There is no doubt about it. We are witnessing Global Millennials, and with the Internet there is a striking similarity between this age group in all cultures. They unite by using what they know best—technology. Go to any Olympics and the children of newscasters/guests will all be there and they are all involved with the same devices, whether it’s Xbox games or Ipads. At a previous Winter Olympics, what united the worldwide young guests was GameBoy. Millennial youth go for tangible results, not just gestures and feelings (Strauss & Howe: 2000: Generations, p.317).
Enter the World of Generation Z. In the 2016 U.S. election, for the first time in recent history, the two younger voting generations, Millennials and Generation X, outvoted the two older ones, the Silent Generation and the Baby-boomers. This is from the Pew Research report of June 1, 2019. The line between the Millennials and the one that follows, dubbed the iGeneration in honor of their attachment to iPhone technology, is set at 1996. The group that my children, now 26 and 30, belong to is the Millennials and they were approximately 13 and 9 when 9/11 happened. They remember it well and the ensuing world events. Generation has no memory of this. That is the dividing line, along with technological views. Generation Z has no memory of any of this. They have no memory of a time before the Internet, given that we got our first desktop with it in 1994. A baby dearth hit right after the baby-boomers stopped reproducing around 1997, and I noticed there were less strollers on the busy downtown street where I have previously walked my own children.
About the presenterMyna German
Myna German, PhD, is a Full Professor in the Mass Communications Department at Delaware State University. She is the author of four books, including a first novel, “Mimi: Class, Identity and the American Dream.” Her research is primarily in Religion and Media; Globalization, Media and Migration, including a recent anthology, “Migration, Technology and Transculturation,” co-edited with Padmini Banerjee, PhD.