Why Millennials Won’t Let Go of Harry Potter
How a generation latched onto wizarding school and never let go.
The Millennial vs. Gen Z discourse that has started to surface in recent months is fascinating, hilarious, and undeniably accurate in a lot of ways.
I was born in 1995. Depending on which source you ask, I am either a young millennial or an old Zoomer. So as someone on the cusp, I’ve been entertained by the exchange of insults and critiques on both sides. I thought I’d have a little fun trying to work out why millennials are the way they (we?) are and why Gen Z can’t stand them/us.
Millennials have long been described as the first “digital natives,” and many have worn that badge with pride for a while. It describes a generation of people who grew up alongside the rapid development of commercial technology that now shapes our everyday communication — smartphones, PCs, the various iterations of the internet (Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.). Many millennials think that because they saw the invention of social media, they are as native to it as other aspects of the digital age.
This is not true.
To give some context, the World Wide Web became publicly available in 1991. Myspace, the earliest yet closest approximation of what we currently describe as social media, came out…
