re: What do you believe is a Real Millennial?

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I consider it 1986-1999. Pretty much spent their childhood/formative years on the internet. Pre madness of 9/11.

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As someone born in the mid-80's, I think you're off base on this one. I grew up calling Time and Temperature, typing book reports on a typewriter, doing research in encyclopedia collections, and having to call the single main phone line in a house if I wanted to talk to a girl. I didn't have a social media account until I used my LSU email to sign up for Facebook.

My sibling who was born in the early 90's likely doesn't remember a time before pervasive internet usage.

Someone born in 1999 likely doesn't really remember a world before the iPhone.

And as for 9/11, I was in highschool. Someone born in 1999 was barely sentient.

Honestly, I think 1982 to 1989 would probably make for an interesting sub-generation. We grew up in an analog world that quickly switched to digital right as we were flirting with adulthood. Makes for a rather unique perspective.

As as addendum to my last post, I think most people have a hazy-at-best recollection of what those early days of the public internet looked like.

Mosaic, the first publicly available browser, wasn't released until 1993. AOL didn't switch to a monthly subscription model (they previously charged by the hour) until the very end of 1996. You didn't have 50% household internet in the US until the early 2000's.

To personalize it again for a minute, I was twelve when my family bought a computer, and we were a fairly early adopter, at least among my peers. And even then, I didn't have internet. I was doing research on Encarta discs. I was probably 14 before we got internet access at home. I was in high school before AIM was really taking off.

People think of the 90's as the internet decade, but it was only so as far as the groundwork being laid. It was still so new that, in the waning hours of 1999, reasonable adults actually thought all of their electronics might melt down at midnight. The Dot Com Bubble didn't even start its run up until the very end of the 90's, bursting in the early 2000's. I was in my 20's when the iPhone was released in 2007; people born at the end of the 90's were likely handed one by their parents as young children to shut them up.

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How old are you?

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I predate both of these products, although not by very much.

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Joshjrn

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Born in 84? I have almost the exact same perspective.