The Biggest(And Best) Difference between Millennials and My Generation
We're an enigma,those of us born at the tail end of the '70s and the start of the '80s. Some ofthe "generational" experts lazily glob us on to Generation X, andothers just shove us over to the Millennials they love to hate. No one reallygets us or knows where we belong.
We've been called “Generation Catalano”, “Xennials”, and “TheLucky Ones”, but no name has really stuck for this strange micro-generationthat has both a healthy portion of Gen X grunge cynicism, and a dash ofthe unbridled optimism of Millennials.
A big part of what makesus the square peg in the round hole of named generations is our strangerelationship with technology and the Internet. We came of age just as the veryessence of communication was experiencing a seismic shift, and it's given us aunique perspective that's half analog old school and half digital new school.
You Have Died of Dysentery
If you can distinctly recall the excitement of walking into yourweekly computer lab session and seeing a room full of Apple 2Es displaying thestart screen of Oregon Trail, you're a member of this namelessgeneration, my friend.
We were the first groupof kids who grew up with household computers, but still novel enough to elicitconfusion and wonder. Gen X individuals were already fully-formed teens oryoung adults when computers became mainstream, and Millennials can't even remembera time before computers.
But, when we firstplaced our sticky little fingers on a primitive Mac, we were elementary schoolkids whose brains were curious sponges. We learned how to use these impressivemachines at a time when average middle class families were just starting to beable to afford to buy their own massive desktops.
This made us the firstchildren to grow up figuring it out, as opposed to having an innate understanding of new technology the way Millennials did, or feeling slightlyalienated from it the way Gen X did.
An AOL Adolescence
Did you come home from middle school and head straight to AOL,praying all the time that you'd hear those magic words, "You've GotMail" after waiting for the painfully slow dial-up internet to connect? Ifso, then yes, you are a member of the Oregon Trail Generation. And you are definitelypart of this generation if you hopped in and out of sketchy chat rooms askingothers their A/S/L (age/sex/location for the uninitiated).
Precisely at the timethat you were becoming obsessed with celebrities, music, and the opposite sex,you magically had access to "the Internet," a thing that few normalpeople even partially grasped the power of at the time.
We were the first groupof high school kids to do research for papers both online and in anold-fashioned card catalogue, which many millennials have never even heard ofby the way (I know because I asked my 21-year-old intern and he startedstuttering about library cards).
Because we had one footin the traditional ways of yore and one foot in the digital information age, weappreciate both in a way that other generations don't. We can quickly turn curmudgeonlyin the face of teens who've never written a letter, but we're glued to oursmartphones just like they are.
Those born in the late'70s and early '80s were the last group to have a childhood devoid ofall the technology that makes childhood and adolescence today pretty much theworst thing imaginable. We were the last gasp of a time before sexting,Facebook-shaming and constant communication.
We used pay-phones. Weshowed up at each other's houses without warning. We often spoke to ourfriends' parents before we got to speak to them. And we had to wait at least anhour to see any photos we'd taken. But for the group of kids just a littleyounger than us, the whole world changed and that's not an exaggeration. Infact, it's possible that you had a completely different childhood experiencethan a sibling just five years your junior, which is pretty mind-blowing.
Napster U
Thanks to the evilgenius of Sean Parker, most of us were in college in the heyday ofNapster and spent many a night using the university's communal Ethernet to pillageour friends' music libraries at breakneck speeds. With mouths agape athaving downloaded the entire OAR album in under five seconds, we built ourmusic libraries faster than any other dorm-dwelling generation in history.
We were the first toexperience the beauty of sharing and downloading mass amounts of music fasterthan you can say, "Third Eye Blind," which made the adoption of MP3players and music streaming apps perfectly natural. Yet, we still distinctlyremember buying cassette singles, joining those scam-tastic CD clubs andrecording songs onto tapes from the radio. The very nature of buying andlistening to music changed completely within the first 20 years of our lives.
A Youth Untouched by Social Media
The importance of goingthrough some of life's toughest years without the toxic intrusion of socialmedia really can't be overstated. MySpace was born in 2003 and Facebook becameavailable to all college students in 2004. So if you were born in 1981-1982,for example, you were literally the last graduating class to finish collegewithout social media being part of the experience.
When we get together with our fellow Oregon Trail Generation friends, we frequentlydiscuss how insanely glad we are that we escaped the middle school, high schooland college years before social media took over and made an already challenginglife stage exponentially more hellish.
We all talked crazyamounts of bad things about each other, took pictures of ourselves and ourfriends doing shockingly inappropriate things and spread rumors like it was ourjobs, but we just never had to worry about any of it ending up in a place whereeveryone and their moms (literally) could see it a hot second after ithappened.
But unlike our older GenX siblings, we were still young and dumb enough to get really into MySpace andFacebook in its first few years, so we understand what it feels like toovershare on social media and stalk a new crush's page.
Time after time, we late'70s and early '80s babies were on the cusp of changes that essentiallytransformed modern life and, for better or worse, it's shaped who we are andhow we relate to the world.
Article Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-garvey/the-biggest-and-best-difference-between-millennials_b_7438370.html
Image Source: https://hr2012.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/millennial-generation.jpg
VOCABULARY WORDS:
Enigma (n.) ~ a person orthing that is mysterious, puzzling, or difficult to understand
Cynicism (n.) ~ aninclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest
Unbridled (adj.) ~uncontrolled
Elicit (v.) ~ evoke ordraw out a response or answer
Innate (adj.) ~ natural
Curmudgeon (adj.) ~ acrusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man
Devoid (adj.) ~ entirelylacking
Heyday (n.) ~ a period ofa person’s or thing’s greatest success
Pillage (v.) ~ rob a placeusing violence
Agape (adj.) ~ mouth wideopen, especially with surprise or wonder
QUESTIONS FORDISCUSSION:
Do you remember the time when thecomputer wasn’t as popular as now? Describe it.
What generation do you belong to? Whatare the advantages and disadvantages of belonging to that generation?
Some people say that the millenials aredeprived of “normal childhood” because they lack opportunity to play outside.What is your opinion on this?
What do you think are the disadvantagesof growing up in a time when social media is very common?
