The Middle Child – 90s Kids and Why We Aren’t Millennials | Hacker News Reader

The Middle Child – 90s Kids and Why We Aren’t Millennials

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> The definition of a Millennial is someone who was born between around 1980 and around the early 2000’s.

Early 2000's isn't Millennial, that's Gen Z. That's one of my frustrations. I remember seeing an article talking about Millennial college students partying on Miami Beach during COVID, and I was internally screaming "THOSE AREN'T MILLENNIALS, THOSE ARE GEN Z!" But I digress...

Of course, really using years isn't a good way to define a generation. I think it's better to define them by behaviors, events, and especially technology.

For example, one of the defining factors for being a Millennial is the growth of the Internet. It effectively didn't exist during our childhood. Our first Internet experience was on dialup. We could barely stream phone-quality audio. Video was out of the question (Yeah, RealPlayer existed, but it was garbage quality). We got to witness the invention of the MP3 and used Napster (and later Kazaa or Limewire).

We were the last generation who would knock on a friend's door to ask if they wanted to ride bikes together.

Now, depending on where you lived and how quickly your family adopted new technology, you might not have had an Internet connection until the early or even mid 2000s. Or maybe you had one, but rarely used it. These "late bloomers" could make someone born in 1995 identify more with Gen Z than with Millennials.

Where is the author getting the age ranges??

"Currently aged 16 to 25, we are forced to be grouped into this almost derogatory term, “Millennial”

Um excuse me but last time I checked someone who is 16 is not a millennial, bus instead gen z

The article was written 5 years ago.

This illustrates how this whole generation labeling concept is a divisive and self-serving media construct.

In 2015 when this was written, 90's kids with their millennial problems were now adults and became part of the problems they spent the last 20 years complaining about.

They also found out they're not any better at solving them.

So the rant is an attempt to kick responsibility to the next generation, while pushing the blame onto the previous one.

You'll find the aughties doing the same thing in like 5 years as the cycle continues.

True, but the entire concept of named generation is designed to allow the media to create narratives in which generations are set against each other in some kind of blame/envy game.

It’s evil stuff.

What problems do you refer to?

I think of things like lack of affordable health care, widening wealth inequality, and police brutality.

Millennials won't solve any of them as long as half of them still think their vote won't change anything, so they stay home and allow the boomers to elect Republicans and centrist Democrats (Which are essentially DINOs).

It's even worse when you look at the big picture. The generational construct originates with Karl Mannheim in the late 1920s who drew from among others upon Marxism. Contrast that to today when generational identity has become one of the biggest distractions from class consciousness.

It maybe had some validity where there were big social changes post-WW2 and a baby boom. I think of it like a diffusing wave, becoming less relevant over time.

"We are incredibly young, and yet possess the nostalgia of an old man." I always felt that way about myself but never really put it in the context of my generation. I wonder how true that actually is for "90's kids" at large.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/top/?t=all

Maybe 90's kids are just at some generational maximum of "tendency to nostalge" * "inclination to post about it on the web".

I think it's really only the dullest minds that latch on to this kind of stuff.

If a random person on the internet making broad generalizations about the millions of people in your "generation" feels important to you personally, you need to assess your life priorities.

Sorry, are you trying to contribute something meaningful to this discussion? It sounds like you're just here to disparage the author.

First World Trade Center bombing was feb 1993, not 1994 as stated in this article.

I don't read much in this piece that can't be claimed in a similar form by prior generations. Boomers were also hated, especially "hippie" boomers, and also grew up on a hugely transformational media -- television. Gen-X was hated as eternal slackers and sarcastic do-nothings who also grew up on early forms the internet.

Millennials are also "hated" in these ways, also based on stereotypes and media portrayals. Really it isn't the age range people "hate", it's the lifestyle of a particular urban millennial with a particular life goals. When this generation is mocked, it usually isn't directed toward the guy born in 1990 in a small Midwest town who decided to hang sheetrock right after school, even though he falls squarely in this generation.

needs a (2015) tag

no kidding, i was assuming the writer was really bad at math with his age groupings.

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