Snapchat? No thanks; I'm an Old Millennial

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There's a sensation you get when you hear the name of a group you're a member of. If someone says "Bostonian" or "liberal" or (sorry) "Patriots fan," my brain perks up a little. Oh, they're talking about me. Over the last few years, though, I've found I'm getting less and less of that ping from the term millennial.

Technically speaking, I'm definitely a millennial. I was born in 1983, which means I'm part of the generation, whether one uses the Census Bureau's definition (born 1982-2000) or Pew's (about 1981-1997). But the more I hear about millennials, the less I recognize myself. And I'm not alone on this front: In 2015, for example, Juliet Lapidos -- born the same year I was -- may have put it best in a column for the New York Times headlined "Wait, What, I'm a Millennial?" "I don't identify with the kids that Time magazine described as technology-addled narcissists, the Justin Bieber fans who 'boomerang' back home instead of growing up," she writes. And I've had plenty of conversations with other people my age who feel the same way. Many, many people who are in their late 20s and early 30s simply don't feel like they are a part of the endlessly dissected millennial generation.

As it turns out, there are good reasons for this. Old Millennials, as I'll call them, who were born around 1988 or earlier (meaning they're 29 and older today), really have lived substantively different lives than Young Millennials, who were born around 1989 or later, as a result of two epochal events that occurred around the time when members of the older group were mostly young adults and when members of the younger were mostly early adolescents: the financial crisis and smartphones' profound takeover of society. And according to Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University and the author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before," there's some early, emerging evidence that, in certain ways, these two groups act like different, self-contained generations. ("Early" because there's still a fair amount we don't know about the youngest Young Millennials given how, well, young they are.)

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