I've read a lot of articles lately about "Generation Y", and I've been a little bit surprised to find that I actually fit into this generation. As I write this in the middle of 2008*, Generation Y is often referred to as people "under 30". I will turn 29 in a month, so numerically, I fit, barely, but for a long time I assumed that since I grew up without internet, and cell-phones, as Generation Yers are supposed to have, that I didn't really fit the generation. But what I've realized lately is that over the last 10 or 15 years, as Generation Y has been growing up, I have, along with them, been inducting myself into their generation by defining myself in many of the same terms as they do.
Cell phones: Yers all have cell phones. When I was in college, the only reason I didn't have a cell phone was because I couldn't afford it. But my social life was diverse and fragmented, and it would have been an invaluable asset. (Translation: I wanted one really badly!) I bought my first cell phone in 2003, about the same time many highschoolers were receiving one from their parents, and was immediately obsessed with all its functions. Now, phone two models later, I am on a family plan with my parents (okay, technically, my in-laws, but close enough), I use my camera phone as much as my regular digital camera, and I would be absolutely screwed if I lost the calendar information stored in my phone.
Music: In terms of when I was born, (1979) and the music that was popular when I was growing up, I would technically fit better in the MTV Generation than in Generation Y. When I was in high school, the popular bands were the Spice Girls, and Nirvana. In a way, I still consider this the "music of my youth", but in another way, it totally wasn't. I heard this music from time to time, but it was far from ubiquitous. I didn't go to parties much, I didn't listen to the radio, I didn't buy CDs, and I'm not aware that I ever actually watched MTV. Other than "Wannabe" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit", my familiarity with music of the 90s comes more from a historical perspective. It's only in the last year that I actually sat down and listened to the rest of the albums these songs are from. In other words, the supposed "music of my youth" is actually something I'm just getting to know more than something I grew up listening to.
Films: I like to brag that the first film I ever saw in the theater was The Lion King, in 1996. I was 16. In the next few years, I watched movies every chance I got, which wasn't all that much, because I lived far from the theater (didn't have a car), and didn't have a TV, let alone a VCR. Whenever I did get a chance to watch something, I usually chose a "classic" like E.T., or Star Wars (for the 8 thousandth time). I hit some of the big ones, like Jurassic Park, and later, The Matrix, and my high school English class went to see Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet, but I was still in the dark most of the time, whenever one of my peers referenced...well, pretty much anything from pop culture. It wasn't until after college, when I lived with people who had DVD players, and had a bit of money to buy or rent films that I began to feel caught up on movie culture. So, in a way, I didn't start watching "the latest films" until about 1999, about the same time as then 10-year-olds, from the middle of Generation Y.
Media: As I've been researching modern American generations, I've discovered that all the later ones seem to be defined in large part by pop culture. Obviously there is the name MTV Generation, but even with Generation Y, one of the biggest definers is our comfort with the internet and other electronic media, which, to be honest, we use far more for entertainment than for any other purpose. In 2003 I started reading Entertainment Weekly regularly, and I have read it ever since, both to keep current with popular culture, and to help narrow down my ever-expanding mental list of films to see. One could argue that this falls under the category of studying film because I want to be a filmmaker, but you could say that everyone in Generation Y is a filmmaker. We are the generation that video blogs, and that creates commercials and videos of our science labs in high school. We are also the generation that runs circles around our parents and teachers when it comes to hooking up electronic media devices, and that can figure out how to use any device without reading the manual.
Facebook: Facebook started as a students-only networking site 2 years after I ceased to be a student. I joined MySpace in 2005, but was not able to join Facebook until they opened it to the public a year later. I have never been a 3-hours-a-day user, but I get on almost every day, I use the site to plan social events, and I socialize with more people on Facebook than I do through email and phone combined. The fact that I maintain a MySpace account even though I rarely log in is itself evidence that I consider online networking an important part of my life.
"Liberal": Much of Generation Y has liberal political and social views, including racial "blindness", acceptance of homosexuality, and supporting Obama for President. Goshen College taught me that homosexuality is acceptable (although apparently I am not PC in my terminology), and I support equal marriage rights for people of all sexual identities. I'm not sure that I am racially blind, but I do have strong convictions that racial prejudice is evil and destructive, and I try very hard to ignore race. The thing that makes me feel hypocritical about saying that I am liberal when it comes to race is that I don't actually have very many non-white friends. But I think it's mostly about attitude. I support Obama for President because of his policies. I couldn't care less if he was a hispanic woman, or a white man.
Most members of Generation Y grew up in households wired with high-speed internet, and were handed cell-phones along with the keys to their first car. They go to the movies regularly, keep up with current music trends (then download the best songs to their MP3 players), and organize their social lives around facebook. They have an instinct for technology, and integrate it into their lives. They don't think about equal-opportunity, because acceptance of diversity is deeply integrated into their social consciousness.
My identification with most of these traits has progressed in a somewhat artificial manner, often by choice more than social circumstance. But my age is close, and compared to any other defined generation, I fit best with Generation Y.
*I wrote this article in June 2008, and then forgot to publish it. Better late then never!
