Yeah, I see boomers like my uncles talking about how millenials are the "participation trophy" generation, without any awareness that it was their generation handing out the participation trophies to millenials.
Right. Every generation blames the next (a tale as old as time), while not examining their role in it. Which would be much more productive.
See Jonathan Haidt's book "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" for an insightful examination.
As the son of boomers and parent of two millennials my observation is that it was my generation handing out those trophies (not that I agree with the practice, quite the contrary). I didn't get participation trophies when I was a kid and I was a perfect candidate because I was awkward and uncoordinated and never won a thing for coming in first place (in sports anyway).
>As the son of boomers and parent of two millennials
I guess this is somewhat normal but it's so weird for me to hear, millennials are 81-96 so it's entirely possible for you, a Gen X (65-80), to have a millennial child but it seems so off to me.
I think because the millennial date range is too large, it encompasses people who grew up without computers in the home or cellphones, e.g. 81-90ish, but also people who are "digital natives", 90-ish to 96. My friend group is 37 through 24 and the difference between those two ages is striking enough so as to be completely different.
I don't like the term "digital native" at all, but I have to disagree with your age ranges. We mid-to-late 80s children might have been a little older when computers were introduced, but it was absolutely a part of growing up - first computers, then mobile phones.
I put that term in quotes because I have similar misgivings but I haven't found another term that really captures what I'm talking about.
>it was absolutely a part of growing up - first computers, then mobile phones.
You're correct but missing an important difference, it was a _part_ of our coming of age but for people who are on the younger side of millennials it wasn't a "part" of their world, they were literally soaked in it from birth. There is difference between, "I got my first computer at home when I was 10 and then I remember a few years later when we got dial-up and then when I was 15 I got a flip phone." and, "The internet was a given in my home, computers existed everywhere, and I got a phone at 10."
> The broadening of the millennial range is a noticeable trend
Broadening from what base? It was open-ended when coined, and the people who coined I later proposed a 2004 cutoff; most definitions in use are narrower, not broader (though some start earlier.)
Broadening in the sense that I was in generation X for the first thirty-odd years of my life but then in recent years I've been lumped in with millennials.
edit/ You're even admitting to observing the same thing, are you not, by commenting on the dynamic nature of the starting range?
> Broadening in the sense that I was in generation X for the first thirty-odd years of my life but then in recent years I've been lumped in with millennials.
That's...improbable. While there is a range of starting dates for the Millenials, I'm pretty sure it was within a few years of the term be coined in 1987 that the current range of common starting dates (roughly 1977-1982, with two most common, in descending order of frequency of use, being 1981 and 1977) was reached.
> You're even admitting to observing the same thing, are you not, by commenting on the dynamic nature of the starting range
No, acknowledging that there have long been differences between different sources as to the start (and even moreso historically, though less currently, end) dates is not the same as claiming that there is a trend of broadening.
If there is a trend, it's of narrowing. Pretty much no one now uses the 2004 end date the original users of the phrase stated in 2012, and while ending dates as late as 1999-2000 were once common (a very common definition was Millenials are those born in the 1980s or 1990s), most sources seem to now use an end date of 1996.
