gen alpha is killing the apple sauce industry with their selfish preference for chocolate pudding cups

Gen Alpha is about to start high school, and they’re still being born.

Millennials are late 20s to early 40s. Gen Z is early 10s to late 20s. Alpha is still being born, up to early 10s. Beta-or-whatever-shit will start happening in about 2-4 years, yes - by 2030.

There’s more ‘precise’ ages but it basically doesn’t matter. There are ‘cusp’ people that defy exact organization (say if you’re around 42, or 26, or 12). Past generations also were not stuck as rigidly to 15-year increments, but more noticed trends (like the Baby Boom generation is often given more than the 15). Generations have been tracked and used for centuries, but marketers got their claws more into the concept in the 1900s.

There is some use for generations because in demographic stats, its pretty clear that there are population differences that can be connected to various other subjects like culture, economics, law, etc.

We don’t have to ‘accept’ distinct generations immediately. We can largely ignore a lot of what children do, but we should still be aware of the different environments they’re growing up in compared to people before them. There also isn’t necessarily a lot of difference between say, the oldest Gen Z and the oldest Millennial, even if they’re given their different tags. But there are differences to notice - the people who grew up during certain events, or since the advent of birth control, or the consequences of the housing crunch. Its not just what snacks you each had in school lunches, but it can be much much deeper. Calling people just ‘kids’ and ‘adults’ and ‘seniors’ doesn’t work so well, because people age into another category, when we’re trying to track the trends, sentiments, patterns of a certain cohort as they go through their collective lives.

The rising contention between and fixation on generations is a pretty unnecessary thing, but we also shouldn’t deny that there’s significant differences between what we call Gen Z/Millennial today, and at least those we call Boomers (if not also Gen X). There’s differences in life experiences, formative politics, economic ability and norms, cultural touchstones, even just basic relatable concepts. Yes, we’re human and not utterly alien to each other, and a lot of differences can be more chalked up to age differences and not generational (like teens immediate easier taking up of new ideas while seniors usual hardening against them), but the generational parts still exist and matter.

The markers are imperfect, but they still mark trends, at least within a region. Baby Boomers are an obvious one - a giant wave of new children post-war. Gen X was a local collapse in population, the result of rising acceptability of divorces, and significantly fewer children than ever, by various Silent/Boomers. Millennials were a tick up in population (Echo Boomers), partially due to a small recovery in stable marriages and family growth by Boomers/X, and partially due to a marked rise in immigration to fill all of our neoliberal labor gaps. Alpha’s continued low numbers of children by X/Millennials (except in certain conservative communities), and further perhaps desperate rise in immigration is also distinct in the face of rising unaffordability. Its actually measurable, the differences between these cohorts, even if its not perfectly marked. Their details don’t stand alone, but they can help explain or reflect parts of a lot of economic and cultural changes. What people talk about, buy and sell, accept or deny, feel more inspiration to create. We intuitively know that some other labels are needed, like ‘Xennial’, in conversations, but its not like they have zero use.

The youngest millennials are like 26 (1997 is the cutoff per the idiots who came up with it). People are really jumping the gun, as the youngest gen z is like 10 years old.

Seriously I’m 30 how are there 2 generations with distinct media tastes fighting already behind me.

Zoomers have to ironically hate on the new Gen saying boomer shit like “kids these days aren’t as good as we were”

fair enough, I guess they have to force it in before the world ends

Being to cool for stuff you liked as a teen is the real cringe.

Yeah, I like how “Boomers” is basically anyone born between 1900 and 1985, then it’s seemingly a new “generation” every 5 years after that.

Doesn’t matter, all you need to know is no generation is more cringe than millennials

(Boomers to Greatest are given larger window by demographers, so there isn’t room for Lost Generation to still uh, count as an alive category)

Greatest are dying out, including vets that helped let us have more reminders that Nazis are something to fight and kill.

Silent are elderly and in their brief last period of importance, due to being a smaller generation. (Biden is and will be the only Silent Gen president)

Boomers are seniors hanging onto work/assets/relevance too hard for way too long, but they can do this because they’re a huge generation that took all they could.

X are middle aged and getting to feel legitimately old and uncool, but who cares since they’re a smaller generation.

Millennials are becoming middle aged, from able to still pull off young adulthood, to being way too gray for their expectations. Mid life crises out of greatly misaligned expectations incoming.

Z are young adults/older children who have had to face Trump and Biden as the faces of their nation and/or hegemony. Them often giving up on hope was a predictable response to this.

Alpha are younger children about to start getting into high school, starting to get more unfettered access to the Internet so … skibidi toilet. They don’t know better so they get to be silly for a while, as a treat.

IMO the Z/Alpha split doesn’t make any sense at all. With Boomers/Gen X it makes sense because one grew up in postawar America and got to prosper and the other grew up in Neoliberal America and didn’t, Millenial vs Gen Z makes sense as a distinction because the Internet became big while Millenials were already established but Gen Z grew up with Web 2.0 totally dominating their lives, but what, exactly, is the dividing line between Gen Z and Alpha? Nothing, they’re the same generation, it’s just kids who don’t like something telling the kids who like it that their taste is bad.