PEOPLE born between the mid-80s and early 2000s have been called many things: Generation Y, the Net Generation and, more usually, millennials. Now, a new name is growing in popularity: the Burnout Generation.
The argument, laid out in a , is that growing up, millennials were unduly affected by the financial crisis of the late 2000s and pressured by a new wave of intensive parenting. As a result, they are uniquely overambitious, overworked and overwhelmed.
The description rang true to many millennial readers, but also left a lot of people in the previous cohort, Generation X, wondering why no one was paying attention to the difficulties they face. This disparity exposes the looseness with which we talk about generations. So is it even useful to divide people up in this way?
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“If you want to draw a boundary between two historical generations, there needs to be a reason for it,” says Elwood Carlson, a sociologist at Florida State University. Generally, that should be a collective difference between the two groups that can be identified empirically, he says. It isn’t clear whether “burnout” fulfils that criteria, but it might. “Deciding which differences are important for separating generations is more of an art than a science,” says Carlson.
“Deciding which differences separate generations is more of an art than a science”
The study of took off in the , when sociologist Karl Mannheim posited that youths experiencing major events and rapid social change form more cohesive generations. Merely coexisting isn’t enough to produce a generational consciousness, he argued.
But in 1997, a satirical playwright and an economic consultant changed the way we think about generations. In their book The Fourth Turning, Neil Howe and William Strauss argued that generations followed a fixed cycle: children are born during either historical highs, awakenings, unravellings or crises, meaning their generation is either idealist, reactive, civic or adaptive.
For example, baby boomers are idealists because they grew up during a post-war high, while Generation X are reactive because, as children born in the mid-1960s to mid-80s, they were raised during a social awakening.
The success of the book cemented the belief that people born in the same period share common traits, behaviours and beliefs, even if they don’t have a historical event to unite around.
This idea of defined cohorts has led to intergenerational warfare, says Dan Woodman, a sociologist at the University of Melbourne. “The generation labels we use are too blunt and simplistic, and are also often used to engage in what I call generation bashing – ‘narcissistic millennials’, ‘selfish baby boomers’, ‘cynical Gen X’,” he says.
Shifting definitions
These definitions also shift depending on who holds power and authority, says Woodman. Millennials, long painted as spoiled, lazy avocado-eaters in the media, are now in a position to change the narrative. The BuzzFeed article was written by a millennial, for example, as was the one you are currently reading.
Yet Henry Rose Lee, an author and speaker about generations in the workplace, says that while labels can be dangerous, they are also necessary to understand generational differences in attitudes to work.
“Younger people’s values are much more about inclusion and diversity, environmental sustainability, and caring and cooperation,” she says. While millennials may seem disloyal to employers, this is just a product of their increased mobility between jobs, which is in turn a result of fewer young people being tied down with mortgages due to the global recession, she says.
New generations are now entering the workforce. “In 2017-18 we had about 3 million Generation Z coming into the workforce,” says . These are the post-millennials, the oldest of which are just entering adulthood.
Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University and author of the book iGen, argues that smartphones have made this generation more anxious and depressed than previous ones.
“I call them iGen as they are the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with smartphones,” says Twenge. “This generational shift, like most since the baby boomers, is more defined based on life experiences than historical events.”
“Simplistic definitions of generations obscure class, gender and race and thus downplay inequalities”
Her analysis of surveys of teen attitudes and behaviours , but Twenge argues that her conclusions are based on nationally representative averages in the US. “There’s no danger in that unless someone assumes everyone from the same generation is the same – which I don’t think anyone would recommend.”
And yet, many of us do make that assumption. Simplistic definitions of generations obscure class, gender and race and thus downplay the inequalities within a generation, says Woodman. Carlson blames this on the commercialisation of generations, with a boom in products that target individual cohorts, such as books about managing millennials at work.
“Awareness of variety within a generation has never been more important than for millennials, who are the most diverse generation that we have seen [in the US] in at least a century,” says Carlson. figures show the generation is 56 per cent white, compared with 68 per cent for older generations.
This diversity has led some to approach generations in a new way. “Today generations are defined sociologically rather than biologically,” says Ashley Fell of McCrindle, a marketing research firm based in that coined the term Generation Alpha to describe the youngest current generation – the children of millennials.
Fell says the pace of change in modern society has made the traditional biological definition of generations, spanning 15 to 20 years, irrelevant. “Cohorts are changing so quickly in response to new technologies, changing career and study options,” she says.
Label with caution
Some are already defining generations over shorter periods of time, such as the Xennials, a so-called micro-generation between X and millennials, from GOOD magazine. While Fell believes generations are now naturally shorter, Woodman warns that without agreed criteria for what makes a generation, creating micro-generations could be meaningless.
“A compelling generational account needs to clearly specify the changed social conditions, relative to previous generations, that are significant and will have effects beyond youth,” says Woodman. “Cutting the generations more finely, while useful, doesn’t get us away from the limits of these labels in general – and they need to be treated with some scepticism.”
Even if individuals within Generation Alpha are raised on virtual reality and brain implants, there is no guarantee this will produce significant sociological differences. Older generations also adapt to new technologies, arguably making the differences not as stark as they might first seem (see “Growing up with gadgets”).
Yet Carlson argues that despite the debates, we should still continue to put stock in generational labels. “If we don’t pay attention to our differences, it is fatally easy to misunderstand the fears, the hopes, the prejudices and the general outlook of a generation other than your own,” he says.
Growing up with gadgets
BABY BOOMERS
Born mid-1940s to mid-1960s
Television
While their predecessors, the Silent Generation, saw the rise of television, baby boomers were the first to grow up with the box as a mass medium. The first children’s show premiered in 1947, while millions watched the moon landing in 1969.
GENERATION X
Mid-1960s to mid 1980s
Computers
Generation X were the first children to have access to computers at home. Some claim there is a micro-generation known as the “Oregon Trail Generation” – younger Gen X-ers who grew up playing a computer game of the same name.
MILLENNIALS
Mid-1980s to early 2000s
Social media
From text messages to WhatsApp, millennials have experienced rapid technological change in the way they communicate. Social media was a formative part of their adolescence, and they have brought that experience to the workplace.
GENERATION Z
2000s onwards
iPads
Just as boomers were raised on television, Generation Z are the first to be given iPads at a relatively young age. Adept at tapping and swiping from infancy, this cohort has learned how to navigate the digital landscape on their own terms.
