Lara, Why Aren't You A Millennial?

Hey, internet! It's been a long time, huh?

If we haven't met before, then hi. I'm Lara. You might have seen me around before on the book blog Another Teen Reader, where I think I carved out a small, vaguely identifiable corner of the internet using strong opinions about books, made-up words and unreasonably long, impassioned run-on sentences.

As you can see, the sentences themselves are still alive and kicking, and I doubt I'm going to get very long into this post without referring to awesomeness, but since I've been gone for so long I had an opportunity for a new start. Frankly, I wanted to air some strong opinions about life in general, so I thought moving away from the bookish brand a little bit might be a good idea.

In the relatively unlikely but absolutely lovely case you liked my old stuff and are upset by this, Another Teen Reader is still live for you to scroll through. And I'll definitely be talking about books now and again here.

GIF reads: "It is so hard to stop."

Today, I thought I'd write a post that vaguely explains my kooky blog title. Why, exactly, am I not a millennial? And why would my Mum think I was?

#1 - AGE

The first, and possibly most confusing, thing that you discover about generations when you start researching Googling it is that they are by no way definite. Practically every site you see will have a different date for where one generation becomes another, but according to the internet's general consensus, the youngest millennials were born somewhere around 1995, and that absolutely means that if you do not remember having your own worldviews and philosophies at the turn of the millennium, you are categorically Generation Z and have to accept this.

Miss Piggy GIF reads: "I am who I am. Why can't you accept that about me?"

Which I guess makes sense. But based on the internet's overall opinion on millennial life (which is both sizeable and shockingly divided) I'd always assumed - along with my parents - that they were kids. I'd always shouldered the generally anxious and misunderstood millennial identity. One particularly succinct Urban Dictionary entry describes 'millennial' as

"a term used by insecure idiots to dismiss somebody aged 10-35"

but that, dear questionable friend from Urban Dictionary, is wrong. 23 to 40 would be more like it. And there are many, many debates to be had about why exactly public opinion is so skewed to reality, but my personal theory is a combination of older people not wanting to feel old and wanting to dismiss the technological culture of millennials as a 'kid thing'.

Where that culture comes from is another question.

#2 - CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE

One of the more existential questions I've asked myself about this whole thing is why generations even exist as a concept. It's not as if between the 31st of December 1995 and the 1st of January 1996 someone flicked a huge comical breaker switch and created a huge, definable divide between millennials and Gen Z. Both me and my cousin Will (hello, Will) are technically Gen Zers, but we've had many long, overly animated conversations about how the differences in our early childhood memories have shaped us as people. And those differences are sometimes incredibly wide - particularly when it comes to technology, politics, and Harry Potter.

GIF: *Hermione startles*

Maybe this just shows that generational borders are just symptoms of the human obsession with putting things in neat, labelled little boxes, but to me it also demonstrates just how much childhood experiences - even the tiny, tiny ones - shape how we view the world. And that might explain why we find generations so important.

When Googling 'milennial childhood experiences', I found Tamagotchi (which I'd only heard of in nostalgic sitcoms), some really really questionable fashion choices ...

GIF: Boy in unfashionable jumper rolls his eyes

... and 9/11.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that 9/11 was an excellent example for how huge historical events have made millennials so different to Gen Zers. Ask anybody born before 1996 and they will almost definitely be able to tell you where they were when the Twin Towers fell. It was a momentous event in people's lives that changed the way they view a whole religion, not to mention immigration and border security.

And I wasn't even born yet.

Milennials see modern-day terrorism as a recent threat, but for Generation Z ... it's kind of a part of life. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it is a notable life difference which will likely have an impact on how we see the world around us in the future.

#3 - SOCIAL MEDIA

Millennials are often described as the world's first digital natives - the first generation to have grown up with computers and other modern-day technology. But it can be argued that Generation Z are the world's first social media natives. With Facebook being launched in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, we have grown up waiting for the day we'd be thirteen and legally allowed to sign up to them (or just lying about our date of birth and hoping we wouldn't get caught later on).

GIF: Stephen Colbert crosses his fingers

What really interests me, though, is the difference between growing up in chat rooms and growing up on Twitter. People often link increased internet activity with the skyrocketing levels of anxiety and depression among young people, which is definitely logical considering the microscope it puts us under, but seeing that as the only consequence of social media normality on human behaviour is naive. Will it change the way we work? The way we raise our children?

That's the thing about being such a young generation. Only time will tell.

#4 - SENSE OF HUMOUR

One of my favourite summaries of the differences between the two generations comes from the global recession that occurred around 2008. The theory is that milennials grew up before this, so they spent their childhood surrounded by the 'American Dream', the belief that they deserved a stable job and would be able to earn their own home as long as they worked hard. Despite the name, this was true pretty much globally, or at least in the west. Generation Z's earliest memories are of stock market crashes, cuts to public services and banks being propped up by the government.

South Park trading GIF reads: "Agh! Oh, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell!"

We've lived our entire lives with 'getting on the housing ladder' feeling like some sort of acrobatic trick. Knowing that we were probably going to spend time unemployed. Milennials were blindsided by it. We never knew anything different.

And that explains the sheer morbidity of Generation Z humour. The amount of our communications that revolve around death, or just going to sleep and never waking up. It sounds horrifying out of context, and maybe it is, but for some reason our generation collectively sees it as casual. 

Where milennials might see "my life is a disaster" as a desperate cry for help, Generation Z would probably just think of it as another rainy Tuesday.

FANCY A FREEBIE?

Well, you're in luck. I made you these cute little emoji-generational bookmarks. Click the link to download!

***

In the comments: What generation are you? Do you think your generation has changed who you are as a person? Or do you think you were born in the wrong era?