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A lot of millennials learned more IT skills due to user unfriendly operating systems, whereas a lot of GenZ don't have as much exposure to that, due to phones being way more capable and having OS's being more user friendly and locked down.
Millennials remember when video games weren't pay to win.
The digital landscape is so different. I teach undergraduates and it's hit or miss whether they understand what a file path is. But honestly, I'm not sure it will be relevant in the same way for much longer. I grew up installing games from CD and establishing a specific file path and folder for install and if I did it wrong it wouldn't work. With GUI's becoming more simple and intuitive, combined with advances in machine learning and algorithmic design, I have no problem imagining a future where all file structures are transparent to the user.
Imagine an AI llm combined with an OS file search. Like "two years ago I was playing Skyrim and I installed a lot of mods, and I think one of them turned all the dragons into Kirby. Where was the installer for that mod?"
And then your computer is like "I gotcha bro, here's the installer right here."
That'd be pretty cool. But then again it'd probably also go "I'll go ahead and install it for you. And hey, while I'm at it I know you're gonna love this ad tracking program that paid M$ a few million dollars for your info, so Imma install that too. If you'd rather not install it, feel free to find your files and run the installer yourself"
That's funny I'd call that opaque not transparent.
I certainly don't like that there are browsers that hide the full URL. That's a key part of safe browsing in my opinion: watching the domain name and the parameters. Like, if the link doesn't point to a domain you trust be careful with it you know? But you can't know that if it's not showing link targets or if the URL is obfuscated
I teach undergraduates and it’s hit or miss whether they understand what a file path is.
I provide tech support to Linux sysadmins and it's still hit or miss whether they understand what a file path is.
Millennials remember when video games weren’t pay to win.
And Gen X'ers remember when they WERE. 😂
We also remember when most video games involved having a finite number of lives and having to start over completely if you lost them all.
Some games are like this today, but not many. Back in the day it was the basic assumption of every video game. Based off arcade games. And it seemed so natural.
Millennials generally had hope and lost it.
Gen Z never had any hope.
Millennials grew up in the 90s, possibly one of the "best" decades in modern history: good economy, closest we've gotten to "world peace," comparative political stability and "quiet" (the biggest scandal in US politics was Monica Lewinsky), and problems existed but generally seemed to be getting better with time not worse. The 90s were an optimistic time, especially considering the snowballing disaster of a 21st century that followed.
Edit: also advancements in science and technology were bright and exciting, without the constant existential dread of "what calamity have we unleashed this time?" The biggest tech/science-advancement ethical debate I remember was about cloning people, which is a genuine sci-fi-esque moral quandary but ended up being generally moot in reality.
Yeah, but us millennials were only teenagers at best, toddlers at the youngest. Not really enough time to do anything with it. So while we got to experience a cool time in our youths, we had it all ripped away as soon as the .com bubble burst, and then 9/11 hit, along with other mixed events, like the Unabomber, Columbine, etc. We were also the first in line to get sent to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Gen X got to live their adult lives during the 90s and make a name for themselves.
Sure, some aspects of the 00s were shit, but that felt like a bump in the road: things were still on the up-and-up overall, and the general expectation was that we could change the future for the better, resolve the world's issues, and live better lives than our parents. That all came crashing down sometime around 2010 with the Great Recession, failure of Occupy, and realization that Obama wasn't the knight in shining armor we'd literally hoped for. So the difference is that Millennials remember a pre-9/11 world and the less-great-but-still-hopeful early 00s, whereas Gen Z doesn't.
Someone recently asked why the devil admitted he'd lost the fiddling match with Johnny. They said "If he's the devil why didn't he just claim he'd won?".
I'd never asked myself that before. It had never occurred to me that the devil might cheat in a contest.
It made me realize that the dominant view of how people operate has changed in our culture. We now tend to assume people are slimeballs. The shittiest, back-stabbiest, most underhanded dishonest stuff now seems like normal behavior. Not even consciously necessarily. We just assume everyone is a barely-held-together antihero just looking for an excuse to take the gloves off and do nasty shit, and that we're only good to our tight inner circle while it's okay to treat the rest of the world like garbage.
It's our zeitgeist. I'm finally starting to grok that word's meaning, after having lived through four decades.
At least where I live as a millennial you could have had a really nice childhood - until you finished school. Most struggled to find a job. Businesses would hire you as unpaid intern at best, etc. All while your parents (the boomers) expected you to have house, car and family in your twenties.
This is generally what I came to say, except to add that Gen Z is giving me (old millennial) some hope. We were frogs in the pot, but it's a rolling boil and zoomers like Greta, David Hogg, and the 12 year old who interrupted COP28 seem alright.
Ultimately, I'm determined to break the cycle of previous Gen calls current Gen lazy. These kids are alright and I wish we had left them better.
Am millenial. Can confirm the first part.
That hope died 9/11/2001.
2008 financial crisis ripped the last vaneer off.
The rich won't be allowed to lose. The whole system is bullshit. You can do everything right, get sick cuz fuknature,, have to sell everything off for medicine and still die, younger than you should, in debt and penniless. It's not even necessary, the Cruelty is the point. That's capitalism. It's about control, and capitalists need to be looked at like they have a mental illness. Most our jobs are bullshit and don't matter. The national debt doesn't matter. Money isn't real, it's a vehicle for resource allocation, not a store of value, but try getting someone not ready to hear that to even think about our social systems as something mutable and not organic or ordained. Nope. Society was designed, by people, and it's working exactly as it's intended, which is, fucking great for them and fuck everyone else.
At the end of the day, your physical body has had just one goal. Survive. Everything I have to do to achieve that end is justified by existence itself. Building a system that puts itself in the way of people simply surviving is building a system to fail. When it comes to politics, and by that I mean, do-whatever-you-want-as-long-as-it-doesn't-hurt-someone-else and then policies, and for policy I just ask "is this the best we can do?"
I don't think I see the best we can do anywhere.
I work in IT support, and I have for longer than I'd like to admit. I'm on the very early edge of millennial. I was born a few years after the generation "started". My older brother was on the transition between millennial and gen X and my oldest sibling was very gen X. My parents were part of the prior two generations (boomers etc), and I tend to work along side and for all sorts of people from all of these generations.
Earlier than gen X, eg boomers and older, are usually technology adverse, they don't like change. I find many are kind of "set in their ways". Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but they seem to be fairly rare. They like to do things using methods that are tried and true, but often reluctantly agree to use computers instead of paper because that's what others are doing. Even so, they're fairly adverse to updates and changes that modify how things get done. They have money, and you can't have any of it. Often, they have little understanding of the problems faced with current generations, likely because they did not have the same challenges, and despite their stories of "back in my day" about how hard things were for them, they actually had it rather easy in terms of cashflow and buying power. They made less, sure, but when they were able to buy a mid sized, single family, fully detached home for the same dollar value as a "cheap" car costs now, their money went much farther (around $20k).
Gen X is kind of lost. What I mean is that they don't really have too many traits that stand out. As far as I can see, they're hyper independent, mostly riding the coat tails of the bombers economically, so, while they didn't have it quite as easy as boomers did (despite what boomers might think/say), it also wasn't significantly harder for them. They were mostly able to follow a fairly typical life path, get an education (HS/college/uni), get a career, buy a house, have a family (if desired). Politically, from what I've seen, gen X is the most diverse group and they're usually following along with whatever is regionally popular. Not because it's popular, but because they're surrounded by it. From what I've seen this group is the most adaptable to their neighboring community, mostly just trying to fit in and not be bothered. Right now they're a large part of working professionals.
Millennials are usually post college, debt laden individuals that are just tired. They were trying to kick-start their lives in some of the craziest times imaginable. Many early millennials who were able to quickly move through the education system, and immediately get into a career and the housing market follow more along the lines of gen X. If you were held back for any reason or you were caught up in a situation that held you back, you shared fate with many of the later millennials. The majority of millennials were caught up in every economic crisis short of a complete collapse of the money system during the years that they should have been starting their careers. Homes rose in price swiftly and vehicles didn't lag far behind. Driven by sheer determination to succeed, many accrued significant debt that they just want to balance out. This group is the most technically malleable and can adapt to most technology changes in the shortest time. Growing up on landlines and home PC's/consoles/electronics that all significantly changed their designs, capabilities and interfaces every 4-5 years. Many seem to be problem solvers and want to be helpful/useful. Many have, and some still do, hold onto the ideal that their contribution should be impactful. Most just want to be acknowledged and told they're doing well, while making enough to pay their bills and debts. For many the dream of owning a home is dying or dead. Renters, car owners, debt holders. They're growing rather jaded about it as they get older.
Gen Z have their own language. Millennials did too but mostly in cultural memes, with the zoomers, it's less cultural reference and more of a short hand derived from cultural references. Things that on their own, don't make any sense and are not even full sentences in any way shape or form. They follow in the aftermath of the economic crisises of millennials and have many of the same economic challenges. Many of those challenges are simply more severe. Prices are higher than ever, buying power is at an all time low. Surrounded by toxic "hustle" culture and many seem to want nothing to do with that. Many find humor in randomness and unexpected happenstance rather than traditional subversion of expectation as humor. They're quickly becoming the most socially aware and active generation, and want change. Technologically growing up on iPhones and Androids rather than home PC's, many are not very adaptable to changes in technology though zoomers are one of the highest use groups for the technology. They use it, they don't really understand it very well, so when things break, even if they're only non fictional in their current state, things are replaced rather than fixed. Eg, if their iPhone is too slow, rather than trying to find out why or trying to fix the issue, better to simply upgrade to whatever apple is currently pushing. Due to this, they needlessly spend more money than their older generation counterparts. This is by design by the actions of corporations, fostering a single use, replace, not repair mentality. They're not lazy or lacking in motivation at all, despite appearances that may show a lack of success, instead the lack of success is driven by an inability to find adequate employment that will pay enough to allow them to prosper. The majority will be "held back" from the "typical" life path of education > career > home ownership > family, because of their inability to prosper due to high prices and low wages.
Overall, through the generations there has been a decline in community as a function of geography, and an increase in community as a function of shared interest, mainly due to the growing and universal access to the internet. The internet has allowed both good and bad to be accessible at a moment's notice. This has shortened the tolerance to delays and given a sense of urgency to even the most trivial and mundane of requests. With the immediate response available from growing internet connectivity, demand for more frequent, more detailed updates from everything has grown significantly, eroding confidence in others to fulfill their obligations unless they communicate that "we're doing things" (so to speak). Even something as simple as ordering take out or having things shipped, if there is no tracking and reporting, then it might as well not be happening.
Over all, IMO, the problems faced by the current generations tend to be more centered around artificial issues created by corporations. They want to pay less, earn more, and overall turn a larger and larger profit. This is neither surprising, nor helpful to most. It does however explain the single use, replace rather than fix, nature of things that has been growing. The rise in rental vs ownership has increased the cost of living and is on track to build a service-based lifestyle where personal ownership doesn't happen. Everything is provided for a "low" recurring fee, which has so significantly outpaced any rise in wage that most will be unable to accrue any amount of savings.
For me, all of this has made it very clear what future we're in store for, and bluntly, it's not very pleasant. Perpetual home rental, no personal ownership of vehicles (you simply tap a button on your phone and if one is available, it will arrive for you to use, little more than a taxi service), video, audio and other media will be rental only, streaming over the internet, which is a monthly service fee. This leads to near zero ability for customization of your lifestyle. You have no choice in terms of the appliances and devices you use, the car you drive, your home's design... The list goes on. So if you want or need something different, you're completely out of luck. Conform or die.
I tend to agree with your summary of the generations, but my experience in life sounds largely similar to yours, so some obvious bias there. The future you paint feels almost inevitable, and I hate every bit of it. Yet I can't find any reasonably effective way to change it.
Definitely as a millennial I'm of the last generation that will remember arranging to meet up somewhere in advance and sticking to that plan (or rearranging over landline with more than a day's notice...)
But something I've noticed when I ask people in my team what their dream jobs are the younger people tend to say 'run their own businesses', 'work for themselves' etc. Whereas in our generation (in my circles anyway) that definitely wasn't so prominent. Maybe a side effect of seeing influencers making it big?
Just spitballing here, but the “dream job” question might also come down to the destruction of the middle class (and the recognition thereof). 20 years ago it looked a lot more like you could make a good living working for someone else, doing something interesting. Plus there was more trust that employers would “do right” by their employees. There were pensions and quality healthcare benefits.
Now all that (and the security it brings) has dissolved. It may not be Gen Z people wanting to make it big or be a celebrity, but a desire to live comfortably and seeing that they can’t trust an employer to let them do that. If the only way you can build security for yourself is by building a big pile of money, then people are going to seek that out.
Edit: and when I say that “20 years ago” these things existed, I don’t mean that they were still functioning like they did another generation earlier, but it was way better than it is now and there was less awareness of what was happening.
I think besides having better tech literacy, millennials also tend to be much more cynical about the state of the world. There is only so much you can take of taking the blame for ending the good old days while being called lazy and entitled before you get sick and tired of it all. Hell, you can see that in this very thread of some of us project our own cynicism onto Gen Z.
I don't see that doomerism we millennials have in most of Gen Z. While we grew up in a world where we resigned to the fact that everything is getting worse, they grew up in a world where things are already terrible, and they think it needs to be fixed, and I have high hopes for them.
And I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired of everything, all the time. So I decided to change.
I've definitely caught myself in the doom attitude. But I've been waiting for 30 years to for enough reinforcements to fight a winning fight against the boomers and their many terrible ideas. Here they are. Every millennial still able to fight, its back the the trenches. Our allies have the energy to push our fight through the doom, millennials and gen z together.
(And a huge thank you to the few boomers fighting along side us.)
There's no fight. No battle. It's just people trying to get by day to day. "Boomers" are not a nation, they're just another way to split up people trying to get by so one group can justify being shitty to another. Rich and powerful people are happy to promote anything that keeps us divided and conquered. Wars have leaders and strategies and clear lines drawn. The "generational war" is just rats fighting over a piece of cheese dropped by the rich and powerful looking for amusement.
Marketing Exec here. I specialise in generation segmentation. I wrote this recently for my employer:
Gen-Z
Are recession learned, young, with low disposable income and low income. They are in education, are career starters and living at home.
They are lonely, single, and spend 10 hours p/day online (hyper online consumption / always logged in) with the least attention to ads. They are engaged in people-discussing-products-and-services, prefer information over ads, and use ad blockers.
Otherwise known as ‘digital natives’, Gen-Z are highly socially consciousness (body image, cyberbullying, mental health) and highly environmentally conscious. They have a strong focus on saving and responsible spending and are quite frugal. They are study and career minded and prefer money over perks and benefits in employment. They dislike having their time wasted. They have a low attention span.
Millennials
Have long-term debt (mortgage/car/student loan) and have young children. They are not at full purchasing power, are the most adaptable generation ever to pre-and post-technology, are delayed in marriage, delayed in independence, and came of age through globalisation and economic rollercoasters.
They prefer texting/messaging, are high use smartphone users, and sleep with their phone. They are the most active and health conscious generation, environmentally conscious, and the highest consumers of web content. Learning is more compelling than buying to Millennials as they spend an average of 4 hours p/day online or with phone/apps. They prefer advisors, advice, and opinions over a corporate story. They prefer sharing economy (access not ownership). Prefer e-commerce as entertainment.
Millennials are impatient, have reduced brand loyalty, and are extremely tech savvy. They are researchers of ideas, thoughtful and seeking expertise, and love to collaborate and help companies or causes achieve. Online they use acronyms, slang, and respond to authentic but complex language. They prefer honesty and being empowered. They are price aware.
There's strong statistical evidence suggesting that millennials are, on average, older than gen z'ers. It not clear from the latest studies what could have caused this presumed age gap.
Those same studies also evidenced the startling fact that the tested individuals shared over 99.9% of their genome and could in fact belong to the same species, which is what prompted all the recent controversy after one of the lead researchers said in a televised interview that "they're all people".
Gen Z hasn’t had their name changed several times yet
It's fuckin annoying. The whole time I thought I was Gen X up until a decade ago. Then all of sudden other people are telling me I'm this bullshit.
For fucks sake, I remember using rotary phones and fucking with TV antennas to get better reception. I remember when no one had cell phones or the Internet. If you didn't know an answer to something, you just made your peace with that.
No GPS, no map Quest, no internet on cell-phone. You just got lost in the smokey mountains for hours, about to run out of gas, hoping there was an open gas station at the next exit. Just raw-dogging those road-trips for the most part
I use the MTV demarcation line. If you were born before MTV came on the air (1982) then you're GenX. But the whole Xenial thing is also legit.
PS the hidden secret to knowing anything before the internet was librarians. If it was really obscure the NY public library would take calls from all over the country.
I'm 35 and remember all those things too, but I was never under the impression I was gen x.
I'd say: if you remember the fall of the Berlin wall, you aren't a millennial, no matter what they say. If you don't remember 9/11, you're gen Z.
"What are some differences between these two groups that we can use to divide them?"
Fuck off.
They might as well has asked “what was it like for you growing up?” because everyone’s just posting their own experiences and insisting their entire generation was exactly the same.
They grew up knowing different Willy Wonkas. With a new remake due to drop in cinemas, it seems like the next generation will too.
Computer use, millennials always had computers but Gen Z grew up with tablets and smartphones.
I'm among the first millennials. I grew up without a computer. While we had that single, ancient Apple II in school for the Oregon trail, it was just as a "treat" and never in any serious educational use. Didn't even have a computer lab till high school, and all they really taught us was word processing/typing. I was lucky we had some extra off site courses available that taught some IT, CAD, HTML, and programming. But that was by the end of the 90s, 1998-99.
But yeah, point I'm making is while computers were around, not everyone really knew about them. I think there were a good number of middle class millennials who got to grow up with access to a computer at home. My family was too broke to lay down 2 grand on a computer that my parents had no understanding what it was useful for.
As a millenial I found I had a lot more in common with my Gen Z brother than I do with my boomer father. However, the little shit treated and thought of me like I'm a boomer. He'd consider my shitty FPS playing on console to be a sign "I couldn't play games" (I'm a PC gamer).
I'd like to think he'll mature and realise he was being a little cunt but I doubt he will.
Me, reading these comments, laughing in GenX
Dude, you're, like, caring too much. Gen X card revoked. Whatever.
I have kids in both these age groups and they are more alike than different. I think the younger set is slightly better with technology and much more diverse in their musical taste than the older ones were at the same age. I guess they don't have a generational difference if they are all siblings though.
Hi. System Admin millennial here.
You would think that's the case, but in my experience it's not.
Millenials were around during a major shift/evolution in general home computer use, so we're much closer to understanding the "flow" of tech, even if it's older. Gen-Z tries to think in smartphone or tablet mode.
Younger Gen-Z are the same as a blue collar boomer: when the company I work for hires a Gen-Z employee, I spend a ton of time with them the first few weeks "fixing" their "broken" machines. Most of the Millenials that are hired can do the general troubleshooting themselves.
I will agree with the music bit though.
