doesn't want to be associated with people who give a damn about social injustice? How bizarre Who does she feel more at home with?

Xennial fits me the best in terms of my lived experience. I was born in 81. My sister’s (86) life was had always been more millennial. Weird how just a few years makes all the difference.

I'm '83 and definitely a Xennial. I don't relate to millenials at all. I grew up in the sticks with boomer parents and grandparents born 1900-1936, so that may go some way to explain it. My friends (and DH) are all firmly gen X, as I'm the baby of the group.
As PPs have said, your sister is one of us too. We don't fit with either gen X or Millennials as we carry both experiences.

So my life would be better if a few randos on an Internet forum didn't see me as narrow minded? 🤔

That said, I agree that it'd be pretty shitty to 'apply general stereotypes to entire generations of people' rather than just moan about the woke brigade like I did in my post.

Or are you insinuating that all Gen Z are wokesters?

I'm 1980, so a Xennial. It is a bit of a no man's land in that like others I don't identify at all with Gen X and not hugely with millennial either.

There is a general misunderstanding of millennial though. DH is always calling the 25 year olds who work for him "millennials", and I am always pointing out that they are Gen Z. A lot of the attitudes we associate with millennials are actually Gen Z.

You know most millennials are in their 30s now, we aren't hip we have kids and backpain

As others have said, Xennial is the term you’re looking for. We had an analog childhood and then our teens and our young adulthood were shaped by the digital revolution. I feel like true millennials came of age right into the teeth of the 2008 recession, and their adulthood thus far has been defined by it. We xennials are lucky in that we had graduated from university and had been in our jobs for a few years before 2008, so we had a bit of seniority at work and decent CVs by the time things got bad. A lot of us bought starter flats or houses when prices crashed in the recession, and then we benefitted from the massive price gains a few years later. In my mind, the true millennial experience is of those who graduated from university just a few years later. They graduated from uni straight into the teeth of the recession, which impacted their earning potential, and then the low ultra low interest rate environment (enacted to ease the sting of the recession) pushed up house prices at such a blistering pace that many were left behind. Xennials missed that dumpster fire scenario by the skin of their teeth.

Everyone born in the 80s is a millennial. Millennials are in their 30s and 40s now. I'm an older millennial and proud of it. And I'm already proud of generation of my children who I'm sure will do amazing things.

I hate criticism of younger generations. Each new generation brings something better. It's how the world progress. That doesn't mean that older generations are redundant, but that all generations can learn from one another. Dismissing a whole generation of people is patronising and ageist.

@CathyorClaire thanks I just checked out Generation Jones, and yes, that's me!

This. I was born in 1990 and my entire adult life we have seemingly been in a financial crisis. Went to uni in 08'

I am early 81’ and thought of myself as one of the oldest millennials have done for some time. I remember my Walkman fondly.

Copied this from Statista:

Generation Alpha: 2013-2020.
Generation Z: 1997-2012.
Millennials: 1981-1996.
Generation X: 1965-1980.
Baby Boomers: 1946-1964.
Silent Generation:1928-1945.
Greatest Generation: Pre-1928 (Also includes the youngest members of the 'Lost Generation' born before 1901)

I was born in ‘77 and very much Gen X. I don’t like the Xennial subset! Being in a class with kids born in ‘76 I’m obviously going to be much more similar to them than those born in ‘85.

I didn’t use the Internet until my final year at university, first had a mobile phone when I was nearly 23… Definitely didn’t grow up with technology.

Early 1981. I'll accept Xennial, but feel far closer to Gen X than actual Millenials. I was an adult in the 20th Century. I was pissed off to be given a mobile phone at 17- it was a PITA, too big to go in a pocket, an aerial sticking out, could only hold 8 SMSs. It was a couple of years off from Nokias taking over with cool features like Snake.

Most of the educational reforms of the Millenial age group hadn't come in, or came in later schooling (SATS-only did them in y9, GCSEs were linear, pre-AS/A2 levels). Corporal punishment was still legal in schools when I started, and there wasn't a "you can't touch me" culture that phased in with younger year groups that persists today.

Most of my friends are Gen X, and having grown up with an older sibling and having a long memory, I remember much of the 80s. Yuppies, mobile phones like breeze blocks, car phones, pre-car seats (and often seat belts), sitting in the boot, strikes, Live Aid, Channel 4 being a new channel, and Channel 5 was a bit of a joke when it launched in my teen years, AIDS, the unrelenting tedium of Sunday afternoons in Winter prior to Sunday opening, Marathon bars and Opal Fruits having stupid name changes, 5ps shrinking from being the size of current 10ps to the size of a halfpenny. If you wanted information, it was still encyclopaedias or for something topical, Ceefax/ Teletext. Colour photos on the front page of the newspaper was an exciting innovation!
I was 16 before New Labour won the general election.

Being married to a Gen Xer, financially I don't feel represented by Millenial issues either although I won't be able to dodge changing pension ages.

It's a transitional age group, but my childhood and teen years were very much analogue with far more in common with older age groups than younger.

I still love a mix-tape even if the DJ spoke over the song 😂

Is it just me who's fed up with hearing about all these generations? People never used to talk about them except for hearing about baby boomers on old programmes. I only very recently discovered I'm Gen X. I'd never heard of it.

Things I have learned on this thread but not sure I agree with:
I am a xennial (born 1978 but no internet till I got to uni in 1996, no phone till 99 - nah don’t feel I had a digital young adulthood - think I’m gen x)
my parents are not boomers (born in 44 - working class, climbed the property ladder like a ferret up a drain pipe, 3 cruises a year - pretty sure they are boomers)

Each new generation brings something better. It’s how the world progress. That doesn’t mean that older generations are redundant, but that all generations can learn from one another. Dismissing a whole generation of people is patronising and ageist.

I agree with you about dismissing entire generations, it is patronising and ageist. However, I don’t think each new generation brings something better, just different, in some ways. In the meaningful ways, I don’t think the world is really progressing, history repeats itself on a loop. War, famine, oppression, disease, destruction … the human race isn’t progressing, it’s stuck in the same destructive cycles it’s always been in.

Pffffft, next you'll be saying that zodiac signs are meaningless too....

i was 16 in 2000 so technically a millennial BUT enjoyed all the perks of gen X. The joy of VHS tapes and recording your fave songs on cassette from the top 40 on the radio every Sunday. Knowing what a Walkman was but also the briefness of mini disks and suddenly changing tech, before iPods hit the scene and reshaped our lives completely.

We were so broke and music was so expensive £20 for a flipping album from HMV and raiding sale bins in Woollies hoping we could get something for less than the tenner we’d earned doing actual Saturday jobs and paper rounds. Then we’d duplicate our mates cassette tapes instead; we progressed to CD to tape then we had the internet and Home computers and could burn CD from CD then stopping buying CDs altogether because we had Napster then limewire or ripping tracks direct from YouTube before they put stop to that too. All within such a short space of time.

music really was everything to us MTV and the box was still a thing and we lapped up music videos and learned the dance routines to pop songs for fun not for clicks but we were also riding through the last real wave of the real big music subcultures, with rock and nu metal hitting the mainstream around 1999/2000 ish just as the boy band wave peaked.

the 1990s were crazy revolutionary and then we started adult life right into a recession. Good times.

It's the modern obsession with giving everything a label. From what kind of food you do and don't eat and what kind of people you do and don't find attractive, to what kind of way you tidy and put things away.

It's bizarre.