What’s up with these generations?

I’m sure everyone has heard the terms: Gen X, Baby Boomers, Millennials and even the Greatest Generation. Personally, I dislike the idea of labeling people within some age grouping based on the year someone was born. If you take most timelines, I myself am a Millennial, but the simple fact that no one can decide on a true timeline for a generation of people means that generations themselves do not exist, except within families and photographs of parents, grandparents, children, grand children and so on.

We love our labels, don’t we? Putting a person into a box to view them through that lens definitely makes our lives easier to manage and less complex. We label everything…Generation X, Newlyweds, Honeymoon stage, Mom jeans, Dad looks, penguin suits, preppy/emo/goth/skater/scene/stoner/nerds, popular, compact car, business attire, big box stores and so on. Some of these labels are appropriate descriptions, such as the penguin suit, everyone understands it’s a tuxedo that most likely has a coat tail, or with big box stores, people know it’s the gigantic stores in a shopping mall where you can buy everything within that company’s catalog. It’s less definitive when you label people though. A popular kid might describe someone who is well liked within the school and has a lot of ‘friends’, or it might describe someone who is well known but not necessarily liked.

So these labels, when applied to a group of people within a particular age range, are reductive and slap stereotypes on the people within that age range. I was just on a conference call Friday last week where the associates I was talking to were speaking on how frustrating Millennials are to hire and employ, “they have no sense of loyalty” and “want everything handed to them.” If you subscribe to the above and then apply them unilaterally to everyone born after 80 and thru the year 2000 or so (not sure they’ve come up with a catchy moniker for people born in the 2000’s yet. The Aughts just doesn’t sound right) not only excludes individuals from consideration based on their own merits and qualities, they are discriminatory in practice and perhaps law, depending on your state. The current wording under the EEOC regarding Age Discrimination states that it is illegal to discriminate against anyone aged 40 and older, but some states have protection for people younger than that.

What’s amusing regarding the conference call I was on, it was a networking group called YOUNG Executive Symoposium, and is reserved for people age 35 and younger only. These people were labeling their own generation (as it’s currently accepted) rather than taking the time to consider that they themselves are part of that generation and to perhaps think that every group is made up of individuals. The individual is whom should be considered, not the group.

What people are noticing instead of an age group is an overall level of maturity. Every generation prior to ours has had these labels applied, up to and including writings on how irresponsible the youth of Ancient Greece behaved. As people age and gain more responsibility or maturity, their behavior naturally changes. What’s become different in that time is coverage. Everything is online, people have access to more information than the library of Congress holds at the click of a button. Because people are so connected, it allows for more commentary and opinion and less objective reporting of fact.

Keep things in perspective: Any group is made up of individuals, and it’s the individual that deserves consideration, instead of dismissal based on their grouping.

Justin Huereña Staff Blogger

#genx #babyboomers #millennials #greatestgeneration #newlyweds #ublock