I'm Jan 1981, so as close to the Pew line as one can get, and really am a Xennial. I didn't get a cell phone until I was in graduate school and didn't get an email addresses until college. I filled out my college applications in hard copy, read a paper map to find my way around for the first decade I was driving, and know how to use the Dewey decimal system for research. I backpacked across Europe for three summers with no cell phone and only paper maps, only getting on Internet at cafes every 2-3 weeks. I got all the way through college before camera phones became ubiquitous. Lots of formative experiences that Millennials mostly don't have. I "adulted" before I had a cell phone or regular internet access, let alone social media.

My Millennial younger siblings had social media in their teens or earlier and cannot recall a time when everyone didn't have a camera phone to record antics.Their college experience was very different, as a result. They also don't recall how to communicate without texting, have always been in direct communication with our parents (unlike me who spent months in Europe with no phone), and can't read a map to save their lives.

But I'm also not Gen X. I don't relate to the music or culture. I don't know the politics. It was all older than me.

I'd put myself solidly in a separate category.

Spouse was born in 1980 but had older siblings, so my spouse is culturally more Gen X.

I was born in 1981, but I was the oldest child and definitely feel more Millennial.

Spouse always had to watch TV targeted at their older siblings (big age gap), so they are not familiar at all with the shows I was watching as Millennial (ex: I watched tons of Nickelodeon and my spouse was rarely exposed to any of those shows). Spouse was also always hanging around siblings' Gen X friends, so was more in tune to their cultural touchstones and fashions.

So - in spite of being only a year apart - we experienced very different lifestyles and cultural waypoints due to our birth order.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was born a month shy of 1980.

I think Xennial is the appropriate term here. I definitely feel different than my millenial coworkers who were born 10 years later, like we identify with different things in pop culture trends, etc.. They completely missed out on an 80s to early 90s childhood and all the related trends. They didn't grow up on a diet of 80s kids movies the way I did, don't identify as much with the Brat Pack, or Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson's Creek. These were significant culture things for which some millenials do not identify. They were young kids when shows like Friends and Seinfeld were enormously popular.

We do both share a love of Harry Potter, but they are actually the generation that grew up with Harry Potter as kids/teens so I discovered their fanbase for it is greater than my own as I read it in my mid 20s.

Harry Potter came out while we were in high school. It was huge in my school

The first HP book was published in 1997 in the UK.

I graduated in '97 and didn't hear of Harry Potter till my senior year in college in 2001ish. I worked at a retail store when home during school breaks - Bed Bath and Beyond - and they actually sold copies of it at the register. I rang up someone who talked about how their kid absolutely loved it and read the back and thought I'd check it out so read it sometime after that.

None of my highschool nor college friends were particularly aware of it either for those of us who graduated highschool in '97, so seems we just missed the boat with that graduation year. I thought I was a big fan until I met my millennial co-workers who are 10 years younger than me, so graduated around 2007-ish and they are much bigger fans than I (though I dressed up and waited in line at midnight for the later books, etc.).

Anonymous wrote:I was born a month shy of 1980.

I think Xennial is the appropriate term here. I definitely feel different than my millenial coworkers who were born 10 years later, like we identify with different things in pop culture trends, etc.. They completely missed out on an 80s to early 90s childhood and all the related trends. They didn't grow up on a diet of 80s kids movies the way I did, don't identify as much with the Brat Pack, or Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson's Creek. These were significant culture things for which some millenials do not identify. They were young kids when shows like Friends and Seinfeld were enormously popular.

We do both share a love of Harry Potter, but they are actually the generation that grew up with Harry Potter as kids/teens so I discovered their fanbase for it is greater than my own as I read it in my mid 20s.

Harry Potter came out while we were in high school. It was huge in my school

Anonymous wrote:1984 here, and I feel like a millennial. I was texting my family on 9/11 from the high school cafeteria which I think is a pretty defining factor. My nerdy parents were early adopters for a lot of technology and that probably plays into it.

This study was from 2017 (and I’m now seeing that this thread is really old too but I’m still going to post!) and I think the emergence of Gen Z and now Alpha helps redefine boundaries.

I'm 81. I was in college for 9/11 and people were still having to borrow each others phones to check on family. If texting being ubiquitous was the defining characteristic, then maybe high school vs college in 2001 is the boundary

I was born a month shy of 1980.

I think Xennial is the appropriate term here. I definitely feel different than my millenial coworkers who were born 10 years later, like we identify with different things in pop culture trends, etc.. They completely missed out on an 80s to early 90s childhood and all the related trends. They didn't grow up on a diet of 80s kids movies the way I did, don't identify as much with the Brat Pack, or Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson's Creek. These were significant culture things for which some millenials do not identify. They were young kids when shows like Friends and Seinfeld were enormously popular.

We do both share a love of Harry Potter, but they are actually the generation that grew up with Harry Potter as kids/teens so I discovered their fanbase for it is greater than my own as I read it in my mid 20s.

I’m the tail-end of the Boomers but am definitely a Boomer because I think Starbucks is a waste of money.

Anonymous wrote:1984 here, and I feel like a millennial. I was texting my family on 9/11 from the high school cafeteria which I think is a pretty defining factor. My nerdy parents were early adopters for a lot of technology and that probably plays into it.

This study was from 2017 (and I’m now seeing that this thread is really old too but I’m still going to post!) and I think the emergence of Gen Z and now Alpha helps redefine boundaries.

I was 31 and driving past the Pentagon to work on 9/11. GenX 1970.

1970 solidly GenX. Siblings 66 and 67.

We are quintessential GenX.

Our Parents were Silent Generation. 1941, 1943.

We skipped the Boomer Gen. entirely in my family. Thank god.

Early 80s. We aren't Gen X. I never really listened to the music that people born in the 70s did. Never really watched the shows that they did. Was born after all of the famous baseball players they grew up with had pretty much retired. I was still a very young kid when Wayne Gretzky retired and barely knew his career. I was still too young to watch a ton of Michael Jordan in his prime.

Sports players I really recognize are players like Tom Brady, Emmett Smith, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Randy Moss, Lebron, Tiger, Zidane, Ronaldinho, Messi, Mariano Rivera, Arod, Eric Lindros, Sergei Federov and the Russian 5, the New Jersey Devils dynasty.

I think the easiest way to tell by far is also by video game console that defined your life. I think PS1 and especially PS2/Xbox had way more impact on those us born in the early 80s than Atari, Sega, and SNES. N64 straddles both generations, but PS2 is our defining system. Gen x just really never picked up PS2 as much.

This thread is Generation Zombie

I think it's a good classification because my sister is a boomer and I'm not.

This is just another way to divide us up & get everybody fighting each other.

1984 here, and I feel like a millennial. I was texting my family on 9/11 from the high school cafeteria which I think is a pretty defining factor. My nerdy parents were early adopters for a lot of technology and that probably plays into it.

This study was from 2017 (and I’m now seeing that this thread is really old too but I’m still going to post!) and I think the emergence of Gen Z and now Alpha helps redefine boundaries.

1980. Elder millennial or xennial.