As the attention of academics and marketers shifts to the lives of people too young to remember a world in which touchscreens were not commonplace, we millennials find ourselves less often in the spotlight.
We have been discussed, dissected and debated for over a decade. We have entered the workforce and the political sphere. We are representing ourselves in debates about who and what, exactly, we are. We are old hat. Bring on the new generation for its time in the spotlight.
Technically, though, depending on which definition of millennial you use, not every millennial has come into adulthood — we still have a few years before that happens. There’s a big difference between older millennials (born in the 1980s) and the younger ones (born at the start of the century). For me, that calls into question the wisdom of using a broad generational identity to describe all of us.
Already, the line between Generation X (generally born between the early 1960s and the early 1980s) and millennials is often fuzzy, and it is often determined by the former generation’s proximity to the Internet. Our relationship with technology, after all, is as relevant to how we identify ourselves as the era in which we were raised. We are as much the first kids who came of age with email and social media as we are the ones who grew up in the foreboding shadow of 9-11.
For a long time, proximity to the Internet was the sole technological characteristic for millennials. We were the “digital natives,” so to speak. But technology now changes faster and more exponentially than ever before. Related social norms, as a result, are repeatedly knocked on their butts.
For Generation Xers, records, then cassette tapes were the primary media on which music was delivered to consumers. In my adolescence, we shifted from CDs to downloading music on computers to having it available on digital players to our phones. Due to its ethereal nature, piracy of consumer media has become a generally accepted practice among otherwise law-abiding people. Once seemingly rigid concepts like copyright have become blurred. Honestly, I have no idea how the youngest millennials get their hands on new music.
The shifts in norms don’t stop there.
The speed at which technology has changed norms around dating are also remarkable. When I was a kid, online dating was taboo, but communicating electronically with relative strangers fast became a norm. I got married before the dating app Tinder made its way into the market. When younger friends first described their experience with it, it sounded to me like they were describing science fiction.
Constant technological change leads to constant social change. In these conditions, is it becoming less possible to have a large generational cohort that spans decades? To this aging millennial, it seems so — though this is not necessarily a negative thing. It is up in the air whether these sweeping generational assessments were accurate in the first place.
The question also applies to another apparent flaw in addressing millennials — or any generation, really — as a monolith. It’s a question that millennials have examined quite a bit in discussions held — quite fittingly — online.
We typically — and ironically — refer to millennials as a generation that is both diverse and multicultural, yet we refer to them monolithically; the image is often a white one. The generational generalities gloss over disparities of opportunity and the different realities in which members of our generation live. While pre- and post-Tinder millennials have different experiences in life, the greater differences in experience are based on race or ethnic background. Another paradox: Millennials are sharing their varied experiences, backgrounds and perspectives online — a practice we are told time and again we inherently have in common.
Even before rapid, radical technological advances began to challenge generational classifications, the trivialization of wide-ranging experiences within particular generational cohorts had already made these definitions tricky.
In a world of near-constant technological change, will conversations about generations become more or less relevant? Will we redefine the generational parameters or shed the conversation altogether?
In the meantime, can someone explain to me Snapchat?
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.