To anyone who's old enough, has the media always been focused on the latest generation? Like did the newspapers write about Gen X'ers being this and that back at the time?
Yes. It was annoying at the time. Especially how marketing people described every product as "eXXXXXtreme!!!!", because they thought that's how we all talked.
However, strangely enough I DO miss being, well... relevant. Looking around today, it's like my generation never existed. Most of the musicians I listened to are dead, most of my movies and TV shows and childhood toys have been subsumed by reboots, and most people act as if "Baby Boomers" segued directly into "Millennials".
I didn't like being labeled or pigeonholed at the time, but there is something to be said for having a generational "identity". You feel a lot more invisible, even as an individual, when you belong to a smaller generation whose labels don't stay on the forefront.
Not to mention, from a practical standpoint of political clout... we'll probably wind up getting thrown under the bus by your bigger generation in our elder years, just as as we were by the boomers in our younger years.
As for what it means to be part of a generation, all generations disperse as people get older. It's harder to build a shared identity over common experiences as people's overall life experiences vary wildly. If I've read right, and it's the connection you miss, the answer is to connect with people as individuals. We are always more than the labels we assign to ourselves anyway.
Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Jerry Yang, David Filo, Marc Andreson and more are all Xers.
However, not all generations are labelled as strongly. I think I'm part of a 'missing' generation. Technically I'm a millennial, but according to the top definition here (I'm aware Urban Dictionary isn't always the most reliable reference)... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Millennial ... I'd be a Generation Y Millennial. I do think there's a difference between Generation Y and Generation Z, not in the way where one is superior to the other, but in terms of the differences in the childhood and young adult experiences that shaped us. When I read articles about millennials they're almost always targetted at the Generation Z Millennials. I'm not complaining, I'm grateful I avoided the type of pigeonholing that Generation Z has unfortunately had to go through.
As for why this media focus on the next generation happens, I think part of it is adults trying to make sense of an unfamiliar culture. Perhaps it's a natural reaction when you have kids to try to make sense of the world they're growing up in (when they're not with you). There's often an undercurrent of negativity, though this can run in both directions (the baby boomer generation is widely seen as greedy, for example, though of course such generalisations don't really hold up to much scrutiny).
In short, yes.
The terminology you link to is interesting, I had not previously seen Gen Y and Gen Z combined with "Millennial" in this way.
Naming it was not always done / well known.
Cronkike called them "youth"
Social scientists invented names. Marketers segmemted them.
The Vietnam era youth created a disruption of authority which has been followed ever since.
Senators (Moynihan) used to count the number of generations since the founding of the country.
These are some of the names generations have been called i can remember in my lifetime
Child of the depression
War baby
Baby boom
Generation x
Generation Y
Womans rights era (ERA)
Mans world
--- Gen x got lots of headlines.. But that group was very bland
Most generations, until recently had the real threat of dying in war. And to know personally getting notice of a loved one or friend dying.
I totally forgot that. I know why.... We call them the Selfish Generation...
I've never heard the greatest generation being referred to as selfish. However, as we both know, all these labels are nonsense anyway.
I also forgot "net natives" this, to me, will be a label with meaning.
I also have the?privilege of family history and writings.
Imo the war victory meant that the winners began "for the first time" thinking about themselves... Previous generations, from my understanding of my family history, were not all about doing for themselves. Its not the fault of BBers to be selfish because it was planted by our parents