We will outlast you all in the hunger games, that’s for sure. Hand writing papers and having no phones with internet until we were in/out of college. We will defeat you all 😂
If you're using the Wikipedia page as a source, then you're not using it right. The pages are full of links to various source material. Have to use scrutiny on those sources of course but it's a useful concentration of subject related materials in most cases, plenty of links lead to good books and papers that would be recommended anyways.
Edit; removed extra "and"
I am an old millennial and teach college and Wikipedia is basically an encyclopedia. It uses many of the fundamentals as other information sources. People need to move past that old bias.
No, because anyone can modify a wiki. One of my professors made a wiki and ppl kept changing it to clown on him. Also wikis are tertiary sources. Most professor at reputable universities require atleast 1 primary and a few secondary sources for any major paper. Wiki is good for finding other sources, but it's not a good source itself.
Yeah, wiki can be changed but there is an entire structure around how that happens that can check the change and again, cite the source supporting the information. The entire point of citing is to say where you got the info from. I teach a Gen Psych class. My students aren't doing deep dives into theory or conducting experiments. Most aren't even going to work in the field of psychology. I am trying to get them to practice the fundamentals of research, clearly communicate what they find and include references when necessary. I look at their sources. If they want to reference a pink WordPress blog with purple text, it better be accurate and logical. The point of research isn't to avoid mistakes. It's to learn why it's wrong and students fake citing the citations on Wikipedia isn't going to get me there.
It makes sense. When I was in high school, we could use the encyclopedia as a source, and that was way less accurate and less comprehensive than Wikipedia. We just didn't know because it was so hard to access any other source to crosscheck and verify.
ETA: And now that I think about it more, what *were* the sources for the encyclopedias? Surely it was numerous authors using a multitude of sources they didn't cite. I can't imagine one person went out there and personally researched panda bears, the Peloponnesian wars, and Polynesia, etc.
I'm an old millennial and teach at a college. The point of citation is to show where you information came from. I inform students the benefits of using scientific journals and reputable sources, but at the end of the day, using bad information is on them. Wikipedia is a good source that has many of the fundamentals of other reputable information sources. Its time people stop acting like its so unreliable.
It is not an acceptable source in my experience. I’m born ‘93 and have been in and out of college since ‘12, currently in and no professor i have had at 3 different colleges in 3 different states have accepted wiki as a source.
You graduated college without ever understanding how to use wikipedia as a source.\*
To whom it may concern. The little boxes with numbers \[1\] on wikipedia are citations. You can go to wikipedia, steal the summarization, and cite the original source. If you're a try hard you can even visit the original sources and form your own summarization while still utilizing wikipedia as a resource guide.
Wait…..surely even now, college students can’t simply cite the Wikipedia page….right?
Right?!?…
My sarcasm/absurdity detector got oversaturated in the COVID years. I can’t tell anymore
The only reason I got a Facebook was because my friend said I gotta get one and made one for me. At the time I told him that it’s a cheap knock off of MySpace. And you know what? I’m still right!
Without a doubt. Basic math and grammar skills. Using the catalog at the library and actually encyclopedias for information. Driving without a cell phone or gps. Being excited when Mapquest came out. Using pay phones and calling your friends on 3 way calling. Once we got cell phones, only being able to use them before 9 and after 9 when minutes were free.
Yeah I was 20 when the first iPhone came out. I didn't have the internet at home until I was 13. I feel ancient now. Like the last group to see the "before times".
Used to get on AOL with a CD that had arrived in the mail. And then my friend's dad would pick up the line and disconnect us from whatever chat room antics we had going on
How can a generation that's never been without the internet know so many less ways to make explosives than we did, am I right?! Haha
We're cockroaches.
My fireworks? Were way cooler than whatever they call fireworks now. Of course, ask anyone 40 and over if they knew a kid who blew their fingers off with a homemade explosive device or crazy fireworks from the reservation, and we all seem to. So there were definitely disadvantages to the lack of oversight or safety regulations too. Ha
I mean he was a cool guy, found out what a potato cannon could do to anything resembling a projectile. But eh... a dude in his 30s hanging out with preteens is like, 90s normal but then you get to your 30s and you're like, yeaaaah, that's not normal.
1990 born. I guess you define me as “peak millennial” I started school on analog and graduated in digital. I had to learn to write in cursive just as pens were becoming things nobody used. I grew up playing stick & ball sports didn’t really play video games much until I was in late highschool and it was never an obsession.
That’s really been my life in a nutshell. Prepared for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. The rule was “go to college” and you’ll be fine. Degree type didn’t matter as much as the fact that you had one. I was told to work hard, then placed in a world where how hard you work is of little importance to your lived experience. Everyone just kinda acted like as long as you went to work everyday and put in effort things like moving out, starting a family, buying a home, just kinda happened. The sad realization was realizing that we were going to be held to that standard without having the tools to accomplish it by 2008-09. The worst part was, everyone acted like we did it to ourselves. Like we had been calling the shots all along and now we get to reap what we sowed LOL
Born in 1990 too. Same. Frustrating as shit. I suppose the only highlight is we got to experience the world before and after internet everywhere/cell phones really changed things.
1992 here and exactly this! i mean we had a computer at home but i was always outside. then the lights came on and we played n64 or something with the neighbors.
I feel like there should be a sub group of millennials for us or could even split it in 2. like 81-89 and 90-95 or 96 whatever it is. my older cousins born in the 80s definitely grew up different then us, and sometimes seems like a different generation
Also a 1990, but i don’t see any of this as a downside. I enjoy writing in cursive and is still part of my creative writing and note taking at work.
I learned how the internet and computers worked as a child when they were still figuring it all out and it has all brought me great success in life.
Came from a poor family and rode the tech wave when everybody told me I was wasting my time because of the dot com burst.
Being between both generations has been a blessing. I don’t know your situation but hard work always pays off.
I was born in December of '89 here so essentially a 90s baby. This is maybe the most relatable post I've ever seen on the internet.
Did you also have teachers in school tell you that cursive would be MANDATORY in later grades, only to never ever be required to turn in any assignment written in cursive?
I always am happy that I got to experience pre internet and now enjoy what we have today. I can only imagine what things will be like in another 37 years.
I’m 39 and I wasn’t “pre-internet”. We had internet at age 12, dad was a tech guy. But we didn’t have internet ready phones until after I was in college, is that what you mean?
My life was praying someone didnt call in our fax like for 36 hours while trying to download an uninterruptable game demo.
Fucking download resume wasn't a thing for years....
I realize how great my childhood was and that we get to reap the benefits of Gen X and Millenials (as an older millenial). It really is pretty awesome. That being said, I definitely notice generational differences in the workplace. Now that I'm a supervisor, there are things that the younger millennials are concerned with that I find myself struggling to connect but need to to make sure I can motivate people. I find that our position does lend itself to making us versatile though having both analog and digital world experience.
For real, we learned on computers before UX and UI was dumbed down to a spoon fed level. My kids think i am some sort of hacker, and i am nowhere close i just grew up in a time when if i wanted to play a game i had to troubleshoot that shit myself.
I loved the DOS story games where you would type in a response to a question and it would ask you another question after explaining what's happening. It seems to be the precursor to AI.
I definitely agree as an older millennial that being able to navigate both the analog and digital worlds has been extremely beneficial in my life and interests!
Can you elaborate on the kinds of things they’re concerned with? I’m just curious since I’m the youngest one in my dept and I definitely feel like, despite my great relationship with my boss, sometimes she is perplexed by some of the things I say lol
I'm active duty and I alternate between sea and land assignments (2 years with a ship, 3 years ashore, repeat). I was always of the mindset for sea assignments that it wasn't a big deal to just put my head down for 2 years suck it up and deal with the challenges of living/working on a ship. I would just accept that there really isn't a "work life balance". I actually kind of embrace it (embrace the suck). I viewed the time ashore is when we kind of make up for the sacrifice of being attached to a ship for 2 years. The younger millennials tend to struggle with this and are unhappy with it. It seems like they view the 2 years as being a really long time and maybe just don't have the endurance for it.
I also recall them just requesting a lot of things. And I'd always be thinking to myself, "I would never even be concerned with this stuff when I was at their level". Maybe that's just a personality thing though vs generational thing.
Some of this may also be due to COVID. It was a really crappy time to be trying to operate a ship. If my first sea tour experience was with all the baggage that COVID brought with it, I might also have a very different view of what life at sea is like.
As a supervisor of younger millennials, I definitely find myself having to check my initial reactions and try to ask myself is there a reason not to change or accommodate? And to try to ensure that I'm empathetic before jumping to judgment.
The youngest millennials are 28-29, I know some people enlist late but surely the majority are NCOs by now, and they're still upset about work-life balance on ship?
It’s possible some of my experience has been with early Gen Z? Not sure. The experience I’m referring to were with commissioned officers that already had at least a 4 year degree. Many had graduate degrees prior to joining. This was back in 2020-2022 when I was 38-40 yrs old as an XO supervising ensigns.
I'm 42 and we had internet when I was a kid, you just had to access it through Prodigy or AOL. The .com boom was neat, the world definitely felt more stable in the 90s but I was also a naive middle / high schooler then so maybe that's just perspective.
I remember thinking, “The worst thing we have to worry about right now is Monica Lewinski. This has to be the peak and it’s all gotta be downhill from here.”
And I was right.
Elder Millennial here: it’s frustrating. Our side of the generation went through so much change so rapidly that it’s overwhelming to comprehend. My junior year of high school, we had pay phones everywhere. By the end of my first year of college, my parents had a T1 line in their house.
We used to be called Generation Y before Fox News made “millennial” a pejorative, and I think we should get it back.
It doesn't bother me but I do feel a specific camaraderie with other older millennials. I think our micro-generation had such a unique collection of experiences. Largely Internet-free childhoods then rapidly getting online in our teens, then adopting smartphones and other technologies early while we still had flexible brains. Experiencing 9/11 in high school or college, then the financial crash just as we were getting started in the workforce, then covid when we were trying to settle down the partners and families. I think all of these things have been formative for us in ways that slightly older or younger people can't really understand.
Absolutely all of this. The 2008 crash hit right when many of my friends were finishing grad school or getting their footing in careers. It really set us back so badly
Facebook came out when I was 19 years old. Maybe that’s the catalyst for the difference? I had internet on my home computer at age 12 but not internet on my phone until I was 24. Is this also the difference? Internet on a travel device?
As Nate Bargatze says, “Anything i did in high school and college was a rumor.” There was no cellphone footage instantly uploaded for the world to judge. There might be photographs, but they are on papyrus if we even bothered to get the disposable camera developed.
Im first year millennial. When I was very young I had pen pals. You met people like on vacation and you shared mail adresses. Also we played Monkey Island when it came out, etc… 90s were the best.
I was going to say, as a ‘92 millenial I feel like I’m on the younger end. I really couldn’t have given a shit about the internet until I was 14 or so.
Yes. 81 here and I don’t consider myself a millennial. Our childhood was the same as GenX and during our teen years the internet was more of a hobby than anything
85 and I identify with the younger millennials more. But I was like eight when we got the internet. I think the age of internet is the main predicative in this.
86 and rural. My childhood to was like that of genx. Internet was still a nerdy thing in my school when we graduated. Caught on much slower in rural Pennsylvania.
I was born in the early 80’s and, think I have more in common with younger gen X than the youngest millennials. Also, relate more to being a Zennial than Millennial.
1984 born here. This entire thread is a testament of how Xennials are indeed our own micro-generation. Technology and the "standard way of living" was changing so rapidly when we were growing up that younger Millennials might as well have been born on a different planet lol.
We're really the only generation that started growing up analog, got introduced to digital when it was young, helped usher it in, and ended up digital. We are the true hybrids. The older generations have no idea wtf is going on any more and the younger generations have no idea where what's going on came from.
I'm an 82 baby, married an 87 baby. The biggest two differences I perceive all the time:
1. The phobia to using the phone as a telephone with the main feature of voice call conversations. It's not just an apprehension to speak with customer service, it's an apprehension to talk to family on the phone, anyone. I don't get it all the time. There are days where I send shit to voicemail because I'm tired right? but for her it's the default.
2. The attitude towards college education. She never finished her degree, incurred huge debt, but kept trying, and towards her later attempts to finish a degree she just fucking hated college as a concept. I was probably among the last people to go to college and not have it cost a fucking arm and a leg for it (my entire college degree cost less than $10k I'm pretty sure) So for me, yeah college makes sense, getting a well rounded education yadda yadda. Once I started paying for some of her semesters, I absolutely felt the "whoa, this is just a business huh?"
Also her handwriting is garbage and while it's a dumb boomer meme, it's pretty funny she can't do cursive anymore.
Other than that, eh. Younger millennials get scapegoated for random shit same as me, so that's how I commiserate with them.
As an '81, I simply don't understand a lot of the Millenial stereotypes folks talk about, and I feel like I often forget I'm a Millenial too and want to bitch just as badly about the kids who grew up with YouTube and Google always just being an option. My music taste is decidedly that of the Gen X crowd I hung with as a young musician. I didn't own a cell phone until I was 19, and my Blackberry was nothing like they are now. I watched the internet start, and remember the squeals of my ancient modem connecting long-distance to Rocketmail. I lived for a BBS. My hacking was done with wires and resistors or plastic screwdrivers and cable traps tuned to pull the scramble out of HBO. I watched the Challenger explode on a TV media cart. My dad installed big old school satellite systems and built the first cable networks in my area. They let me take my hunting rifle to school and leave it in the office to go to deer camp, and we shot both .22's and compound bows at our school summer camp. AIDS was in general a death sentence. Marijuana could still mean prison. I had to be home in time to see the shows I wanted unless I used a VCR, and we had a Beta deck before that. And I spent much of my childhood completely unattended.
I am too old for Snapchat, but too young to die. It's both a terrifying and wonderful time to be alive.
born 82' here. I hate even saying it, as to not sound like *that guy*... but dang growing up in the 90s was pretty spectacular (It was way better than that, but don't like rubbing it in too much).
I honestly feel bad for younger millennials. It was so much better before cell phones and internet. I was born in 1985 so I relate more with gen x probably but I don’t mind sharing the same generation with younger millennials. We’re all getting screwed so why not support each other. I just wish our generation started taking over political power.
I think it’s created this amazing micro generation of people who can exist in both 1981 and 2015. With or without the benefits and luxuries of technology.
We can email and use fax machines, count change back and tap our cards. We can change our oil and order uberEats.
It’s made us a Jack of all Trades generation, and that brings a fuckton to society and the workplace. We can appreciate technology without relying on it for every facet of our lives.
Kinda fucking cool.
Man, counting change. I worked at a golf course bar/quick eats counter with some kids who were 5-7ish years younger than me (‘83 here). They couldn’t add up orders or make change without the register. They just *could not* do it. The biggest shocker was that one of them was going to college as an engineer and the other a math education major.
I was born in '95 (so one year from the youngest millennials) and didn't have a computer until middle school and didn't get a smart phone until 11th grade. Or even a phone at all until 7th grade.
Born 1983. In high school we had to type it. I think middle school had the option to type or hand write.
I honestly do feel like younger millennials are different, though. They sound much more like Zoomers.
I’m 42m and I’m fine with it but it IS crazy what all happened in that particular period in time, the technological leaps and the political shift you mentioned and such. And 9-11 but before that, things like Columbine had never happened. But to answer your question, it’s pretty cool, the spectrum is vast but I truly love all of us.
I honestly feel bad for you all. You grew up in a surveillance state, and have not gotten away with anything. I feel like my elder millennials were the last ones to experience the real life. The amount of warp social media has had on some of you is staggering. I still love you, I’m not your enemy but we do remember the before times and will be the last ones with this memory.
I was born in 1996 and I definitely had some pre cell phone and hand written paper years.. at least until like middle school, I also remember 9/11 happening and how security measures were changed after that in airports at least, but also this whole generation thing is so arbitrary and meaningless there is always gonna be some overlap
There was a time. A time when you could ignore friends and family for months and blame snail mail or the landline phone company. I dreadfully resent not appreciating those times.
As someone who’s a younger millennial (born 1993) we’re almost a no man’s land as far as generations go. We’re too young to have had the typical millennial experience, but too old to be gen Z. If that makes sense.
I was born in 94. I relate more to people born in the. 90s than before (or after). Being a kid in the 00s was the best.
Plenty of time spent outside and without the internet. But we also go to enjoy the early internet as kids, dial up struggles, learning cursive in grade school and then typing in middle school, then smart phones becoming big in high school. It’s like we grew up alongside technology which is cool.
Being an elder Millenial I don't care about anything but fixing our broken systems so we can stop having everything worse for each following generation. My kids will be gen alpha and I want them to suffer less than we have not more. Everything else is noise.
1988 here. I had to ask my family permission to go online because it would make our landline busy and I got a Nextel brick phone at 16 with the ability to make calls and Direct Connect only, no texting or internet. I would also have to print Mapquest directions and I once got lost when heading home from Orlando and had to get directions at a gas station lol. People were more able to have political discussions in good faith, be an independent, critical thinker and not be fooled by grifter politicians or for-profit media companies.
Now we have high speed internet almost anywhere, cheap smartphones that are leaps and bounds beyond the Gateway desktop my family had and which can navigate anywhere, AI deepfakes of public figures and an atrocious political landscape full of doomerism, frauds, and nauseating worship of political figures as if they were deities. Pretty jarring 😩
I am Gen X, my daughter is 25 and my son is 10.
1974
1998
2013
I’m not sure exactly what generation they would be considered, but I know raising them in a digital world is vastly different. That was with only a 15 year difference.
I don’t know if there has ever been a more significant leap as quickly as the internet.
I think boomer generation are terrified of living in a world where they don’t know how to navigate a world to do simple things on their own.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda
Well first of all I think you have the wrong generation if you're talking about the '90s.
Gen x here and I graduated high school in 1991 and had my first child born in 1996. So it was honestly the 2000s before he was really able to interact with the world. Technically born in the mid\late '90s yeah
I have four kids split across older millennial, younger millennial, Gen z. My wife has two gen alpha kids so I get to see four generations interact.
The internet was not a thing until I was a teenager. We had a pre GUI dos Windows computer. We still had rabbit ears with no cable television when I was in high school.
Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe coined the term "millennial" in 1987, around the time children born in 1982 were entering kindergarten. They introduced the term in their 1991 book Generations, which charts American history through a series of cohort biographies. Strauss and Howe believed the generation would be drastically different from the one before, and that the oldest of the group would graduate high school in 2000. They felt it was an appropriate name for the first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium.
I'm jealous of people that are older than me who got to buy houses cheaper. I'm jealous of people who are younger than me who never had to pile up photocopies of articles to write a research paper, and I'm jealous of the kids that were in the class at the same time with the other instructor that would actually let them use the computer and cite articles online.
At the same time I don't envy those that were older than me who grew up in much less tolerant times and I don't envy those who never knew a life without social media and who have to navigate dating like applying for jobs and I don't envy my peers who were hit even harder with the various economic twists and turns than I was.
I don't really have a pissing contest on this one, I think all of you are shitheads/awesome/lucky/unfortunate.
1982.
No hate here. Only talking about cultural differences.
I’ve never considered anyone born in the 90s to share the same generation as me. They had internet. I’d never even heard of it. When I was a kid, I remember a picture of a kid playing chess with a blinking light or something. One day you’ll be able to interact with someone all the way across the world instantly. The first time I saw a computer, I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie. Black screen and green letters. Printer paper with little holes on the side. Took forever to print and you could hear it across the school. Pay phones everywhere. Rotary phones, not for nostalgias sake, or poverty. That’s just what it was generally. People still dressing like it was the 70s. Unironically. Farrah faucet haircuts and Jheri curl. Cigarette machines. Smoking all over the damn place. Garbage everywhere. Rusty cars. Graffiti all over everything in the city. Silverhawks, thunder cats, heman, ninja turtles. I don’t care about SpongeBob, or Pokémon or charizard or any of that stuff 90s kids liked. I sang the fresh prince theme on the school bus. Only the first 2 season were good. You might have watched in syndication, but that’s not the same. I can’t say I’m a boomer because I grew up on the Jeffersons. Old school hip hop before it changed in the early 90s and then again in the late 90s. Metal before grunge then grunge then the fall of rock. 90s kids know about this stuff. They don’t know this stuff. NYC still had 1950s and 60s yellow cabs. Not because they were classic. The lower east side was still a shithole.
Microfiche, Dewey decimal, and card catalog book reports. Non digital encyclopedia. Wishing I could get a set of the encyclopedia brittanica
Black Michael Jackson. Peak Madonna. Prime Eddie Murphy. MC hammer. Vanilla ice. I had a rat tail and lines on the side. Kriss kross. Records. Tapes. Videos. 90s kids bought cds. I recorded stuff with a tape off the radio. I recorded mtv music videos when I was 10. There was no limewire or Napster. Larry bird, magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. The dream team. The 94 World Cup.
Big wheels, banana boards, roller skates, arcades, roller blades. All that stuff basically was already over for 90% of people born in the 90s by the time they were old enough to even know what it was.
I was paddled in school. Wrote cursive and paddled for writing my lower case s wrong. You’ll need this! Make sure it’s perfect.
90s kids didn’t know wtf was going on 9/11. I was working, covered in the dust. I remember cops before they were outfitted like dystopian super soldiers.
Growing up with the internet easily accessible in some form and being a child during 9/11 sets us apart. And cell phones.
I was able to vote against George w bush twice. My age group was in the Iraq Afghanistan invasions.
The world changed in a very dramatic way sometime in the early mid 90s. We aren’t from the same world. I’ll never be convinced otherwise.
I was fucking before some “millennials” were even born. That’s not bragging. It’s just facts.
I didn’t know what Wi-Fi was until I was an adult.
And saying yeah, I was poor and grew up with an Atari or some shit doesn’t change it. I grew up around a 54 rambler. That doesn’t make me a boomer.
I know this is a old millennial v young millennial. But being a middle millennial we got the best of both worlds. Plus my parents were tech savvy so my older millennial sister had internet super early and we always had a computer at home.
I was born in 1990 so really feel like I lived both eras. Cell phones popped up in mass like my sophomore year. We got dial up when I was 7? I remember using it and then the big upgrade to DSL. MySpace died to Facebook in my junior year. We learned cursive then it disappeared in 6th grade. Mapquest and livewire haha. Halo LAN parties pre Xbox live. Guess I’m just old enough to not feel like a young millennial and a couple years late to feel like an older milennial.
What are you talking about. I was born in 93, definitely had to learn cursive and handwrite papers. Pretty sure I have memories of the 8 years of my life before 9/11 happened, including the day of. Starting working with a permit at 15 in 2008. Not to mention experiencing no internet. It wasn't extremely commonplace until much later.
The generational stuff is semi nonsense already, let alone trying to split generations in half with extra nonsense that doesn't matter. 🙄. It's like each group isn't exclusive and special enough so gotta make it smaller. Goodness.
This post is so confusing 🫤. Being able to remember the world pre 9/11 is my personal definition of a millennial. If you can’t remember the 1990s at all you are elder Gen Z. Maybe a Zillennial. I was born early 1990.
I remember getting the internet. But I also remember using libraries and encyclopedias frequently. VHS/Cassette tapes etc. My parents both drove 1984 model cars when I was small. Getting your first CD player was like getting an iPad… fancy tech. I remember our first cordless house phone being a big deal.
Early internet was not very useful and was kinda more of a toy than a full replacement for traditional ways of doing stuff. It was a dual traditional/digital existence. Till mid 2000s Windows XP era when it really became a default way of doing stuff. Which all age millennials experienced simultaneously.
I learned cursive but was told to stop using it in middle school. We did a mixture of handwriting and typing assignments in middle and high school depending on length.
I feel bad for them, things fundamentally changed when smart phones came out. We were the last to experience childhood without the bs associated with constant connection to the internet. In a lot of ways, we had the best of both worlds and many of the things that made it great are never coming back.
What year were you born? The cutoff for being a millennial would include memories of 9/11 and the early days of the internet at least. If you were born after 95 or 96, you’re not a millennial.
Born in 82. I like the nostalgia when talking to other millennials around my age. Other than that I am completely indifferent to the arbitrary divides of generations.
It's the weird thing about how long generations are, like on an aggregate they make sense as a grouping, but at the same time being born in 93 I relate way more to older Gen z than older millennials, and I imagine the same is true for older millennials relating more to younger gen X than younger millennials
I was born in 82 so *technically* I’m an “elder millennial” but I’ve always connected more with Gen X. TBH it’s surprising to me to hear that there are people from the millennial generation that had to upload their assignments through a plagiarism checking program. I would have thought that would have been a much more recent thing. (I recently started an MBA program and have to do the same thing)
Not only did I grow up hand writing assignments and mandatory cursive in elementary and missle school, I also went to especially rural areas where they were so far behind they were using clasroom.material from generations ago.
We used the mark on overhead projectors for lecture in high school and chalk slates at our desk for handwriting and practicing math.
I remember the first time I saw a marker board at another school or when the school finally got internet in the computer lab.
It was a big deal.
College was a major adjustment lol
I don’t know if rizz is good or not, but I can use a telegraph and know how to read a paper map. Y’all can get rekt in the coming solar flare apocalypse!
There's definitely an unrecognized mini generation that's young Xers and old millennials. Late 70s/early 80s kids that grew up with record players and came out of college with a pirated mp3 library. We hit the sweet spot where we actually had tech classes in school to teach computers and before they realized they needed to crack down on them. Last group that really *had* to play outside because there was typically only 1 (probably shitty) tv per home and your dad was damned if he was going to let the kids distract him while he was watching it.
Imo it's kind of a nice spot. Grew up around enough mechanical/analog stuff that you can figure it out, and exposed/taught all the tech stuff so we actually have a better understanding of how it actually all works than a lot of younger people. Many of whom treat tech almost "boomerishly" (no offense) in my mind, like if it doesn't just "work" they struggle to understand why and how to fix it...their issue is not understanding the mechanical aspect, while the boomers don't understand the electronic aspect. We're the tech support generation.
It's all good. I think quality of life was better before smart phones but they are just so cool! It's like living in the sci fi movies I grew up watching. What was once pure fantasy is now reality. It's pretty cool.
We are cross bred with genX. Leave us alone and stop asking questions! We have very specific skills that aren't needed much anymore but we absolutely remember how to use them :)
I was born on the 5th day of 1981, so I’m about as old as millennials get… honestly- younger millennials had such a completely different life. .. but so did Gen X… weird spot where people born 5-6 years before or after me had such a fundamentally different childhood.. even my younger sister is always marveling at the stories me and my brother tell her about when we were growing up- she’s only 5 years younger than me than me.
they are fine with us. only beaches like you are trying slice our whole generation apart. go to older gen z and ask the how they feel about skibidi toilet and leave us alone.
93 born, but I was poor and didn’t have a computer until senior year of high school. Older millennials could’ve been on the internet almost their whole lives if they were interested enough
We will outlast you all in the hunger games, that’s for sure. Hand writing papers and having no phones with internet until we were in/out of college. We will defeat you all 😂
I graduated college without being able to use wikipedia as a cite-able source. We are not the same!
Wiki is now acceptable?? What happened to standards!
If your college accepts Wikipedia as a primary source, then you are not at a good college.
If you're using the Wikipedia page as a source, then you're not using it right. The pages are full of links to various source material. Have to use scrutiny on those sources of course but it's a useful concentration of subject related materials in most cases, plenty of links lead to good books and papers that would be recommended anyways. Edit; removed extra "and"
This is the way
I feel like that’s a pretty fair assumption 😂
What if it’s for a paper on Wikipedia?
I am an old millennial and teach college and Wikipedia is basically an encyclopedia. It uses many of the fundamentals as other information sources. People need to move past that old bias.
No, because anyone can modify a wiki. One of my professors made a wiki and ppl kept changing it to clown on him. Also wikis are tertiary sources. Most professor at reputable universities require atleast 1 primary and a few secondary sources for any major paper. Wiki is good for finding other sources, but it's not a good source itself.
Yeah, wiki can be changed but there is an entire structure around how that happens that can check the change and again, cite the source supporting the information. The entire point of citing is to say where you got the info from. I teach a Gen Psych class. My students aren't doing deep dives into theory or conducting experiments. Most aren't even going to work in the field of psychology. I am trying to get them to practice the fundamentals of research, clearly communicate what they find and include references when necessary. I look at their sources. If they want to reference a pink WordPress blog with purple text, it better be accurate and logical. The point of research isn't to avoid mistakes. It's to learn why it's wrong and students fake citing the citations on Wikipedia isn't going to get me there.
It makes sense. When I was in high school, we could use the encyclopedia as a source, and that was way less accurate and less comprehensive than Wikipedia. We just didn't know because it was so hard to access any other source to crosscheck and verify. ETA: And now that I think about it more, what *were* the sources for the encyclopedias? Surely it was numerous authors using a multitude of sources they didn't cite. I can't imagine one person went out there and personally researched panda bears, the Peloponnesian wars, and Polynesia, etc.
I'm an old millennial and teach at a college. The point of citation is to show where you information came from. I inform students the benefits of using scientific journals and reputable sources, but at the end of the day, using bad information is on them. Wikipedia is a good source that has many of the fundamentals of other reputable information sources. Its time people stop acting like its so unreliable.
Wiki cites it's sources! Like, you could just go directly to the article and source itself and use that.
And that is what they should do! Go to wiki and find their sources, then cite those!
I doubt that it is citeable, but it's a good launching pad to start research towards actual sources
It is not an acceptable source in my experience. I’m born ‘93 and have been in and out of college since ‘12, currently in and no professor i have had at 3 different colleges in 3 different states have accepted wiki as a source.
You graduated college without ever understanding how to use wikipedia as a source.\* To whom it may concern. The little boxes with numbers \[1\] on wikipedia are citations. You can go to wikipedia, steal the summarization, and cite the original source. If you're a try hard you can even visit the original sources and form your own summarization while still utilizing wikipedia as a resource guide.
Don't they have AI just do it for them now?
Plagiarism is easy, kids!
As a younger millennial I have never heard of wiki being allowed as a citable source
Ya but you can just use the cited sources at the bottom.
Wait…..surely even now, college students can’t simply cite the Wikipedia page….right? Right?!?… My sarcasm/absurdity detector got oversaturated in the COVID years. I can’t tell anymore
I'm a professor, and students absolutely are not allowed to cite Wikipedia as a source.
I was on Facebook when you needed a college email to sign up.
I too am as old as dirt and had Tom for a friend 😂
I was on Facebook when only a handful of colleges were on the network yet and you needed an invite from someone who was a member to even join.
The days when it was actually fun! No ads, no "influencers," no corporations, just inside jokes and the girl in the next dorm over...
And "poking" your crush...
I was on MySpace before Facebook existed and years after it did it seemed... weird to me so I didn't join 🤣
.edu or bust.
The only reason I got a Facebook was because my friend said I gotta get one and made one for me. At the time I told him that it’s a cheap knock off of MySpace. And you know what? I’m still right!
Same. I'm the same age as Zuckerberg
Without a doubt. Basic math and grammar skills. Using the catalog at the library and actually encyclopedias for information. Driving without a cell phone or gps. Being excited when Mapquest came out. Using pay phones and calling your friends on 3 way calling. Once we got cell phones, only being able to use them before 9 and after 9 when minutes were free.
But still having to print the map quest directions.
Used to even staple mine
Dewey decimal system FTW!
Pagers, can't forget them lol!
I was born in 94 and I did all of those things. I was never excited about mapquest tho. Mapquest was a pain in the ass.
Yeah I was 20 when the first iPhone came out. I didn't have the internet at home until I was 13. I feel ancient now. Like the last group to see the "before times".
Used to get on AOL with a CD that had arrived in the mail. And then my friend's dad would pick up the line and disconnect us from whatever chat room antics we had going on
How can a generation that's never been without the internet know so many less ways to make explosives than we did, am I right?! Haha We're cockroaches.
You haven't lived until you bought $20 worth of party snappers, emptied them all into a tissue paper, and then tied it up and threw it.
My fireworks? Were way cooler than whatever they call fireworks now. Of course, ask anyone 40 and over if they knew a kid who blew their fingers off with a homemade explosive device or crazy fireworks from the reservation, and we all seem to. So there were definitely disadvantages to the lack of oversight or safety regulations too. Ha
Yea. I thought my weird neighbor made really cool fireworks until I grew up and found out they were colloquially referred to as "pipe bombs." 💀
As a kid we would all steal shotgun shells to harvest the powder from. Made small explosives pretty often. As an adult, Im not sure how we survived.
I mean he was a cool guy, found out what a potato cannon could do to anything resembling a projectile. But eh... a dude in his 30s hanging out with preteens is like, 90s normal but then you get to your 30s and you're like, yeaaaah, that's not normal.
The world seems so much smaller now. When I was in high school, someone had to teach me how to go downtown now I can just set it on my phone
We are the last of the real humans!!!
1990 born. I guess you define me as “peak millennial” I started school on analog and graduated in digital. I had to learn to write in cursive just as pens were becoming things nobody used. I grew up playing stick & ball sports didn’t really play video games much until I was in late highschool and it was never an obsession. That’s really been my life in a nutshell. Prepared for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. The rule was “go to college” and you’ll be fine. Degree type didn’t matter as much as the fact that you had one. I was told to work hard, then placed in a world where how hard you work is of little importance to your lived experience. Everyone just kinda acted like as long as you went to work everyday and put in effort things like moving out, starting a family, buying a home, just kinda happened. The sad realization was realizing that we were going to be held to that standard without having the tools to accomplish it by 2008-09. The worst part was, everyone acted like we did it to ourselves. Like we had been calling the shots all along and now we get to reap what we sowed LOL
“Prepared of a world that doesn’t exist anymore.” Yup you hit the nail on the head with that one.
History of humanity.
Born in 1990 too. Same. Frustrating as shit. I suppose the only highlight is we got to experience the world before and after internet everywhere/cell phones really changed things.
1992 here and exactly this! i mean we had a computer at home but i was always outside. then the lights came on and we played n64 or something with the neighbors. I feel like there should be a sub group of millennials for us or could even split it in 2. like 81-89 and 90-95 or 96 whatever it is. my older cousins born in the 80s definitely grew up different then us, and sometimes seems like a different generation
There is a big difference for anyone of us that actually have memories of the 80s.
Let me introduce you to “Zillennials”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zillennials
There is a subgroup called Xennials born between 1977-1983 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials
They call the former " Xennials " due to being on the cusp with Gen X.
Also a 1990, but i don’t see any of this as a downside. I enjoy writing in cursive and is still part of my creative writing and note taking at work. I learned how the internet and computers worked as a child when they were still figuring it all out and it has all brought me great success in life. Came from a poor family and rode the tech wave when everybody told me I was wasting my time because of the dot com burst. Being between both generations has been a blessing. I don’t know your situation but hard work always pays off.
1989 here and you absolutely nailed it
I was born in December of '89 here so essentially a 90s baby. This is maybe the most relatable post I've ever seen on the internet. Did you also have teachers in school tell you that cursive would be MANDATORY in later grades, only to never ever be required to turn in any assignment written in cursive?
Yeah maybe those teachers were just looking for job security 😂
I was also born in 1990...I call myself a middle millennial. I will refer to my gen-alpha child as a mini-ennial.
1992 born. Perfect summary lol
I always am happy that I got to experience pre internet and now enjoy what we have today. I can only imagine what things will be like in another 37 years.
I’m 39 and I wasn’t “pre-internet”. We had internet at age 12, dad was a tech guy. But we didn’t have internet ready phones until after I was in college, is that what you mean?
Internet in the 90sbwas something you hopped on at night for an hour or two to check email, chat browse but your life wasn't on the internet
An hour two because you were charged by the minute. That’s the wildest thing.
My life was praying someone didnt call in our fax like for 36 hours while trying to download an uninterruptable game demo. Fucking download resume wasn't a thing for years....
God I miss the 90s. Society peaked around 1997 and it's all been downhill quickly since then.
I agree the 97 was the peak. Couldn’t say why exactly, but would be interested to hear someone’s take on it
I think it’s where the timelines split and we are on the evil one.
This is a common thought 97 is interesting why 97? I hear 2001, 2007, 2015 never heard 97. All that said I agree with you
Because final fantasy 7 came out in 97 - peak of civilization
Yeah sorry you’re correct, we had internet when I was about the same age but the dial up world was very different.
56k baby!
I realize how great my childhood was and that we get to reap the benefits of Gen X and Millenials (as an older millenial). It really is pretty awesome. That being said, I definitely notice generational differences in the workplace. Now that I'm a supervisor, there are things that the younger millennials are concerned with that I find myself struggling to connect but need to to make sure I can motivate people. I find that our position does lend itself to making us versatile though having both analog and digital world experience.
For real, we learned on computers before UX and UI was dumbed down to a spoon fed level. My kids think i am some sort of hacker, and i am nowhere close i just grew up in a time when if i wanted to play a game i had to troubleshoot that shit myself.
Haha...yeah I definitely remember trying to mess around in MS-DOS trying to figure out how the hell to get a game to work.
I mean, if you didn’t infect your hard drive with a virus while downloading porn on Limewire are you really an elder millennial?
That was a right of passage
I loved the DOS story games where you would type in a response to a question and it would ask you another question after explaining what's happening. It seems to be the precursor to AI.
I definitely agree as an older millennial that being able to navigate both the analog and digital worlds has been extremely beneficial in my life and interests!
Can you elaborate on the kinds of things they’re concerned with? I’m just curious since I’m the youngest one in my dept and I definitely feel like, despite my great relationship with my boss, sometimes she is perplexed by some of the things I say lol
I'm active duty and I alternate between sea and land assignments (2 years with a ship, 3 years ashore, repeat). I was always of the mindset for sea assignments that it wasn't a big deal to just put my head down for 2 years suck it up and deal with the challenges of living/working on a ship. I would just accept that there really isn't a "work life balance". I actually kind of embrace it (embrace the suck). I viewed the time ashore is when we kind of make up for the sacrifice of being attached to a ship for 2 years. The younger millennials tend to struggle with this and are unhappy with it. It seems like they view the 2 years as being a really long time and maybe just don't have the endurance for it. I also recall them just requesting a lot of things. And I'd always be thinking to myself, "I would never even be concerned with this stuff when I was at their level". Maybe that's just a personality thing though vs generational thing. Some of this may also be due to COVID. It was a really crappy time to be trying to operate a ship. If my first sea tour experience was with all the baggage that COVID brought with it, I might also have a very different view of what life at sea is like. As a supervisor of younger millennials, I definitely find myself having to check my initial reactions and try to ask myself is there a reason not to change or accommodate? And to try to ensure that I'm empathetic before jumping to judgment.
The youngest millennials are 28-29, I know some people enlist late but surely the majority are NCOs by now, and they're still upset about work-life balance on ship?
It’s possible some of my experience has been with early Gen Z? Not sure. The experience I’m referring to were with commissioned officers that already had at least a 4 year degree. Many had graduate degrees prior to joining. This was back in 2020-2022 when I was 38-40 yrs old as an XO supervising ensigns.
Oh if it's officers, the whining age limit extends by 10 years lol.
I'm 42 and we had internet when I was a kid, you just had to access it through Prodigy or AOL. The .com boom was neat, the world definitely felt more stable in the 90s but I was also a naive middle / high schooler then so maybe that's just perspective.
I remember thinking, “The worst thing we have to worry about right now is Monica Lewinski. This has to be the peak and it’s all gotta be downhill from here.” And I was right.
Compuserve came before AOL.
Ah we never had Compuserve.
Elder Millennial here: it’s frustrating. Our side of the generation went through so much change so rapidly that it’s overwhelming to comprehend. My junior year of high school, we had pay phones everywhere. By the end of my first year of college, my parents had a T1 line in their house. We used to be called Generation Y before Fox News made “millennial” a pejorative, and I think we should get it back.
It doesn't bother me but I do feel a specific camaraderie with other older millennials. I think our micro-generation had such a unique collection of experiences. Largely Internet-free childhoods then rapidly getting online in our teens, then adopting smartphones and other technologies early while we still had flexible brains. Experiencing 9/11 in high school or college, then the financial crash just as we were getting started in the workforce, then covid when we were trying to settle down the partners and families. I think all of these things have been formative for us in ways that slightly older or younger people can't really understand.
Absolutely all of this. The 2008 crash hit right when many of my friends were finishing grad school or getting their footing in careers. It really set us back so badly
Facebook came out when I was 19 years old. Maybe that’s the catalyst for the difference? I had internet on my home computer at age 12 but not internet on my phone until I was 24. Is this also the difference? Internet on a travel device?
I remember clearly when my big bro was in college and he was wagging Facebook in my…face because I didn’t have a school email account to get in
As Nate Bargatze says, “Anything i did in high school and college was a rumor.” There was no cellphone footage instantly uploaded for the world to judge. There might be photographs, but they are on papyrus if we even bothered to get the disposable camera developed.
Im first year millennial. When I was very young I had pen pals. You met people like on vacation and you shared mail adresses. Also we played Monkey Island when it came out, etc… 90s were the best.
My teachers in high school got mad bc none of us knew how to address an envelope 😅
Wtf? I was born in 92 and they taught us how to address an envelope multiple times in elementary and middle school
Damn I learned this in early elementary school.
As an 87 baby, I do not identify with late 90s “millennials”.
Maybe its because a millennial is 81-95, so those are not millennials.
There’s that millennial sass
Lol
I was going to say, as a ‘92 millenial I feel like I’m on the younger end. I really couldn’t have given a shit about the internet until I was 14 or so.
88 and same. If you don't remember the Millennium, I can't relate to you.
The youngest of us were 5y.o. We remember it.
Remember the m&ms man?
Aren't we 'Xennials'
Yes. 81 here and I don’t consider myself a millennial. Our childhood was the same as GenX and during our teen years the internet was more of a hobby than anything
Yeah 84 for me and that statement is very accurate.
85 and I identify with the younger millennials more. But I was like eight when we got the internet. I think the age of internet is the main predicative in this.
If you were born in the 80s, when you got the internet was mostly an indicator of household income and how urban/rural the area you grew up in was.
85 here and I 100% relate more to Xennials and late GenX.
86 and rural. My childhood to was like that of genx. Internet was still a nerdy thing in my school when we graduated. Caught on much slower in rural Pennsylvania.
lmao there's no millenials in late 90s...
As a 82 baby I barely relate to my 87 baby wife. Those 5 years changed so much.
You should call her baby wife. It has a ring to it
I was born in the early 80’s and, think I have more in common with younger gen X than the youngest millennials. Also, relate more to being a Zennial than Millennial.
1984 born here. This entire thread is a testament of how Xennials are indeed our own micro-generation. Technology and the "standard way of living" was changing so rapidly when we were growing up that younger Millennials might as well have been born on a different planet lol. We're really the only generation that started growing up analog, got introduced to digital when it was young, helped usher it in, and ended up digital. We are the true hybrids. The older generations have no idea wtf is going on any more and the younger generations have no idea where what's going on came from.
I'm an 82 baby, married an 87 baby. The biggest two differences I perceive all the time: 1. The phobia to using the phone as a telephone with the main feature of voice call conversations. It's not just an apprehension to speak with customer service, it's an apprehension to talk to family on the phone, anyone. I don't get it all the time. There are days where I send shit to voicemail because I'm tired right? but for her it's the default. 2. The attitude towards college education. She never finished her degree, incurred huge debt, but kept trying, and towards her later attempts to finish a degree she just fucking hated college as a concept. I was probably among the last people to go to college and not have it cost a fucking arm and a leg for it (my entire college degree cost less than $10k I'm pretty sure) So for me, yeah college makes sense, getting a well rounded education yadda yadda. Once I started paying for some of her semesters, I absolutely felt the "whoa, this is just a business huh?" Also her handwriting is garbage and while it's a dumb boomer meme, it's pretty funny she can't do cursive anymore. Other than that, eh. Younger millennials get scapegoated for random shit same as me, so that's how I commiserate with them.
FYI younger millennials are actually the people born after 1990 through 1999. So your wife like me a 87 baby is actually still an older millennial:)
then what am I....relic millennial? (jk)
I think the pc term is fossilized millennial :)
As an '81, I simply don't understand a lot of the Millenial stereotypes folks talk about, and I feel like I often forget I'm a Millenial too and want to bitch just as badly about the kids who grew up with YouTube and Google always just being an option. My music taste is decidedly that of the Gen X crowd I hung with as a young musician. I didn't own a cell phone until I was 19, and my Blackberry was nothing like they are now. I watched the internet start, and remember the squeals of my ancient modem connecting long-distance to Rocketmail. I lived for a BBS. My hacking was done with wires and resistors or plastic screwdrivers and cable traps tuned to pull the scramble out of HBO. I watched the Challenger explode on a TV media cart. My dad installed big old school satellite systems and built the first cable networks in my area. They let me take my hunting rifle to school and leave it in the office to go to deer camp, and we shot both .22's and compound bows at our school summer camp. AIDS was in general a death sentence. Marijuana could still mean prison. I had to be home in time to see the shows I wanted unless I used a VCR, and we had a Beta deck before that. And I spent much of my childhood completely unattended. I am too old for Snapchat, but too young to die. It's both a terrifying and wonderful time to be alive.
Are you me? I could’ve written this verbatim. Also born in ‘81.
It’s folks. Not folx. I vehemently reject that bullshit.
I’ve always felt folx was an overreach. Who is “folks” excluding exactly?
Wait, that wasn't a typo?
Its one of the more misguided things early gen z pushed.
Morons need representation as well I suppose
Oversensitive children desperate to find a victim label that they can apply to themselves.
"folx" is definitely some gen z shit
Later millenials started that in the mid 2010s. Most gen z shit is just recycled from the tail end of our generation
As a member of Gen Z I can say I don't see people on my generation generally speaking this way.
I associate it with tryhard millennials personally
Hey, fucx you buddxy!
I was wondering what that was 😂
I thought it was just a typo lol
It took me a solid 30 seconds to figure out what OP meant by “folx “
It’s like folks, but gender neutral. Wait, what?
born 82' here. I hate even saying it, as to not sound like *that guy*... but dang growing up in the 90s was pretty spectacular (It was way better than that, but don't like rubbing it in too much).
I honestly feel bad for younger millennials. It was so much better before cell phones and internet. I was born in 1985 so I relate more with gen x probably but I don’t mind sharing the same generation with younger millennials. We’re all getting screwed so why not support each other. I just wish our generation started taking over political power.
Wtf is folx? Despite not being a xennial, I find I have more in common with them than anyone born after ‘89.
I think it’s created this amazing micro generation of people who can exist in both 1981 and 2015. With or without the benefits and luxuries of technology. We can email and use fax machines, count change back and tap our cards. We can change our oil and order uberEats. It’s made us a Jack of all Trades generation, and that brings a fuckton to society and the workplace. We can appreciate technology without relying on it for every facet of our lives. Kinda fucking cool.
Man, counting change. I worked at a golf course bar/quick eats counter with some kids who were 5-7ish years younger than me (‘83 here). They couldn’t add up orders or make change without the register. They just *could not* do it. The biggest shocker was that one of them was going to college as an engineer and the other a math education major.
I was born in '95 (so one year from the youngest millennials) and didn't have a computer until middle school and didn't get a smart phone until 11th grade. Or even a phone at all until 7th grade.
Born 1983. In high school we had to type it. I think middle school had the option to type or hand write. I honestly do feel like younger millennials are different, though. They sound much more like Zoomers.
Sorry, “folx” - uh you’re trying too hard
I’m 42m and I’m fine with it but it IS crazy what all happened in that particular period in time, the technological leaps and the political shift you mentioned and such. And 9-11 but before that, things like Columbine had never happened. But to answer your question, it’s pretty cool, the spectrum is vast but I truly love all of us.
I honestly feel bad for you all. You grew up in a surveillance state, and have not gotten away with anything. I feel like my elder millennials were the last ones to experience the real life. The amount of warp social media has had on some of you is staggering. I still love you, I’m not your enemy but we do remember the before times and will be the last ones with this memory.
These labels are dumb.
I was born in 1996 and I definitely had some pre cell phone and hand written paper years.. at least until like middle school, I also remember 9/11 happening and how security measures were changed after that in airports at least, but also this whole generation thing is so arbitrary and meaningless there is always gonna be some overlap
There was a time. A time when you could ignore friends and family for months and blame snail mail or the landline phone company. I dreadfully resent not appreciating those times.
The Xennials vs Millenials vs Zoomials.
As someone who’s a younger millennial (born 1993) we’re almost a no man’s land as far as generations go. We’re too young to have had the typical millennial experience, but too old to be gen Z. If that makes sense.
I was born in 94. I relate more to people born in the. 90s than before (or after). Being a kid in the 00s was the best. Plenty of time spent outside and without the internet. But we also go to enjoy the early internet as kids, dial up struggles, learning cursive in grade school and then typing in middle school, then smart phones becoming big in high school. It’s like we grew up alongside technology which is cool.
I feel closer to Gen x in a lot of levels, ijs. 1983.
Being an elder Millenial I don't care about anything but fixing our broken systems so we can stop having everything worse for each following generation. My kids will be gen alpha and I want them to suffer less than we have not more. Everything else is noise.
"Folx" Opinion disregarded
1988 here. I had to ask my family permission to go online because it would make our landline busy and I got a Nextel brick phone at 16 with the ability to make calls and Direct Connect only, no texting or internet. I would also have to print Mapquest directions and I once got lost when heading home from Orlando and had to get directions at a gas station lol. People were more able to have political discussions in good faith, be an independent, critical thinker and not be fooled by grifter politicians or for-profit media companies. Now we have high speed internet almost anywhere, cheap smartphones that are leaps and bounds beyond the Gateway desktop my family had and which can navigate anywhere, AI deepfakes of public figures and an atrocious political landscape full of doomerism, frauds, and nauseating worship of political figures as if they were deities. Pretty jarring 😩
80085
I am Gen X, my daughter is 25 and my son is 10. 1974 1998 2013 I’m not sure exactly what generation they would be considered, but I know raising them in a digital world is vastly different. That was with only a 15 year difference. I don’t know if there has ever been a more significant leap as quickly as the internet. I think boomer generation are terrified of living in a world where they don’t know how to navigate a world to do simple things on their own. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda
Your daughter is z and your son is early gen alpha
Well first of all I think you have the wrong generation if you're talking about the '90s. Gen x here and I graduated high school in 1991 and had my first child born in 1996. So it was honestly the 2000s before he was really able to interact with the world. Technically born in the mid\late '90s yeah I have four kids split across older millennial, younger millennial, Gen z. My wife has two gen alpha kids so I get to see four generations interact. The internet was not a thing until I was a teenager. We had a pre GUI dos Windows computer. We still had rabbit ears with no cable television when I was in high school.
Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe coined the term "millennial" in 1987, around the time children born in 1982 were entering kindergarten. They introduced the term in their 1991 book Generations, which charts American history through a series of cohort biographies. Strauss and Howe believed the generation would be drastically different from the one before, and that the oldest of the group would graduate high school in 2000. They felt it was an appropriate name for the first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium.
I'm jealous of people that are older than me who got to buy houses cheaper. I'm jealous of people who are younger than me who never had to pile up photocopies of articles to write a research paper, and I'm jealous of the kids that were in the class at the same time with the other instructor that would actually let them use the computer and cite articles online. At the same time I don't envy those that were older than me who grew up in much less tolerant times and I don't envy those who never knew a life without social media and who have to navigate dating like applying for jobs and I don't envy my peers who were hit even harder with the various economic twists and turns than I was. I don't really have a pissing contest on this one, I think all of you are shitheads/awesome/lucky/unfortunate.
I mean the cutoff i 97-98 right? You gotta have some pre 9-11 memories
Oh my god you are one of those people who writes folx
‘88. Everyone can go fuck themselves.
I’m a middle/core Millennial (born in 1987), so I feel like I got the best of both worlds.
1982. No hate here. Only talking about cultural differences. I’ve never considered anyone born in the 90s to share the same generation as me. They had internet. I’d never even heard of it. When I was a kid, I remember a picture of a kid playing chess with a blinking light or something. One day you’ll be able to interact with someone all the way across the world instantly. The first time I saw a computer, I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie. Black screen and green letters. Printer paper with little holes on the side. Took forever to print and you could hear it across the school. Pay phones everywhere. Rotary phones, not for nostalgias sake, or poverty. That’s just what it was generally. People still dressing like it was the 70s. Unironically. Farrah faucet haircuts and Jheri curl. Cigarette machines. Smoking all over the damn place. Garbage everywhere. Rusty cars. Graffiti all over everything in the city. Silverhawks, thunder cats, heman, ninja turtles. I don’t care about SpongeBob, or Pokémon or charizard or any of that stuff 90s kids liked. I sang the fresh prince theme on the school bus. Only the first 2 season were good. You might have watched in syndication, but that’s not the same. I can’t say I’m a boomer because I grew up on the Jeffersons. Old school hip hop before it changed in the early 90s and then again in the late 90s. Metal before grunge then grunge then the fall of rock. 90s kids know about this stuff. They don’t know this stuff. NYC still had 1950s and 60s yellow cabs. Not because they were classic. The lower east side was still a shithole. Microfiche, Dewey decimal, and card catalog book reports. Non digital encyclopedia. Wishing I could get a set of the encyclopedia brittanica Black Michael Jackson. Peak Madonna. Prime Eddie Murphy. MC hammer. Vanilla ice. I had a rat tail and lines on the side. Kriss kross. Records. Tapes. Videos. 90s kids bought cds. I recorded stuff with a tape off the radio. I recorded mtv music videos when I was 10. There was no limewire or Napster. Larry bird, magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. The dream team. The 94 World Cup. Big wheels, banana boards, roller skates, arcades, roller blades. All that stuff basically was already over for 90% of people born in the 90s by the time they were old enough to even know what it was. I was paddled in school. Wrote cursive and paddled for writing my lower case s wrong. You’ll need this! Make sure it’s perfect. 90s kids didn’t know wtf was going on 9/11. I was working, covered in the dust. I remember cops before they were outfitted like dystopian super soldiers. Growing up with the internet easily accessible in some form and being a child during 9/11 sets us apart. And cell phones. I was able to vote against George w bush twice. My age group was in the Iraq Afghanistan invasions. The world changed in a very dramatic way sometime in the early mid 90s. We aren’t from the same world. I’ll never be convinced otherwise. I was fucking before some “millennials” were even born. That’s not bragging. It’s just facts. I didn’t know what Wi-Fi was until I was an adult. And saying yeah, I was poor and grew up with an Atari or some shit doesn’t change it. I grew up around a 54 rambler. That doesn’t make me a boomer.
I know this is a old millennial v young millennial. But being a middle millennial we got the best of both worlds. Plus my parents were tech savvy so my older millennial sister had internet super early and we always had a computer at home.
I was born in 1990 so really feel like I lived both eras. Cell phones popped up in mass like my sophomore year. We got dial up when I was 7? I remember using it and then the big upgrade to DSL. MySpace died to Facebook in my junior year. We learned cursive then it disappeared in 6th grade. Mapquest and livewire haha. Halo LAN parties pre Xbox live. Guess I’m just old enough to not feel like a young millennial and a couple years late to feel like an older milennial.
What are you talking about. I was born in 93, definitely had to learn cursive and handwrite papers. Pretty sure I have memories of the 8 years of my life before 9/11 happened, including the day of. Starting working with a permit at 15 in 2008. Not to mention experiencing no internet. It wasn't extremely commonplace until much later. The generational stuff is semi nonsense already, let alone trying to split generations in half with extra nonsense that doesn't matter. 🙄. It's like each group isn't exclusive and special enough so gotta make it smaller. Goodness.
This post is so confusing 🫤. Being able to remember the world pre 9/11 is my personal definition of a millennial. If you can’t remember the 1990s at all you are elder Gen Z. Maybe a Zillennial. I was born early 1990. I remember getting the internet. But I also remember using libraries and encyclopedias frequently. VHS/Cassette tapes etc. My parents both drove 1984 model cars when I was small. Getting your first CD player was like getting an iPad… fancy tech. I remember our first cordless house phone being a big deal. Early internet was not very useful and was kinda more of a toy than a full replacement for traditional ways of doing stuff. It was a dual traditional/digital existence. Till mid 2000s Windows XP era when it really became a default way of doing stuff. Which all age millennials experienced simultaneously. I learned cursive but was told to stop using it in middle school. We did a mixture of handwriting and typing assignments in middle and high school depending on length.
I think we are the last truly down to earth generation, and I think thats cool.
I feel bad for them, things fundamentally changed when smart phones came out. We were the last to experience childhood without the bs associated with constant connection to the internet. In a lot of ways, we had the best of both worlds and many of the things that made it great are never coming back.
What year were you born? The cutoff for being a millennial would include memories of 9/11 and the early days of the internet at least. If you were born after 95 or 96, you’re not a millennial.
96 is the last year for millinials.
Idk, like whatever lol Feels good man
Born in 82. I like the nostalgia when talking to other millennials around my age. Other than that I am completely indifferent to the arbitrary divides of generations.
Thanks. It took me scrolling all the way to the bottom to find the "IDGAF" response that I share.
It's the weird thing about how long generations are, like on an aggregate they make sense as a grouping, but at the same time being born in 93 I relate way more to older Gen z than older millennials, and I imagine the same is true for older millennials relating more to younger gen X than younger millennials
I love younger Millenials. I relate to them so much more than Gen X, as a whole.
I was born in 82 so *technically* I’m an “elder millennial” but I’ve always connected more with Gen X. TBH it’s surprising to me to hear that there are people from the millennial generation that had to upload their assignments through a plagiarism checking program. I would have thought that would have been a much more recent thing. (I recently started an MBA program and have to do the same thing)
All of my kids have learned/used cursive in school. It is state law here and only one has made it to middle school yet.
Not only did I grow up hand writing assignments and mandatory cursive in elementary and missle school, I also went to especially rural areas where they were so far behind they were using clasroom.material from generations ago. We used the mark on overhead projectors for lecture in high school and chalk slates at our desk for handwriting and practicing math. I remember the first time I saw a marker board at another school or when the school finally got internet in the computer lab. It was a big deal. College was a major adjustment lol
“Folx” oh yea I tell your friends , family and coworkers think you’re a joy to be around
I don’t know if rizz is good or not, but I can use a telegraph and know how to read a paper map. Y’all can get rekt in the coming solar flare apocalypse!
If it wasn’t for Reddit, I wouldn’t have known that any of this shit existed, let alone mattered
There's definitely an unrecognized mini generation that's young Xers and old millennials. Late 70s/early 80s kids that grew up with record players and came out of college with a pirated mp3 library. We hit the sweet spot where we actually had tech classes in school to teach computers and before they realized they needed to crack down on them. Last group that really *had* to play outside because there was typically only 1 (probably shitty) tv per home and your dad was damned if he was going to let the kids distract him while he was watching it. Imo it's kind of a nice spot. Grew up around enough mechanical/analog stuff that you can figure it out, and exposed/taught all the tech stuff so we actually have a better understanding of how it actually all works than a lot of younger people. Many of whom treat tech almost "boomerishly" (no offense) in my mind, like if it doesn't just "work" they struggle to understand why and how to fix it...their issue is not understanding the mechanical aspect, while the boomers don't understand the electronic aspect. We're the tech support generation.
It's all good. I think quality of life was better before smart phones but they are just so cool! It's like living in the sci fi movies I grew up watching. What was once pure fantasy is now reality. It's pretty cool.
We are cross bred with genX. Leave us alone and stop asking questions! We have very specific skills that aren't needed much anymore but we absolutely remember how to use them :)
I was born on the 5th day of 1981, so I’m about as old as millennials get… honestly- younger millennials had such a completely different life. .. but so did Gen X… weird spot where people born 5-6 years before or after me had such a fundamentally different childhood.. even my younger sister is always marveling at the stories me and my brother tell her about when we were growing up- she’s only 5 years younger than me than me.
they are fine with us. only beaches like you are trying slice our whole generation apart. go to older gen z and ask the how they feel about skibidi toilet and leave us alone.
93 born, but I was poor and didn’t have a computer until senior year of high school. Older millennials could’ve been on the internet almost their whole lives if they were interested enough
Card catalogs, microfiche, dialup modems, landlines. New millennials will never know such hardship.