ID: Jumping generations

ID is a mini series of writings reflecting how my identity is visible to the external environment and exploring how the external environment has shaped my identity. The driver of this is a curiosity to understand myself, what my beliefs are and how they are evident through my behaviour; as well as understanding the context as to which the building blocks of my identity have been constructed; and finally, as a stretch, consider improving aspects of my identity which could be improved. For you I hope to inspire a journey in thought as to what makes your identity yours and tread a light path to make your own journey easier to start.

I was born in 1997. Close to the turn of a millennium. From the perspective of demography, I am on the border of two generational groups: Generation Y and Generation Z — also respectively known by the more popular terms millennial and post-millennial or just Gen Z. Millennials, born ~1980–~2000, are characterised as confident, liberal and optimistic but also entitled, narcissistic and sheltered. While Gen Z, born after ~1996, are still growing up or coming of age, they are predicted to be more conservative, pragmatic and independent. Notable historical events that have happened in my time with the potential to influence my world outlook include the September 11th terrorist attacks, the beginning of the War on Terror and the Great Recession, as well as the meteoric pace in technological change. With these things being noted, I want to explore how my identity is being shaped, what my generation might look like and an outlook for the future.

I recall being labelled a millennial, most likely because I grew up in the 2000s; however interacting with people that are unquestionably millennials — having been born within the date range of the millennial generation, exclusively of other generational groups — it is hard for me to apply the millennial label to myself, even though for some time I have accepted the millennial label. The difficulty is derived from what I believe is the change in attitudes to what adulthood means for post-millennials. Traditionally adulthood is marked by an increase in independence — notably the permission to drink alcohol, operate an automobile and have sex.

However during my time in education there has been a strong agenda against (underage) drinking, drugs and sex covered in several classes like biology, civics and religious studies. Education has also had an impact in a different way: the requirement of success was often at the forefront of our minds and to reach success you had to compete. It was a competition between yourself, a competition between peers in class leaderboards, a competition between schools in national leaderboards and an international competition in places to prestigious universities. Peers, parents, teachers and society would keep the pressure on that. If you want to make it in life, alcohol, drugs and sex have to wait.

Consequently the importance of these markers of independence have decreased. But what has taken their place?

The first new marker of independence is owning your own smartphone. This is partly the product of rapid technological advancement increasing the accessibility to such devices. I was very excited about owning my first smartphone. It meant I could interact with my peers at any time without restriction from my parents; it meant I could be more independent from my parents with them knowing they will be able to reach me and I knowing I will be able to reach them when I needed through a device I carried around everywhere; and it meant I could interact with a world beyond my local area. My parents giving me my own smartphone would probably be comparable to that of parents giving someone in my previous generation their first car — it was a sign of trust in the freedom to make some decisions for ourselves.

The second new marker of independence was having a social media account. Having a social media account (and in general being able to access the internet) built upon the independence offered by owning a smartphone. I would assert the age where my cultural identity began being shaped, an important factor of growing up, started earlier than that of the generation previous to mine; but also, something to note, is the ability of my generation to influence the culture around us — we were no longer only being shaped by the culture that we consume but breaking the cultural bounds set up by others, building our own and sharing that in this interconnected world. Parents, schools, technologists and policy makers were potentially aware of this new independence afforded to this upcoming generation. As a result restrictions on whether we could own social media accounts were enforced by parents or schools. Nonetheless, teenagers will be teenagers — we ignored these boundaries, like the previous generation ignored the boundaries against drink and drugs, and did what we weren’t allowed to do.

The third new marker of independence is the ability to create wealth. While it can be argued that this is a traditional marker of independence — leaving school and getting a job — I believe for my generation it is different. Different because the traditional view of getting a job has changed. It is no longer just leaving school and starting off as a junior on some career path. The options for us have expanded beyond that to include vocational studies through apprenticeships and placement programs to forging our own path as an entrepreneur in sectors like the internet and media. Technology has again played an immense role in shaping opportunities like this; the internet has unlocked expansive amounts of knowledge and created a global platform to distribute new creations — my generation didn’t experience a time before the internet. Breakthrough role models from the previous generation proved it was possible to make it out on our own. But while technology was a pull factor in this, there were push factors too. Increased competition in education compelled some of us to diversify our opportunities — the traditional path of university was no longer just the safe option, it was standard and mediocre, plus riskier due to increased tuition fees and potential student debt. And finally the Great Recession: we saw our parents ride through financial instability which has motivated us to secure a future of financial stability through creating wealth in new ways and being generally more conservative with our expenditure.

While I’ve shared what it means to be a post-millennial and how I identify closely to this generation, I cannot deny that some aspects of my identity are closer to that of the millennial generation. In fact, in a previous piece of writing I labelled myself a millennial. The reason for this is that my general political views lean fiscally left and socially liberal and my worldly outlook is optimistic and future-driven. My fiscally left and socially liberal views partly stem from a Christian upbringing and also Asian culture, which I will explore in a different piece; but from a generational perspective I would say the political policy during my formative years had the greatest influence. Labour was the party in power and they ran on a platform of social justice. This agenda filtered down to education through teachings on equality, fairness, justice and opportunity.

Economic issues stemming from the Great Recession and social issues stemming from the threat of terrorism have minimally affected my economic and social outlook. While I am generally personally financially conservative I still believe it is a responsibility of the state in addressing issues covering education, healthcare and poverty. And while social issues like terrorism and immigration are prominent I do not believe in the authoritarian responses enacted by some nations and becoming increasingly popular in national discourse. I believe these views are down to a mixture of how I have been educated and how I have experienced these events — the education has had a solid effect while because I was still growing up I have very little memory or experience of how these events have affected me. But for those in the post-millennial generation that are younger than me I am witnessing an increase in conservatism which I believe is a consequence of these events along with a greater access to conservative views on the internet.

So there we have it — that is me and my generation. Educated in a way to be fiscally left, socially liberal and optimistic about the future… millennial? Witnessing unprecedented technological change which has shifted what it means to be an adult, reshaped how we work and increased our opportunities while growing up under the shadow of financial and social uncertainty… post-millennial? I like to think that I potentially have a good mixture of characteristics from both generations. I believe that we can use our progressive ethics and technological tools to shape the future for better. And I hope that our generation and the generations following us will hold on to liberty. We’re the ‘97ers.