Please explain to me like I’m 5
Why is the inconsistency in the age ranges of generations?
Lost Generation: 1883 – 1900 (17 Years)
The Greatest Generation: 1901 – 1927 (26 Years)
The Silent Generation: 1928 – 1945 (17 Years)
Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964 (18 Years)
Generation X: 1965 – 1980 (15 Years)
Generation Y/Millennials: 1981 – 1996 (15 Years)
Generation Z: 1997 – 2012 (15 Years)
Gen Alpha: 2013 – Present (Currently 9 Years)
In: 0
It is based on cultural events more than time. What happened that had significant impact on ones worldview from 0 to say 20.
>Please explain to me like I’m 5
>Why is the inconsistency in the age ranges of generations?
>Lost Generation: 1883 – 1900 (17 Years)
>The Greatest Generation: 1901 – 1927 (26 Years)
>The Silent Generation: 1928 – 1945 (17 Years)
>Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964 (18 Years)
>Generation X: 1965 – 1980 (15 Years)
>Generation Y/Millennials: 1981 – 1996 (15 Years)
>Generation Z: 1997 – 2012 (15 Years)
>Gen Alpha: 2013 – Present (Currently 9 Years)
“Generations” in that sense are not an accurate metric for measuring anything. They are a handy **narrative** tool to tell simplified stories about complex recent historical developments. That inevitably means information are lost or distorted, but it makes for a better story.
Generations are usually pretty arbitrary in definition. People pretty much made them up on the fly. Most of them are more so vague concepts than clearly defined age groups. Even with Gen X and beyond, you get subdivisions such as Zilennials, aka people who are born in the early years of Gen Z, but to are too old to identify fully with Gen Z, because they grew up right in that gap where the technology that is commonly associated with Gen Z just wasn’t quite there yet, but they were also too young to be Milennials.
Cassettes went out of fashion, but smartphones weren’t a thing yet (letalone something the average citizen could afford), and internet wasn’t fast enough for streaming anyway, so instead, you had the discman, which was a walkman, but for CDs. They came too late for the golden days of the 90s, but are too young to grow up with lives centered around social media and the like, but they got the DS and Phineas and Ferb instead.
Life-defining historical events. The great depression and WWII. Soldiers came home and had a family, causing a baby boom. That tapered off, but the wave of children from the end of WWII to that tapering off was about 18 years. After that they had kids in a second wave. The wave really became less noticeable after that, but people kinda generally decided that a “generation” is 15 years.
Personally, there’s a big split between me and anyone even a little younger that didn’t get their foot in the door before the econopocalypse.
The plague screwing over all the kids for 2 years of education is likely going to be a defining moment. All in favor of renaming Gen-Z to “plague rats”?
Generations like these are not actually hard strictly defined things. There a[re conflicting answers that go against the data set you listed](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/archive/millennials/) so it is not a hard clearly defined edge.
They tend to have events involved, like culture shifts or conflicts. Using the Gen-Z data an example would be “Were they old enough to remember 9/11 or pre-9/11 life?”
Boomers “Were they a byproduct of the Silent Generation who experienced growth from post-war booms?”
“Generations” are a vague cultural concept or marketing idea. While the broad strokes of the timeline you provided will match others, the exact years won’t. If I had to speculate at the thought process of the person who made this:
Step 1) Divide the first two generations at the turn of the century. They’re mostly dead or very old now, so who cares?
Step 2) Put a break at 1927 because the “Greatest Generation” is so named because they may have fought in WWII, and 1927 is the latest you can have been born and been an adult while the war was happening.
Step 3) Put another break 1945 because that’s the end of WWII, and the “Baby Boomers” are supposed to have been born to soldiers returning home from war
Step 4) Continue the Baby Boomers into the mid-60s because that’s the rough consensus on when they ended.
Step 5) Break the rest into exactly 15-year chunks because their names don’t tie them to specific historical events. Just make sure all the Millennials are alive in 2000.
The idea of a “generation” is that it is a group of people who experienced similar social, cultural, and political realities and events. For example, the Silent Generation is usually considered the people who lived through WWII but didn’t fight in it, and were largely shaped by the Great Depression and New Deal in the US. Because of that, these tended to be people who were economically conservative (they grew up not having a lot of money and having to spend carefully) but socially progressive (their best years in childhood were during the New Deal, and so they supported similar programs.
As a more recent example, Millennials tend to be considered as the people who were in school when 9/11 happened. They remember – but were not directly effected by – the Y2K issue and Dot-Bomb. Many of them remember when “gay” was an insult – but also by the time they were an adult (which occurred later, because of the press for college) it wasn’t. They tend to want economic equality and security (having seen that hurt over several economic crashes that seemingly left the rich unhurt); and tend to oppose war (having seen a 20-year war that got very little done).
Generations get split when major events happen. The line between the Greatest Generation and the Silent generation is usually the start of the Great Depression: people from the Greatest Generation might remember a time before it; but people from the Silent Generation don’t. The Silent Generation ends with the significant increase in people having children around World War II. The Baby Boomer era ends with the Civil Rights Movement – but also with the election of Nixon and the changing priorities in US politics. Many people suggest the line between GenX and Millennials is whether you saw 9/11 as an adult, or as a child – while Gen Z (which really needs a better name) don’t remember it at all.
The idea of a human social generation is vague, imprecise.
* What happened while you were in your formative years presumably influences your outlook on life. A proverbial case is that people who grew up in the Great Depression often grew up poor and became accustomed to wasting nothing, making jam and wine out of anything that could be preserved or fermented, hoarding things that that other generations would discard, etc. And that’s why, everyone always claims, great grandma always saved balls of foil and rubber bands and so on. But eras like that don’t necessary happen in a neat little range of years, so generations are different lengths. And circumstances overlap; it’s crazy to say one generation ends exactly when another generation begins.
* Even people who do grow up at the same time obviously are not going to all be the same. Are you the same as all the people your age? No. We’re all different. Economics, genetics, personal experience, gender, etc., all play strong roles in how we turn out. That’s why it’s as stupid to say, for example, “all boomers are like this” as it is to say “all [members of whatever your generation is] are like that.”
* Whether you were 9 or 19 when something happened obviously makes a huge difference on how it affects you, even though you might be in the same so-called generation.
* Things are different around the world. Only a very narrow regional view of things would allow you to think everyone of a particular range of years is similar.
So generations are really only useful if you combine them with other factors, and they’re still not all that precise. All middle-class white American women born between 1950 and 1960 must have a lot in common, but they aren’t all the same.
Please explain to me like I’m 5
Why is the inconsistency in the age ranges of generations?
Lost Generation: 1883 – 1900 (17 Years)
The Greatest Generation: 1901 – 1927 (26 Years)
The Silent Generation: 1928 – 1945 (17 Years)
Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964 (18 Years)
Generation X: 1965 – 1980 (15 Years)
Generation Y/Millennials: 1981 – 1996 (15 Years)
Generation Z: 1997 – 2012 (15 Years)
Gen Alpha: 2013 – Present (Currently 9 Years)
In: 0
It is based on cultural events more than time. What happened that had significant impact on ones worldview from 0 to say 20.
>Please explain to me like I’m 5
>Why is the inconsistency in the age ranges of generations?
>Lost Generation: 1883 – 1900 (17 Years)
>The Greatest Generation: 1901 – 1927 (26 Years)
>The Silent Generation: 1928 – 1945 (17 Years)
>Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964 (18 Years)
>Generation X: 1965 – 1980 (15 Years)
>Generation Y/Millennials: 1981 – 1996 (15 Years)
>Generation Z: 1997 – 2012 (15 Years)
>Gen Alpha: 2013 – Present (Currently 9 Years)
“Generations” in that sense are not an accurate metric for measuring anything. They are a handy **narrative** tool to tell simplified stories about complex recent historical developments. That inevitably means information are lost or distorted, but it makes for a better story.
Generations are usually pretty arbitrary in definition. People pretty much made them up on the fly. Most of them are more so vague concepts than clearly defined age groups. Even with Gen X and beyond, you get subdivisions such as Zilennials, aka people who are born in the early years of Gen Z, but to are too old to identify fully with Gen Z, because they grew up right in that gap where the technology that is commonly associated with Gen Z just wasn’t quite there yet, but they were also too young to be Milennials.
Cassettes went out of fashion, but smartphones weren’t a thing yet (letalone something the average citizen could afford), and internet wasn’t fast enough for streaming anyway, so instead, you had the discman, which was a walkman, but for CDs. They came too late for the golden days of the 90s, but are too young to grow up with lives centered around social media and the like, but they got the DS and Phineas and Ferb instead.
Life-defining historical events. The great depression and WWII. Soldiers came home and had a family, causing a baby boom. That tapered off, but the wave of children from the end of WWII to that tapering off was about 18 years. After that they had kids in a second wave. The wave really became less noticeable after that, but people kinda generally decided that a “generation” is 15 years.
Personally, there’s a big split between me and anyone even a little younger that didn’t get their foot in the door before the econopocalypse.
The plague screwing over all the kids for 2 years of education is likely going to be a defining moment. All in favor of renaming Gen-Z to “plague rats”?
Generations like these are not actually hard strictly defined things. There a[re conflicting answers that go against the data set you listed](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/archive/millennials/) so it is not a hard clearly defined edge.
They tend to have events involved, like culture shifts or conflicts. Using the Gen-Z data an example would be “Were they old enough to remember 9/11 or pre-9/11 life?”
Boomers “Were they a byproduct of the Silent Generation who experienced growth from post-war booms?”
“Generations” are a vague cultural concept or marketing idea. While the broad strokes of the timeline you provided will match others, the exact years won’t. If I had to speculate at the thought process of the person who made this:
Step 1) Divide the first two generations at the turn of the century. They’re mostly dead or very old now, so who cares?
Step 2) Put a break at 1927 because the “Greatest Generation” is so named because they may have fought in WWII, and 1927 is the latest you can have been born and been an adult while the war was happening.
Step 3) Put another break 1945 because that’s the end of WWII, and the “Baby Boomers” are supposed to have been born to soldiers returning home from war
Step 4) Continue the Baby Boomers into the mid-60s because that’s the rough consensus on when they ended.
Step 5) Break the rest into exactly 15-year chunks because their names don’t tie them to specific historical events. Just make sure all the Millennials are alive in 2000.
The idea of a “generation” is that it is a group of people who experienced similar social, cultural, and political realities and events. For example, the Silent Generation is usually considered the people who lived through WWII but didn’t fight in it, and were largely shaped by the Great Depression and New Deal in the US. Because of that, these tended to be people who were economically conservative (they grew up not having a lot of money and having to spend carefully) but socially progressive (their best years in childhood were during the New Deal, and so they supported similar programs.
As a more recent example, Millennials tend to be considered as the people who were in school when 9/11 happened. They remember – but were not directly effected by – the Y2K issue and Dot-Bomb. Many of them remember when “gay” was an insult – but also by the time they were an adult (which occurred later, because of the press for college) it wasn’t. They tend to want economic equality and security (having seen that hurt over several economic crashes that seemingly left the rich unhurt); and tend to oppose war (having seen a 20-year war that got very little done).
Generations get split when major events happen. The line between the Greatest Generation and the Silent generation is usually the start of the Great Depression: people from the Greatest Generation might remember a time before it; but people from the Silent Generation don’t. The Silent Generation ends with the significant increase in people having children around World War II. The Baby Boomer era ends with the Civil Rights Movement – but also with the election of Nixon and the changing priorities in US politics. Many people suggest the line between GenX and Millennials is whether you saw 9/11 as an adult, or as a child – while Gen Z (which really needs a better name) don’t remember it at all.
The idea of a human social generation is vague, imprecise.
* What happened while you were in your formative years presumably influences your outlook on life. A proverbial case is that people who grew up in the Great Depression often grew up poor and became accustomed to wasting nothing, making jam and wine out of anything that could be preserved or fermented, hoarding things that that other generations would discard, etc. And that’s why, everyone always claims, great grandma always saved balls of foil and rubber bands and so on. But eras like that don’t necessary happen in a neat little range of years, so generations are different lengths. And circumstances overlap; it’s crazy to say one generation ends exactly when another generation begins.
* Even people who do grow up at the same time obviously are not going to all be the same. Are you the same as all the people your age? No. We’re all different. Economics, genetics, personal experience, gender, etc., all play strong roles in how we turn out. That’s why it’s as stupid to say, for example, “all boomers are like this” as it is to say “all [members of whatever your generation is] are like that.”
* Whether you were 9 or 19 when something happened obviously makes a huge difference on how it affects you, even though you might be in the same so-called generation.
* Things are different around the world. Only a very narrow regional view of things would allow you to think everyone of a particular range of years is similar.
So generations are really only useful if you combine them with other factors, and they’re still not all that precise. All middle-class white American women born between 1950 and 1960 must have a lot in common, but they aren’t all the same.
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