re: Do free-thinking millennials exist?

quote:

---

What kids were running around with cell phones in 19 fricking 98?

I didn't get one until 2003...when I was 16. All it was for was playing snake and telling my parents I wasn't dead.

---

I’m a few years younger than you but I got my first phone in 8th grade

quote:

---

I think making assumptions on the upbringings and values of large groups of people based on an arbitrary birth year is almost always silly.

---

This is what those liberal marxist professors at UGA TOLD YOU to believe!

quote:

---

free-thinking

---

quote:

---

They are the product of the progressive takeover of our education system. Generations before them were taught how to think. Their generation was taught what to think.

---

where did you go to college and what did you study?

quote:

---

the Nokia phones with snake didn't come out till 1998...

---

Ya hate to see it

quote:

---

I think making assumptions on the upbringings and values of large groups of people based on an arbitrary birth year is almost always silly.

In your example, there would be very little meaningful difference in the experience of one kid born in 1989 vs their sibling born in 1991, so why are we making different assumptions about each based on a 1990 cutoff?

---

In terms of the Millennial generation this actually isn't quite accurate. There are 3 major events IMO that split the Millennial generation in 2. 9/11, the Financial Crisis and Smart Phones.

Those of us Xennials remember 9/11 vividly. I was a senior in high school and for the first few weeks after 9/11 terrified I'd never see a college campus. That I'd graduate high school and then be shipped off to some military base for basic training. That was a true fear at the time. Younger millennials don't really remember 9/11 or weren't as affected by it.

In terms of the Financial Crisis us Xennials were already out of college and just starting our professional careers. We all had bought into the idea that if you did good in school and got good grades there would be a good career for you. Younger millennials were in their formative years when the Financial Crisis hit and therefore had a more practical view of what the working world had in store for them.

And finally Smart Phones. Us Xennials largely grew up without cell phones period and Smart Phones didn't even exist until we were either in our later college years or out of college completely. I'm 36 and I've never used Instagram or Snapchat. Find me a 25 year old who's never used Instagram or Snapchat, you'll be searching for a long time. Young millennials barely even remember life with Smart Phones, never mind life without any cell phone.

Those three points alone are valid and show why the generation actually needs to be split into 2. And yes that could even relate to a kid being born in 1989 having a different experience growing up than a kid being born in 1991.

I could say the same thing, that my life growing up was pretty much identical to younger Gen Xers. That I have more in common with someone who was born in 1978 (technically another generation) than someone born in 1990 (who I'm considered to be in the same generation as).

There does need to be an arbitrary line. The way I look at kid, kids in the 80s grew up without technology. Kids in the 90s were the first who were digital natives. That's a pretty big inflection point. I think it makes sense to split Millennials into 2 generations. Xennials 1980-1989, Millennials 1990-1999.

quote:

---

bruh what

---

Another good inflection point as to why the Millennial generation should be split in 2. I'm 36, I absolutely remember pay phones and even used pay phones. I remember when I got separated from my dad after a football game in 2000 and had to use a pay phone to call my mom.

Find me a 25 year old who has ever seen or used a pay phone. That person doesn't exist. To them pay phones might as well be rotary phones, something their parents used and something they see in a history book.

quote:

---

all it was for is to call to come get picked up and like he said, snake.. But this was in 1995. And i wasnt the first in my group to have one.


the Nokia phones with snake didn't come out till 1998...

---

well snake just runs in to one big memory. But yall are comparing kids with cell phones today with what im saying. and thats not at all what im talking about. I mean parents would give the kid a nokia when they would drop them off at the movies. giving it to the kids and letting the kid live his life.

quote:

---

in no way was it common for kids to have a cellphone in 1995

---

That ain't no lie. Hell, I didn't have one until '99 or 2000.

quote:

---

Now tell me, how many kids born in 95 or 96 would even remember what a flip phone was? A lot of them probably never had a phone that wasn't a smart phone.

---

Every single kid born in the mid to late 90s knows what a flip phone was.

A kid born in 95 would be in middle school when flip phones were still relatively common. Plenty of kids got phones around middle school. Even if they were born in 98 they would still remembered their parents having flip phones like the Razr.

Even pay phones were still around in the early 2000s. You don’t think they remember stuff from when they were 7 or 8 years old?