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  • Those born between 1961 and 1981. Also called the baby bust generation, MTV Generation, Video Generation, and the 13th Generation.

    January 30, 2009

  • These dates are floaty, I think. The U.S. Census Bureau considers a baby boomer someone who was born during the demographic "birth boom" between 1946 and 1964. It seems that everyone I talk to has seen or read different dates! :-)

    January 30, 2009

  • I think for those who were born in the early 1960s, it depends on which generation they identify with the most culturally.

    These labels of entire swaths of a population make me really dissatisfied and argumentative.

    January 30, 2009

  • floaty, indeed! Nice word, Rt.

    This term, by the way, was popularized by Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991), though the term actually goes back to a 1964 British sociological study of teenagers (in the mid-1960s, so this was the first wave of the Baby Boom generation), written by Jane Deverson and Charles Hemblett and also called Generation X, I'm guessing because the post-WWII generation seemed like such a mystery to their elders.

    These terms - Generation X, and Generation Y (Why?), and now Generation Z – seem so contrived to me, quite patronizing (they are all essentially marketing labels), and, needless to say, so unimaginative that I feel sorry for the people who assume these terms for themselves.

    January 30, 2009

  • I bought a cassette tape recorder about a dozen years ago when I was working as a journalist. Unpacking it at home, I was horrified to see that it had Genexxa emblazoned on it. I suppose when I undertake the chore of buying appliances I'm focused on their features rather than whether they have a dismal, cheesy name.

    January 30, 2009

  • Of course it's a wild generalisation, which is why it's useful to demographers (as well as marketers) I'd have thought. Like it or not, people within a generation are more likely to share social trends, attitudes, outlooks, than one generation is with the one immediately previous or subsequent to it.

    January 31, 2009