Generations

This is the first double book in this Michigan State University series of guides to cultural competence. We combined generations because they are largely described in relation to each other. To understand one, it helps to know others. Generation X and Millennials are a good pairing because of their growing power. We cover them separately because, though they are connected, they are distinct. Each has its own realities and stereotypes. This flip guide contains 200 questions with answers.

GENERATION X

When was Gen X born?
How many Gen Xers are there?
Why is Gen X called the Forgotten Generation?
What are differences between early and late Gen Xers?
How have recessions affected Generation X?
What is the student debt load for Gen X?
How did technology change for Gen X?
What was the significance of MTV?
Do Gen Xers hold jobs longer than Millennials?
How does Gen X vote in presidential elections?

MILLENNIALS

Who are the Millennials?
What else are Millennials called?
Why was Rainbow Generation suggested?
How much time do Millennials spend with technology?
Are Millennials weak at face-to-face communication?
How did the Great Recession affect Millennials?
Are Millennials off to good career starts?
Is the job-hopping Millennial an accurate stereotype?
How do Millennials vote?
Do Millennials live at home longer?

GENERATION X


When was Gen X born?
Generations do not have crisp cutoffs, and researchers use different years. Generally, people born from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s or early 1980s are called Generation X. In this guide, we are using 1965-1980 from the Pew Research Center.
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How many Gen Xers are there?
This is a smaller generation than the ones that came before and after. There were an estimated 66 million Gen Xers in the United States in 2015. Gen X enjoyed just three years as the largest U.S. generation in the workforce, from 2012 to 2015. Then, the Millennials overtook them.
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Why is Gen X called the Forgotten Generation?
The Baby Boomer (77 million) and Millennial (83 million) generations surround Gen X, sometimes causing people to skip the “forgotten middle child.” Marketers skipped over Gen X, according to AdWeek, jumping from Boomers to Millennials. In 2019, the online news network CBSN posted a graphic about generations and forgot about Gen X. One person tweeted, “Er, you forgot one, @CBSNLive. #GenX? You may remember us as the inventors of Harry Potter, podcasting and irony.” Even many Gen Xers say “forget it.” According to a study by MetLife insurance company, only 41 percent of this generation identifies as Gen Xers. It has also been called the Lost Generation, lost between two bigger ones. Other names include the MTV Generation and the Latchkey Generation, for children who came from schools to empty homes because of the rise of two-income families.
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What are differences between early and late Gen Xers?
The gap between the beginning and end of Gen X made for distinct differences in experiences and values. People born near the edges of generations are called cuspers. They can be like the generation nearest to their own. Some Gen Xers born just after the Baby Boom reflect its generally more conservative values. The youngest Gen Xers may identify more with Millennials. For example, Pew found that only 32 percent of Boomers wanted bigger government, while 53 percent of Millennials preferred more services. Pew found that mid-spectrum Gen Xers were closer to their generation’s average on politics and technology.
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How have recessions affected Generation X?
Gen X has experienced economic turbulence at vulnerable times. After the boom years of the 1990s, when they were young adults, they were slammed by the burst of the dot-com bubble in 1999-2001. Then came the 2007-2009 Great Recession. Many Gen Xers were young tech entrepreneurs hurt by the dot-com crash. The Great Recession came as they were recovering in their 30s and 40s.
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What is the student debt load for Gen X?
Besides having more education than previous generations, Xers also have more college debt. This means many Gen Xers have higher incomes, but lower savings. Many struggle to pay for their children’s college educations which could push student loan burdens into the next generation. The Pew Charitable Trusts reported in 2014 that Gen Xers owe nearly six times what their parents owed at the same age.
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How did technology change for Gen X?
So many ways: affordable digital watches, calculators, push-button phones, microwave ovens. Beepers to pagers to mobile phones to smartphones. AM to FM to digital. Photography went from film to digital and then into phones. Computer technology transformed from Gen Xers’ childhood days in the 1970s and ’80s into adulthood. The 1990s saw the advent of the Internet, the rise of cellphones and laptop computers, Palm Pilots and BlackBerrys. The 2000s saw the rise of text messaging, Wi-Fi, and smartphones. The 2010s gave rise to tablets, wearable technology, and smart home technology. Music went from vinyl 45s and albums to 8-track tapes to cassettes to CDs to downloading and streaming. The Sony Walkman gave way to the Discman and eventually the iPod, which led to smartphones. In television, the game-changers were widespread cable, the VCR, then DVD, Blu-Ray, then PVR and streaming services. In computing, the typewriter went electric, then went to microprocessing, basic computers, then the PC and Apple revolution in personal computing. The latter tied in with the advent of prevalent Wi-Fi. Gamers saw Atari, Coleco and Intellivision come out with in-home devices in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Photographers and videographers went from film through iterations of digital cameras and camcorders to cameras in phones.
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What was the significance of MTV?
MTV captured Gen X and changed entertainment. Not since the Beatles seized early Boomers in the 1960s had music achieved such a hold on young people. MTV launched early in the Gen X birth years, on Aug. 1, 1981, with the prophetic music video “Video Killed the Radio Star.” By year’s end, MTV had 2 million viewers. Its music video blocks gave Michael Jackson, Madonna and Duran Duran access to younger fans. Cabled into homes, music became an experience for the eyes as well as the ears. Michael Jackson’s moonwalk video “Billie Jean,” a single released early in 1983, brought MTV to mainstream audiences. For Gen Xers of a certain age, the day they got MTV was a milestone. MTV shattered network reluctance to screen Black artists. MTV aired Jackson’s full 14-minute version of the horror music video “Thriller” that December. With Prince, rappers Run-D.M.C. and others, MTV’s audience grew. That exposure changed music. English synth-pop band Duran Duran brought high-quality 35mm music videos to MTV. The band led a second British music invasion from the early to mid 1980s. However, MTV was also planting the seeds for its own decline by ushering in livestreaming and the fragmentation of audiences for entertainment and news.
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Do Gen Xers hold jobs longer than Millennials?
Because generations span 15-20 years, people in the same generation can be at very different life stages. A 20-year-old is not the same as a 35-year-old in the same generation. Bureau of Labor Statistics research shows that average job tenure for workers aged 25-34 hasn’t changed much in 30 years. As people get older, they switch jobs less frequently. Older workers might feel that younger workers are moving all the time, but that is what they did at that age, too.
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How does Gen X vote in presidential elections?
CNN exit polls on Election Day 2016 showed that this age group was divided at right around half for Donald Trump and half for Hillary Clinton. Trump’s biggest support came from people over 50. Clinton’s came from people under 30. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received 48.2 percent of the popular vote. Donald Trump received 46.1 percent but won the electoral votes.
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MILLENNIALS


Who are the Millennials?
People born from the very early 1980s to the mid 1990s are, by most definitions, Millennials. However, generations do not always have crisp edges. Baby Boomers were an exception, bracketed by a sharp upturn and downtick in the U.S. birth rate. With most generations, different demographers give different dates. Furthermore, people in the same generation do not all share the same perspectives. People born near the beginning or end of a generation are called “cuspers,” meaning they have characteristics of two generations.
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What else are Millennials called?
Other names include the Net Generation and the Internet Generation or iGen, referring to their experience growing up as digital natives. More names are Linksters, the Selfie Generation and the Rainbow Generation. Generation Y has also been used to follow Generation X. Millennials means the first people to come of age in the new millennium. Historian, author, economist and demographer Neil Howe is credited with coining “Millennial Generation.”
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Why was Rainbow Generation suggested?
The Brookings Institution called diversity the defining characteristic of this group. It predicted Millennials will be key as the nation becomes one in which there is no racial or ethnic majority. Forty-four percent of Millennials were non-White in 2018. The Census Bureau projects that, as U.S. population grows from 2020 to 2060, the White-alone population will shrink from 199 million to 179 million.
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How much time do Millennials spend with technology?
Research disputes the stereotype of them always being on their devices. A Nielsen study in 2017 found that Millennials were online less than either Gen X or Boomers. These were the weekly usage time in hours and minutes that Nielsen reported for Millennials:
TV 19:18
Smartphone 17:49
Radio 10:40
TV-connected device 7:16
PC 5:53
Tablet 3:05
People use more than one device at a time.
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Are Millennials weak at face-to-face communication?
A study found that about 80 percent of Millennials and 78 percent of Gen Xers prefer to communicate in person. Millennials use instant messaging and texting, but prefer face-to-face. The study was by the USC Marshall School of Business, the London Business School and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In contrast to the goldfish study, this one looked at 40,000 people in 22 countries.
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How did the Great Recession affect Millennials?
The 2007-2009 Great Recession and the years after hit millions of Millennials at a critical time in their financial lives. It hurt more than just their income. It caused debt and reduced home ownership, which limited wealth accumulation. A 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said some Millennials might never recover. People in their late 20s to early 30s continued to lose ground from 2010 to 2016. As other generations recovered, the wealth gap between young and old grew. According to a St. Louis study “A Lost Generation,” the net worth of families headed by early Millennials was 34 percent below what had been expected.
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Are Millennials off to good career starts?
This illustrates intra-generational variance. The first Millennials, born in 1981, started their careers as the economy was sliding into the Great Recession. In 2010, according to the U.S. Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds with only a high school diploma was 24.6 percent. For those with college degrees, it was 8 percent. This made it hard to start and sustain careers. Late Millennials who started careers in 2018 walked into the lowest unemployment in 50 years and found far greater opportunity.
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Is the job-hopping Millennial an accurate stereotype?
Early studies seemed to confirm this. They compared young, early-career people to older ones. However, a 2017 Pew analysis of Department of Labor data contradicts this. Pew found Millennials “are just as likely to stick with their employers as their older counterparts in Generation X were when they were young adults.” It reported that college-educated Millennials stay with their employers longer than Generation X workers did in 2000 when they were at the same age. Pew concluded that the job-hopping Millennial characterization does not fit.
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How do Millennials vote?
A poll by KQED News found that roughly 55 percent of Millennial voters in 2016 went for Hillary Clinton. Thirty-seven percent voted for Donald Trump, and 8 percent voted for third-party or independent candidates. Pew reported a generational voting gap. Baby Boomers and older voters lean right. Millennials and Gen X are increasingly liberal. Millennials are the most politically liberal voting generation and more likely to identify as Democrats. An NBC analysis of the 2018 election noted that Democrats won the youth vote by 35 percentage points, a significant shift from their 11-point edge in 2014. There was also a growing gender gap. Women, who preferred Democrats by 4 percentage points in 2014, gave them a 19-point margin in 2018.
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Do Millennials live at home longer?
According to a 2016 Pew report, for the first time in more than 130 years, it was more common for young adults to be living with parents than with a spouse or partner. This was especially true of men. Twenty-five percent of people aged 25-29 lived with a parent, up from 18 percent a decade earlier. For people aged 30-34, living with a parent rose from 9 percent to 13 percent. The Washington Post reported, “behind the trend are older Millennials, particularly those without college degrees, who are living at home.” Why? The Great Recession and older generations delaying retirement made it difficult for some Millennials to get higher-paying jobs.
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