So someone born in 1980 has more in common with someone born in 1961 than someone born in 1981? Does that make sense to anybody? Would we accept all these generalizations about other generations? If not, I think we're just doing one of those "these kids today!" rants. Are Gen-Xers generally skeptical, self-reliant, risk-taking, with a good life/work balance? In my experience, this generation has some of the biggest workaholics I know, so I'm going to disagree with the life-work balance. I don't see significant risk-taking in the people I know from that generation, either. Skeptical and self-reliant? I don't know - I wouldn't say I see that more in that generation than in any others... How about boomers? They're supposed to be optimistic, ambitious workaholics with a focus on team-work. But most of the baby boomers I know are retired, buggering off to the south for half the year, not doing much of anything. Maybe when they were in the workforce they were different, but that just goes to suggest we're talking about life stages rather than anything connected to their actual years of birth.
There are far too many factors involved which largely prevent one from making defensible statements about an entire generation spanning the whole globe, I agree. But that goes both ways, whether you love or hate millennials. That's why I proposed the better way to go about it, is to study how technology has affected two (or more) different groups. One way to define these groups, could be "Group A, who have lived and breathed smart phones since they came out of the womb and took a selfie with their mother" to "Group B, who lived half their life in both eras" and so forth. And of course, what you're specifically studying is technology's effect on creativity. I suspect the results would vary greatly from culture to culture, country to country, but there'd likely be a discernible trend or pattern. I don't know if creativity is testable, and to what degree of reliability. All I'm saying is that conjecture isn't going to get anybody anywhere, unless you're just interested in sharing opinions and perspectives, which is absolutely fine too.
Your comments have set me off on a slightly new train of thought. At what point in the development of the brain does it become more difficult to make changes? Take a very young child. They can easily learn a language by osmosis, but if you get them young enough, they can learn a second or even a third language the same way (and not get them mixed up.) And yet, as the child grows older, learning a new language becomes harder and harder, until they have to study it. And then studying it becomes difficult. And only a few people out of the total population actually become multilingual in their adulthood. So at what point do things get 'fixed?' It's pretty much a given, if you're right—as I suspect you are—and the impressionable brain of a young person takes on the characteristics and expectations of the environment they're in. (Meaning generations DO see things differently from other generations, because the environment is different.) But at what point does that harden up? That's probably the point at which the generation changes to the 'next' one.
@jannert From just a quick Google search, the physical development (which has its corresponding effect on mental development) seems to end by the mid thirties. It varies slightly from person to person. Of course, that doesn't mean you have to stop learning, or can't learn anymore. I think that's more of a get-out-of-jail-free-card for people who can't be bothered. You can always keep learning and adapting *as you see fit*, even though your learning-muscle starts to get a little tuckered out. Of course, like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it will get, thus being likely to last longer. Your brain can sort of fragment, like a computer hard-drive. Imagine the process of fragmenting as a bunch of filing cabinets with documents and folders, or pictures, and so on contained in them. Over time you go searching through things, and maybe sometimes you don't put them back where they belong, or you throw things out and put new things in. Reshuffle, re-organize from alphabetical to numerical. You get a serious concussion (insert metaphor: some of your filing cabinets get hit in a terrorist attack, and you lose them for good). There are ways to go about unfragmenting it, such as strengthening the bonds and connections between ideas. But it's a natural process. See chaos-theory. I don't know the actual science behind it, and even the experts I suspect have only hit the tip of the iceberg. This is just layman's talk, based on articles and bits of textbooks I've read, or YouTube videos.
Well, I certainly can't disagree with that last bit ...about buggering off south and not doing much of anything. That's definitely me. (Well, except I tend to bugger off north.) I was never particularly ambitious. I always had a job, and did a good job, but it was there to finance my time off, where my 'real' life took place. And it was flexible. It wasn't a career. I was a jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe that's a very boomerish way to look at the world. I think the boomer era started at the end of WW2 and went until the birth rate peaked and started to decline. I know my sister's high school graduating class was the largest in our town. She was born in 1953, 4 years after me. After the year she graduated, the numbers began to decline. However, some people extend the 'boomer' period farther than that. I don't. I'd say boomers were born between 1945 and 1955. After that, a different set of factors came into play. Of course you're right, that it's a progression, and there aren't any complete cut-offs or starts. I guess the end of WW2 was a pretty good start. TV was a factor that changed a lot of how people got their entertainment and information. I remember when calculators first came out. Before that, you either had a cumbersome adding machine, or you did all your mathematical computations the old fashioned way. The Vietnam War had an impact on my generation, at least the USA side of it—an unjust war versus the 'just' war my parents' generation fought. Many of us saw the two generations as incompatible with one another. That's a factor that has been less obvious in subsequent generations. Getting computers in the home and school was another factor for change. The internet was a major change. I think people who were raised before and after each of these developments will show different characteristics from others who either take them for granted, or missed them altogether. Having said that, many technological things were common to all of these eras, from boomers onward. Everybody (in the USA) had cars, washing machines, refrigerators, telephones, vacuum cleaners, electric or gas stoves and ovens, etc. These technologies advanced, but they didn't have the same impact as a new technology did.
Huh, I guess I'm a Millenial if the definition is someone 18-30 years old at this time. I always thought it was people born during the 2000s... hence Millenials? And really, by my definition, Millenial behaviour is just teenage behaviour from any generation. I desperately wanted to be liked and accepted as a teenager, because I was bullied to the point of two attempted suicides for NOT being like the majority in my school. I got out of that toxic atmosphere and began rebuilding my confidence, and now every year I care less and less what people think of me. I'd be surprised if that's changed from prehistoric times to now - the teenage years are the same, broadly speaking, for every generation in all walks of life. It's the time when we're pre-programmed by genes to establish ourselves as autonomous people separate from our parents, and 'find ourselves' to use a horrible buzz phrase. I do feel very sorry for anybody glued to their phone all the time (and even more sorry for the friends and family who have to put up with being ignored!) but I agree with others that it would've been the same if smartphones were around in the 1980s, or 60s, or the Iron Age. I think technology is great. I love it and use it to make me happy and my life more pleasant. I'm very glad I was born when I was, even if I wish smartphones weren't so prevalent.
Man I love it when people generalize each other, its really fun.</sarcasm> I mean, maybe some of this is true when it comes to adolescents, but otherwise its just a massive generalization on part of whoever wrote the article. I'm 16 and I'm a very creative person so...
Sorry if this has already been said, but I only really noticed the term "millenials" being a big thing in the context of the current US election cycle, and lo and behold, all the same negative characteristics that used to be ascribed to us Gen Xers are now being tagged onto the Millenials. Well, screw you, kids! We are the self absorbed slackers. We are the politically under-involved. We are the hopeless, no-future types who will never equal, let alone exceed, our parents' standard of living. You're just, like, little copycats or something. With hashtags. <ducks and waits for a Boomer to chime in. From its Barcalounger....>
I think the biggest problem with saying '[Generation whatnot] are _____' is that those apart of the group usually take it personally, the generation above uses it as a chance to, 'heh, kids these days, eh', and the media uses it as a chance to generate online traffic, or boost their raitings, or sell more newspapers. (Since I'm a millennial and all, i'm not sure what these 'newspapers' are, I assume they're what phased out oldspapers?) A productive conversation would be, 'how has the internet changed society over the last 30 years' instead of passively blaming a generation for growing up in a changing world.
Kind of like how coaches gave us participation trophies and society blamed it on us like we asked for them?
Like the way my generation, who used to bring squirt guns to school, had a collective freakout when a member of your generation bit a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun and had him suspended. I'm not a childowner, and FSM and the Trojan company willing I never will be, but I am so ashamed of my generation's parenting.
Woo! Yeah. Screw you, Millennials, trying to steal our bleak, bleak thunder. We lost all interest in the world around us waaaay before you did. Hang on... "Millennial: a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000." "Born between 1982 and 1994." I was born in 83 and turned 17 in 2000. I think I might be a millennial. That's a bit of a shock.
I can't be the only one sick of this generation labeling horseshit. People are people. You can't lump a bunch together and say they all act like this.
Labeling groups of people in order to appear to have a broad understanding of the ways of the world is a habit television programs picked up, about the time people started calling a certain time period "The Sixties." First, it was naming your "era" after a decade. The Fifties. ta da ta da. It strains credulity to assert history neatly compartmentalizes itself in ten year packets. This should tell you something about the people who do this. I do think people in the U.S. (the only area I know first hand) have become rather self-focused, and dismissive of others, dismissive of ideas, and preoccupied with vanity, and the surface of things. I don't think the so-called millenials started this, but they were born into it, and if they do show signs of this, it's due to the adults around them setting the example. In fact, I think the majority of the people in the U.S. have turned their backs on the second imperative to existence - species preservation, and are in some sort of competition with each other for a non-existent prize which amounts to no more than bragging rights. I think also the culture suffers as a result. There's a marked lack of awareness of previous stages of our cultural development, and I'm sorry, Kanye West and this Kardashian thing just doesn't qualify as culture. It's more of a carnival sideshow run amok. So, there is something going on. Where to place any blame, though, I think someone would have to have been watching all this for a considerable amount of time to make that call. Anyone who's done this observing wouldn't blame millenials for any of it. However, eventually so-called millenials will be bearing the weight of the cultural responsibility, and if they don't take steps to move things forward, they'll have to share the blame - as a generation.
I don't know how you can come here and berate Kanye. How many award-winning rap albums have YOU composed? And also Bruce Jenner was in the olympics.
But Caitlyn wasn't. Sorry, that was wrong. Still, several years before she announced her transition, I went a googling to see what the connection between the name "Bruce" (military people will recognize the stories of Bruce Co.'s exploits) and allegations of homosexuality. One posting I found somewhere asserted that Bruce was among the manliest of names, and cited Mr. (at the time) Jenner as an exemplar of masculinity, by virtue of his decathlon win. Hope that poster lived to see the day.
Bruce Wayne and Bruce Lee, Bruce 33 for the UK. Bruce Almighty I think is something almighty somewhere. Bruce Willis, the wrong category probably - by my definition of the Bruce. If I was a Bruce? I'd certainly rip off heads, not this century, I would not want to frighten anybody in this century. Stamping on hobbits seems right, swinging tree trunk lifestyle, possibly Biblical.
Foppish red hat over horsey white scowl. Black heeled boot crushing innocent Native's jugular. The "word" really doesn't matter.
