What Old People Mean When They Say Millennials

[Midpack]

Seems timely given the other [-]get off my lawn[/-] thread...

https://youtu.be/dqd_ZBPTceY

 

[Amethyst]

I found it ironic that he has his hair tucked up in the back like a young guy, but he's bald.

 

[ls99]

To me he IS a millenial. BTW just to torture them, make them use a dial telephone.

 

[DrRoy]

I did all that stuff on tape.

 

[NW-Bound]

That comedian is not a boomer, but perhaps a Gen-X'er.

From Wikipedia:

Millennials (also known as Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years. Millennials, who are generally the children of baby boomers and older Gen Xers, are sometimes referred to as "Echo Boomers" due to a major surge in birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s.​

 

[Totoro]

Seems so overly broad to me. I was born in 1980 in an early technology adopter household, and have more in common with those from 1960 than those in 2000.

I feel a generational divide once more than 10 years difference shows up. I've had my high school years before mobile phones, smartphones, the web, wikipedia, facebook, you name it. Someone born in 1995 has only known those things to exist. It's radically different. Internet billionaires only started existing after my childhood, now they are daily occurrence (sort of).

I grew up being bullied because I liked computers. Now MBAs no longer want to do investment banking, but join technology giants.

Just a few things.

 

[NW-Bound]

You are more in the Gen X.

From Wikipedia:

Generation X, or Gen X, is the demographic cohort following the Baby boomers. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the starting birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960s and ending birth years ranging from the late 1970s to early 1980s. Generation X is a relatively smaller demographic cohort sandwiched between two larger demographic cohorts, the Baby boomers and the Millennials.​

 

[Dreaming of Freedom]

Yep, he is a Gen Xer. He may have even had a PC or Mac class in high school and internet in college. Note: he said cassette tape, not 8 track tape (or record).

 

[Totoro]

I guess, the last of the X'ers ..

Had my own PC though at 12 years old (C64 before that), internet halfway through highschool (web near the end). Indeed had programming classes in first two years of high school, already knew how to having dabbled in BASIC before that. Only a few kids in our town were at that point then.

In that case it doesn't sit well with me to define the early 1980 as the first millennial, my sister (1983) for example is still in the same category as me, as well as one niece (1981) and one nephew (1984). The ones born after 1990 have a different experience.

1985 and later makes more sense to me then. That way the web was there when they hit highschool, facebook and the IPhone before they left college.

 

[Nemo2]

A Millennial, to me, is anyone born after WWII ended.

 

[Danmar]

A Millennial, to me, is anyone born after WWII ended.

Including all the boomers?

 

[Nemo2]

Including all the boomers?

If they're younger than me, they're kids, regardless of what they call themselves.

 

[kcowan]

My grand daughter did not want a phone in her room. She used her iPod Touch with WiFi to FaceTime all her friends. I met them and chatted with them even though we never "met".

 

[kcowan]

Who are these "old people" he speaks about? I have an 89 year old friend who actively uses his smart phone. I also have a 70 year old friend who has an iPhone that he uses for speaking only! I have a local announcer who refers to people in their 50s as elderly.

Old is how you act not your numerical age.

 

[NW-Bound]

... Old is how you act not your numerical age.

I have been acting as a cranky geezer since at least the age of 40. My wife tells me this all the time.

If you act like one, you are one.

 

[ls99]

Enough already, everybody off my lawn.

 

[NW-Bound]

It's MY lawn!

 

[Nemo2]

It's MY lawn!

At an RV park in Puerto Peñasco, I recall a fellow having a sign outside his motorhome that went something like:

"Here lies John,
Cold and Hard.
Last guy who
walked through my yard."

 

[W2R]

To me, the members of the post war Baby Boom generation are those who were born from 1945-1950, right after the WW2 veterans came home and were able to start their families. But nobody else agrees with that definition any more.

Millennials? I think I've got that wrong too. Born after 2000? I guess not.

As for becoming old, it's never too late to learn. Now that F has an LG smart phone like mine, we are learning how to text. It's easy with an icon right there on the smartphone, and we thought it was time that the two of us entered the 21st century. Before now, we didn't really know who to text but we have been texting one another sometimes.

 

[NW-Bound]

I think you had a smartphone before I did, and you just learn to text?

My children have trained us to do "Hangout", which can be a group conversation.

It's useful and convenient as I can send both of them messages like "I am making Philly cheese steak sandwich Saturday at noon. Want to join us?"

They in turn occasionally send us photos of tricks they have trained their cats to do.

 

[W2R]

I think you had a smartphone before I did, and you just learn to text?

My children have trained us to do "Hangout", which can be a group conversation.

It's useful and convenient as I can send both of them messages like "I am making Philly cheese steak sandwich Saturday at noon. Want to join us?"

They in turn occasionally send us photos of tricks they have trained their cats to do.

Well gee, c'mon. Gimme a break. We don't have kids nearby who need to know about Philly cheese steak sandwiches. Since we don't know a single person around here who texts, you might say that kind of limits things, right? F had a flip phone and couldn't figure out how to text with it, but now we both have LG smartphones and I thought we were pretty cool to figure it out on our own. The last thing in the world we would need is the capability for group conversations, unless/until we find a third person who texts.

I did text him on Tuesday when I was right in the middle of a root canal, to tell him I'd be late getting home. My dentist had stepped out of the room momentarily. I thought I was being pretty 21st century to do something that wild.

 

[NW-Bound]

Just teasing. Don't be upset.

PS. Wild is something like taking a selfie of your mouth wide agape on the dentist's chair and send it out.

 

[W2R]

Just teasing. Don't be upset.

OK. Thanks, it's hard to tell on the internet sometimes.

 

[NW-Bound]

Regarding the definition of Boomers, Wikipedia has this to say:

Baby boomers are the demographic group born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964...

In the U.S., the generation can be segmented into two broadly defined cohorts: The Leading-Edge Baby Boomers are individuals born between 1946 and 1955, those who came of age during the Vietnam War era. This group represents slightly more than half of the generation, or roughly 38,002,000 people of all races. The other half of the generation was born between 1956 and 1964. Called Late Boomers, or Trailing-Edge Boomers, this second cohort includes about 37,818,000 individuals.​

It occurs to me that the terms Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial may be US-centric. They denote certain cultural and social characteristics of each group, and these may not describe the groups of the same age in other parts of the world.

 

[Totoro]

Good point, although Europe is rather similar in terms of major events, economic development and technology availability.

China on the other hand .. random google http://www.globalforesight.dreamhos...ts/chinas-5-generations-diverging-lifestyles/

• The War and PRC Generation (1920-1945)
• The Cultural Revolution Generation (1946-1955)
• The Recovery Generation (1956-1967)
• The Sandwich Generation (1968-1979)
• The ‘Me’ Generation (1980-2000)