I recently attended a conference with several hundred educators. The keynote speaker was a “generationist.” Her talk overflowed with graphs, tables, and charts highlighting generational characteristics, including a host of stereotypes intended, it seemed, to amuse the audience. For example, if you want to communicate with a Boomer, schedule an in-person conversation. If you want to communicate with a Gen-X’er, use email. If you want to reach a Millennial, send a text. And if you want to communicate with a Gen-Z’er, share a TikTok video. When the session was over, I overheard conversations between several groups of participants, each of which converged on a single theme: “Wow, that was depressing!” Generationism suggests that we are what we are largely because of a factor over which we have no control—the year of our birth.
Prejudices are pervasive. Communists believe as a matter of doctrine that it is appropriate to prejudge persons by class, sexists according to whether they are male or female, and racists according to such traits as skin color and facial features. ”Generationism” is a newer form of prejudice that seems to have become remarkably acceptable in public discourse. It holds, much like astrology, that persons can be prejudged according to their birth cohort. There is nothing inherently objectionable about the notion that people might be shaped by their times, but to assume that any member of such a cohort will conform to a stereotype is merely to lapse into another form of bias.
Before critiquing generationism, it is important to survey the categories into which it presumes to divide people. Among these are “Silents,” those born between 1928 and 1945; “Boomers,” 1946 and 1964; “Generation X,” 1965 and 1980; “Millennials,” 1980 and 1996; “Generation Z,” 1997 and 2012; and “Alphas,” 2013 and 2029. “Generationists” believe that the members of these different cohorts differ from one another in predictable ways that should inform what we expect and how we interact with them. Such differences are presumed to be rooted in the changing historical circumstances of their formative years.
Having been shaped by the Great Depression and World War II, the members of the Silent Generation are said to be thrifty, respectful, and loyal. As a result of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Boomers are competitive, hardworking, and team-oriented. Having been shaped by increased maternal participation in the workforce and lack of adult supervision, Gen Xers are informal, skeptical, and independent. The Millennials, having experienced the birth of the personal computer and the rise of environmentalism, are digitally proficient and care more about experiences than possessions. Gen Z, having been shaped by the 9/11 attacks and the birth of smartphones, is socially aware, keen on activism, and prizes diversity and inclusion. Alphas, having experienced artificial intelligence and the COVID pandemic, are globally conscious, socially responsible, and concerned with sustainability.
Seemingly harmless jokes about the generations abound. Why did the Boomer have a no-coins policy in his store? He couldn’t tolerate change. Why is the age of 30 so significant for the members of Gen X? Because they were 30 at 10 and remain 30 at 50. What does a Millennial get for doing nothing? A trophy. Yet sheer repetition can make such stereotypes seem truer than they really are. For example, numerous educational experts have proposed that learners in Generation Z require short, highly visual content to thrive. Yet I just completed an undergraduate course composed entirely of Gen Z students in which we enjoyed lively discussions of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. What would have been lost had we heeded the advice of generationists?
Like communism, sexism, and racism, generationism fosters a number of bad habits.
There are powerful reasons to question such generalizations. For one thing, the many millions of persons born within each cohort exhibit differences between one another that are at least as great as the supposed differences between generations. Groups of Boomers may have grown up under radically different circumstances, one in well-off, highly educated, intact families that provided every advantage in life, while another may have grown up in poverty among poorly educated people in a one-parent or no-parent household. Although the two may belong to the same birth cohort and may even have been born on the very same day, there is a good chance that they will differ sharply from one another in a variety of ways. Cheech Marin, Marie Osmond, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and John Roberts are all Boomers, but how similar are they, really?
The categories themselves often prove shifting and fuzzy. For example, one generationist says that Gen Z begins in 1995 and ends in 2010, while another says it begins in 1997 and ends in 2012. Almost all refer to such divisions in approximate terms, as in “born roughly between 1995 and 2010.” And some even posit that there are overlaps between different generations that result in so-called “microgenerations” such as Xennials, born between 1977 and 1983. How long before proponents begin recognizing nanogenerations, such as those born during the presidential election campaign of 2016 or the lockdown phase of the COVID pandemic? All such divisions of time—generations, decades, years, and even hours—are somewhat arbitrary and, when used to categorize people, often obscure at least as much as they reveal.
To be sure, year of birth tells us some things; would a person benefit more from a pacifier, a tricycle, a driver’s permit, a parenting class, a silver wedding anniversary card, or retirement counseling? Such determinations are appropriately informed by the age of the person in question, and placing others in generational categories may, in some cases, serve as a useful mental shortcut. Yet to assume that we can make inferences about personality or character based on birth cohort is quite a stretch. In fact, people often share more characteristics in common with different generations of their own family than with members of their graduation class.
Like communism, sexism, and racism, generationism fosters a number of bad habits. Those who operate with such poorly grounded, inaccurate, and imprecise distinctions may find themselves easier prey to other superficial overgeneralizations. Simply put, sloppiness of thought anywhere threatens clarity of thought everywhere. I teach undergraduate, graduate, and health professions students each year at a large public university, as well as seniors in retirement and assisted living communities—groups made up of Boomers and Gen Xers. I find that the members of both groups take to reading and discussing books like ducks to water.
Generationism is a form of what the sociologist Robert Merton referred to as a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” We assume that people born at different times must differ from one another. Then we set about seeking to identify the stereotypical characteristics of each such group. We take a continuous variable, year of birth, and attempt to impose discontinuities upon it, even though firm boundaries are virtually impossible to establish. We take people from very different geographic, educational, and economic circumstances and suppose that, due to one shared variable, they can be grouped together, eliding a host of notable differences. “All of you”—insert Boomers, Gen-Xers, or Millennials, and so on—“are alike. You have no loyalty. You don’t understand the value of a good day’s work. You spend your whole day just staring at a screen.” Repeating such epithets indeed helps to reinforce the stereotypes generationists purport to observe, but there is no sound reason to do so.
There is a different way, as outlined in perhaps the greatest study of human character even composed, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In it, Aristotle suggests that one of the key factors shaping each person’s character—including the degree to which they are virtuous or vicious—is the choices they have made. If we do what we can to ensure that our children, students, and neighbors have good conversations, take responsibility for their actions, aim to contribute to the lives of others, and yes, read good books, and if we take care as well to do so ourselves, the results are likely to be favorable. We become what we habitually do, think, feel, and attend to, and by developing better habits, we become better versions of ourselves. By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, however, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.
