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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

Oh thank goodness, the article opens with explaining the utter uselessness of the term "millennial". I (32) have next to nothing in common with someone who was born when I was graduating high school. It's an absurd category.

Anyway, it's still silly to take this particular question as a proxy for views on gender equality. I think there's an obvious desire for it to be economically feasible for one partner to be able to take time off to raise children in their early years. It's usually not possible anymore.

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Then the second paragraph states directly that this category is over-broad, and that lumping so many age groups is problematic, and dissects younger versus older "millenials". Sometimes more than one sentence is needed for context :).

Absolutely. What happened to Generation Y? If Gen X cuts off at 1980, wouldn't Gen Y be from 1980 to early/mid '90s? Millenials are kids who don't remember dial-up, and perhaps even wired ethernet.

I'm considered a millennial and I was born in 1985. The most common I've heard is it is anyone who turned 18 on or after 2000.

Also, I very definitely remember dial-up... and cassette tapes, and VHS, and walkmans, diskmans, CRT monitors, playing outside, etc :)

Born in 93, is playing outside really not common anymore or are you just joking?

I am half joking on that one. But yes, I get the distinct feeling playing outside is becoming increasingly less common.

And when kids do play outside their parents hover over them and they can't explore or take risks.

Speaking purely from the perspective of someone in the US. I know other countries are very different.

I hover over my kid when he plays outside... but then, he's 18 months old.

90s kids remember dial up, vhs, car cassette players and wired ethernet without doubt. In fact, I remember plugging my xbox 360 into my phone jack hoping it was the same as ethernet.

Born in 1978 I was clearly too young to be part of Gen X at the time it was popular in the media. Gen Y was sort of a transitional label that never really got traction until it coalesced into Millenial. Ultimately for me it just shows the absurdity of bucketing generations in this way since I clearly don't fit in either.

Gen Y was the placeholder name until they the millennial name stuck. Depending on who you ask the generation starts from 1977 to 1984 and ends from 1994 to 2000. We are rapidly approaching the time when we can expect some catchy name to stick for the next cohort.

Generations tend to be around 20 years and every one has a big gap between the start and the finish. Just look at baby boomers, do you think someone born in 1946 with a returning GI father and graduating high school right into the start of Vietnam escalation had much in common with someone born in 1964 and not graduating high school until the Reagan administration?

If only people would be grouped by decades, ie 90's kids. The problem with this though is it doesn't mean you were born in the 90's, but you grew up on the 90's - but what age is growing up?

Regardless, although I understand the ubiquity of terms like millenial, I think there's so much more value in breaking down things into decades. I'd actually say 8 year segments are the most useful because you can use presidents (who often serve 2 full terms) as references, but that's specific for the US and doesn't jive well with a base-10 counting system.

I bet out there somewhere someone has come up with a great way to classify generations specific to cultural changes and I just haven't found it yet. Maybe it'll show up in this thread.

Connection method seems an odd choice. In terms of cultural changes, I'd pick from not remembering a time before (1) Amazon/web-selling, (2) laptops over desktops, (3) Google or (4) smartphones.

to me the more functional definition is "do you remember life before the internet?"

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