Whenever i look up how long each generation is it always varies but the most consistent is the Baby Boomers spanning from 1946-1964. Though if the following generations continued the same logic, Gen X would be 1965-1983, Millennial would be 1984-2002 (making me a late millennial instead of an early gen z), and Gen Z would be 2003-2021. But instead everyone says Gen X is 1965 to late 70’s/early 80’s, Millennial is early 80’s to mid 90’s, Gen Z is from mid 90’s to late 00’s and Gen Alpha is early 10’s and currently ongoing
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People have talked about “kids these days” and “back in my time” forever, but the trend of actually making generations like this began with the ppst-WWII Baby Boom. A lot of kids were born in a wave, which did make a real quantifiable “generation” that was worth talking about – the baby boomers.
But since then, children haven’t been born in big waves like that, so we’ve just kind of divided a continuous population into arbitrary groups based roughly on being ~one generation, two generations etc. after the baby boom.
There is no defining organization or body for those labels! Different researchers list different starting and ending years for each, and many of them don’t even bother with exact years (instead opting for fuzzy ranges). Especially in the information age, specific generational classifications are incredibly hard to define. Even within Millennials and Gen Z there is a huge difference between (those born in the early-90s and grew up before smartphones and social media) and (those born in the late-90s and early 2000s that did have smartphones and social media). In fact, even when drilling deeper into the “social media era,” there’s still a huge difference between those who grew up with early Facebook and MySpace and those who grew up later with TikTok! You could make the argument that each of those distinctions could be their own “named generation” if you wanted to.
The older generations that are more associated to historic events such as the Lost Generation and WWI, the Greatest Generation and WWII, Boomers and Vietnam, etc. have more generally-accepted date ranges because of when those events took place. Many people also make the argument that the “speed of cultural shift” is much more rapid in the information age than it was for those older named generations, so it has become more difficult to pin down singular generations in an increasingly online world.
As others mentioned, it’s somewhat arbitrary and just agreed upon. However, one of the primary factors for a generational marker is that the cohort (the group of individuals as a whole for the “generation”) has a shared experience that is not shared by other generations, and principally involves events during formative years of childhood, teenage years, and some into early adulthood. For the Baby Boomers, that shared experience was the boom of births following WW2 and the unparalleled – and unrepeated – gain in wealth and productivity.
As the speed of technological change has accelerated, the generational windows have collapsed into shorter spans of time because the cohort shared experience only exists for a narrower time period.
These are totally arbitrary delineations, based on nothing in particular besides peoples love of hearing about themselves. Since it is arbitrary, there is no correct set, just various opinions. Just as we discuss ‘the 80’s’ when nothing actually changed on NYE 1979 and the attributes we assign to the 80s (Punks! Leotards! Malls! Pee Wee! Hair Metal!) often existed in the mid 70s well into the 90s.
Oh, yes, they change regularly and nowadays largely by whichever media can get the most clicks. There was a beautiful moment when it was 18 year intervals
Boomer: 1946 until 1964 (aka through dec 31, 1963)
X: 1964 until 1982
Millennial: 1982 until 2000 (HENCE THE NAME)
Z: 2000 until 2018
The main arguments for shortening the generations are weak (generally defined by lack of experiential diversity and differences in information technology). But the engagement gained for media companies is strong.
However, it’s always been this way. It was never exact years, the Baby Boom was defined by the timing of an event, and the years changed over time anyway. It’s not new.
There is a slight hint of class warfare, readied discussions of cultural identity narcissism etc. But in the end, some news organizations starting around 2010 capitalized on a Canadian definition of when Millennials ended, and found by shortening the generations starting with Millennials, they got more engagement and the younger Millennials liked sleuthing their way into being Gen Z, which is hilarious because with Xennials, Z-lennials, trying to be Gen Y, etc, a defining traits of a Millennial is to declare you are a different generation.
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