A better name for The Kids Today: iGeneration
(Dan here…better late than not!)
by New Deal democrat
A better name for The Kids Today: iGeneration
You know the drill. It’s Sunday so I get to ruminate about all stuff that isn’t dry economics.
The oldest member of the Millennial generation is 38. Not only do I not think that The Kids Today would want to be lumped with that age group, but their uncool parents are probably precisely members of that group!
So what to name the generation that came after the Millennials? both “post-Millennials” and “Gen Z” are condescending and probably don’t cut it with The Kids Today. Remember, “Gen X” was originally called “the baby bust,” and Millennials were originally called “Gen Y” or “the echo boom,” before catchier names were found.
A good dividing point is whether or not you remember 9/11. If you do, and were born after 1980, you’re a Millennial. If you don’t, you’re not. Most studies seems to agree with this, using 1996 or so as the cut-off year after which you are not a Millennial. A similar if less apocalyptic marker is the Columbine school shooting of 1999. If you remember it, you’re a Millennial. If your schooling always included “active shooter” drills, you’re not.
But while the War on Terror or mass shootings have always been in the background for The Kids Today, everyday life has been dominated by something else. If you were born after 1996, iPods were always around — and there’s a good chance you owned one. So were cell phones. For most of your youth — *always* for the younger part of this cohort — iPhones and flat screen TV’s have been around, and you probably have had one (or another smart phone) since junior high school. In fact you may spend most of your time glued to one! The term “iGeneration” captures this perfectly.
I’m not the first person to think this is a better name. From Wikipedia:
iGeneration (or iGen) is a name that several persons claim to have coined. Demographer Cheryl Russell claims to have first used the term in 2009. Psychology professor and author Jean Twenge claims that the name iGen “just popped into her head” while she was driving near Silicon Valley, and that she had intended to use it as the title of her 2006 book Generation Me about the Millennial generation, until it was overridden by her publisher. In 2012, Ad Age magazine thought that iGen was “the name that best fits and will best lead to understanding of this generation”. In 2014, an NPR news intern noted that iGeneration “seems to be winning” as the name for the post-Millennials.
So henceforth when I examine demographics issues, I am going to use the term “iGeneration,” the earliest polling as to which indicates that they hate Trump even more than their Millennial predecessors do!
Can we make the IGen one issue voters? They’re gonna need the planet a lot more than me……
“It’s been a difficult 15 months if you care about the environment. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he’s made fracking easier on public lands, decimated the Environmental Protection Agency and renounced the Paris climate accord.
These are just a few reasons millions of Americans will pledge their support for the environment on April 22 for Earth Day.
But this year, that is not enough. This year, if you care about the environment, you should spend April 22 and every other day working toward a more important date ― Nov. 6, Election Day. That’s when we can force policymakers to protect our climate and natural resources. Nov. 6 is this year’s Earth Day, and all of us need to show up…..
nfortunately, we haven’t always shown up in the past. According to Environmental Voter Project research, 69 percent of registered voters cast votes in 2016, but only 50 percent of environmentalists did. In the 2014 midterms, 44 percent of registered voters went to the polls, compared with only 21 percent of environmentalists.
Simply put, the environmental movement has a turnout problem, but this problem also presents an enormous opportunity. By some estimates, over 20 million registered voters list climate change and the environment among their top priorities. This could be a powerful constituency on Election Day, particularly in midterm elections where barely 80 million people vote. Nonvoters are the low-hanging fruit of the climate movement. They are already-persuaded environmentalists in a society where it’s increasingly hard to persuade anybody of anything.
Over the past few years, behavioral scientists have come to bemoan the difficulty of political persuasion in a “post-truth” world, and they reference our growing tendency to evaluate information based not on conformity with common societal standards (like evidence or logic), but simply on whether it supports the values of our “tribe” (i.e., what is good for our team equals the truth)….
The good news is this: We have overwhelming numbers of voters who value environmental issues. And if we vote, politicians will follow ― we need only look back to the first Earth Day for proof.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, protesting smog-choked air and toxic water in the largest demonstration in American history.
At the time, this took much of the nation by surprise. Neither Richard Nixon nor Hubert Humphrey had focused on environmental issues in the 1968 presidential campaign. And in May of 1969, only 1 percent of Americans named “pollution/ecology” as one of the country’s most important problems. Yet by 1971, that number had soared to 25 percent.
Even back then, politicians knew how to read polls and respond accordingly.
With astonishing speed, Nixon worked with Congress to form the Environmental Protection Agency, and then enact the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, all before a single ballot was cast in the 1972 election.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-stinnett-earth-day-election_us_5ada2fefe4b01c279db4349b
I Generation meet the Me Decade!
EM, why so off topic?
I don’t know if the “I” phone. pad etc is the best marker, but it is at least one for this generation. We’ll have to see what else transpires to symbolize this generation. Some might call them the least historically aware. Not sure we can blame them for that, though, although being technologically reliant/fascinated may limit their experience.
Missed the transition, huh?
“I am going to use the term “iGeneration,” the earliest polling as to which indicates that they hate Trump even more than their Millennial predecessors do!”
Meanwhile, the Pew research does not include the IGen, though it does talk about them as being an unnamed group at this point, since most were not adults they did not poll them. Though NDD’s reference to them hating trump more than millennials is heartening.
Appears to me that the continuing decrease of old white men who have run this country is good for basically the entire country and the planet. And trump is an old white man.
Dylan was a couple of generations too early, but the kids are coming
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
“Across generational lines, majorities say there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming. Still, younger generations are more likely to say this: 81% of Millennials and 75% of Gen Xers say the Earth’s temperature is getting warmer compared with 69% of Baby Boomers and 63% of Silents. And Millennials are the only generation in which a clear majority (65%) says both that there is solid evidence of global warming and attribute this primarily to human activity.
Among Republicans and Republican leaners, the younger generations differ substantially in these views from Boomers and Silents. Majorities of Republican Millennials (57%) and Gen Xers (56%) say there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming. By contrast, Boomers and Silents remain divided over whether there is evidence that the Earth is getting warmer.
And while about nine-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners across generational lines say there is solid evidence of the Earth warming, Millennials are somewhat more likely than those in older generations to attribute the cause of warming to human activity: Fully 87% say this, compared with no more than about three-quarters of Gen Xers (73%), Boomers (74%) or Silents (72%).”
http://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/4-race-immigration-same-sex-marriage-abortion-global-warming-gun-policy-marijuana-legalization/
fixed
Just have to let father time cut down the size of the tribe.
“What will change this dynamic? The stalemate on climate change is a symptom of a sickly and sclerotic political system, but not the disease itself. If Republican political leaders recognized the reality of climate change, bipartisan majorities on climate change would follow. Dave Roberts has written about this idea at Vox, and a meta-analysis of 74 climate polls between 2002 and 2013 reached the same conclusion.
We see this partisan effect on other issues. When President Obama threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, over the use of chemical weapons, only 22 percent of Republicans supported the strikes. When President Trump did the same thing last month, 86 percent of Republicans swung to support him.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/climate-polling-burnout/523881/
As one of “The Kids Today” I’d find it rather sad to have my generation named after a company, or generally coining us as technology obsessed and anti social, which is the direction this iGen thing seems to be going.
We did grow up with the internet and social media is a big part of many of our lives, however, basically naming us after a phone and constantly assuming phones, iPads and the internet is all there is to this generation is really annoying (the times people have assumed I only talk in “yolo, wtf and lol” terms just because of my age are endless).
“iGen” just reinforces this stereotype and makes it more difficult to be taken seriously.
The name does have some truth to it, but do we want to encourage this type of behaviour and make it normal, making “I’m simply generation iGen” an excuse for behaving this way?
Marie:
Welcome to Angry Bear. First comments always go to moderation. This slight delay for the posting of your comment helps us weed out spammers and advertising. Thank you.
If it is of any consequence those of us who grew up in the fifties and the sixties were called many names, things, and animals. Unfortunately, we have forgotten the lessons of that time period.
Learn from our short comings as we struggle to change the course of this nation against a few who are moneyed and politically empowered to block anything good.
EM, your year old article mostly about polling, and we know polls can and are easily skewed. The article says this about that::
“Depending on how firms ask the question, they sometimes even find a majority of Americans are concerned. ”
and then this:
“If you include a partisan watchword in a question, people start answering through a different frame. They give the answer that matches their affiliation—their societal “team”—even if they may harbor doubts about it. There is a vast partisan disagreement, for instance, on the question of whether scientists near-unanimously agree that human industrial activity is causing global warming. (They do; nearly every study finds unanimity on this issue among scientists. But only 13 percent of self-identified conservative Republicans think that’s the case, as compared to 55 percent of liberal Democrats.),,,”
Emike,
When the iGen kids tire of war what will save the liberal interventionist con artist democrats?
ilsm,
Your idea of intervention does not match mine. The Iraq war was interventionism, as it this:
““The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its 40th birthday,” Bolton said. (The 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution will be on February 11, 2019.) “The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” Bolton added. “The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself.”
As the Iranian expatriate journalist Bahman Kalbasi noted, Bolton concluded his address to the exiles with a rousing promise: “And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!”
You know, there is only one reason why anyone would keep going on like you. We both know what it is
Too soon
Here’s why:
“The Trump administration will not at this time implement new sanctions under the law Congress passed near-unanimously in response to Russian election interference, the State Department announced. The sanctions would have hit companies doing business with Russian defense and intelligence agencies.”
https://www.axios.com/as-deadline-hits-trump-admin-declines-to-add-new-russia-sanctions-1517268443-db8315be-17ea-4cf4-8da2-1ea0647fe48d.html
Wonder if Manafort is “whole” with the russians now?
CoRev,
More meaningless denial.
Yeah, everyone knows that the phrasing of a question can determine the poll results.
However, you’ll have to show me that these questions were phrased differently by age groups, otherwise the the difference in responses by age groups are indicative that we really need old white men to cast off their mortal coils to move forward.
EM, that ole saying: “If you’re not a liberal by the time you’re 20 you have no heart if you’re still a liberal by the time you’re 40 you have no head.” still stands as a GENERAL truism. People change with time, and some to more conservative stances.
What you are preferring is the loss of experience and wisdom over emotion. Showing emotion is no guarantee of being correct.
BTW, an interesting indicator of the AGW emotionalism is the complaints against Pruitt’s change in how scientific data is used. WaPo article: “The proposed rule would only allow the EPA to consider studies where the underlying data is made available publicly….”
Without public data the study results MAY not be repeatable. Without replication there is NO SCIENCE just conjecture. Much of the
EPA rulings and AGW science fits into this category.
CoRev:
You are full of crap and to dispute this in the manner you are is just plain trolling. Find another place to comment please.
No one in their right mind would call for revealing the healthcare records of the people examined in this study and used as a foundation to document the findings and data. Pruitt is a fraud who is little more than a lackey for moneyed and political interests. Using the lack of availability of individual healthcare records as a cause for this new rule which you advocating for such is nonsense. You know better and you just choose to ignore it and troll some more.
You just read the parts you want. In every single post it is the same exact thing.
Total waste of time talking to you.