Most of the fundamentals on studying generations derive from the theories of two American historians, William Strauss and Neil Howe, and their theories were originally conceived considering only the American population.
With globalisation and its large impact on the formation of taste and cultural references, the idea was increasingly used around the world to describe groups according to what was happening in the world when their identities were shaped (culture, technology, economy, how to raise children, etc.).
As we’ve seen plenty of confusion and disinformation on the subject, we’ve picked four of the most common misconceptions and how we get around each one of them.
1: Like any other segmentation, it has limitations and it’s not a silver bullet — like other variables like gender or income, generations must ideally be combined to other criteria for more precise readings. The way we see it, the most valuable use of generations is for historical and comparative data. (i.e. “Brazilian Millenial women are getting married later than previous generations” versus a reductionist cliché like “Millenials are lazy and digital”).
2: Generations are about historical context, not age range: birth years are fixed and that’s why age ranges change every year. Millenials are not going to be young forever. If you consider older Millenials were born up to 1981, they will be 38 in 2019, 39 in 2020 and so on — if a study repeats age ranges every year, it is not generational. Even though there’s no absolute consensus on when each generation starts and ends, it is necessary to determine fixed birth years. At Zeitgeist we use the same criteria as Pew Research center, a non-partisan think-tank with a wealth of historical data on the subject for comparability.
3: Life stage characteristics are not the same as generational traits:
It happened to Millenials and it’s happening again to generation Z — “Generation Z seeks self-expression.”“Generation Z spends all day staring at their smartphones and on social media”. It’s evident! This is the life stage when we connect to our similar age peers more closely than to our families because we’re in the process of forming our identities. This is about being a teenager or young adult, not generation Z! Life stage characteristics are very frequently attributed to younger generations as if they were generational. Part of the allure of studying this subject is understanding how life stages are being redefined by different generations.
4: “I’m generation Y but I relate to X a lot more”. “My nephew is a Z but he’s nothing like that”. This fallacy is called anecdotal evidence — it’s when we take our personal experience as evidence, rather than statistics and formal data. We have nothing against your nephew, but you need better evidence. Also, people born close to the “edge” years between generations tend to be influenced by circumstances from both.
