The generational divide has surely never been wider
Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Baby Boomers, The Lost Generation. Our obsession with labelling great swathes of people by their age has created siloes of sweeping generalisation.
When I was a boy, calling out “boomers” for their opinions wasn’t even a thing. I’m not sure we’d even defined Gen X. The Baby Boomer generation was well known but anything before or after didn’t have a label I was aware of.
Fast forward to today and everyone has a label based on their age. And if you’re in that generation, you’re treated the same as everyone else in that grouping.
- If you’re glued to your phone and you’re needy, you’re Gen Z.
- If you’re harking back to better times that “kids these days could never understand” and can’t understand the plight of youth, you’re a boomer.
- God forbid you’re a year outside of being Gen Z, making you a Gen Y — totally different. You don’t get it.
- You can’t remember the Millennium or 9/11? Too young to appreciate anything.
We tear each other apart on social media.
Try to highlight mental health in the younger generation because of the pace of technology and the pressures of not having a highly-paid job or a house in the country and you’re slammed for being too soft: “when my grandfather landed on the beaches of Normandy after losing everything in the Great Depression…” or “when I were a lad, working down the mines, we didn’t complain about not having wifi…”
“HAH! WI-FI?!!” It’s like Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch all over again (if you’re old enough to remember that… oh, be quiet…)
The fact is that we’re all different.
- Young people struggle with concentration and focus because of their constant tech distractions — but so do Gen X and Yers.
- Gen Z are adept at using social media — but I know two nonagenarians who use it too (although I’m not sure they’re on TikTok yet).
- I have friends of similar ages who are at different ends of the tech-savvy scale.
- I know a 10-year-old boy who loves reading and playing with Lego; I know another who wants to play his PlayStation all day and create stop-motion videos.
Do any of these labels actually help or just cause grief between the generations vying for position as “best Gen ever”?