Gen Xers and older millennials really just want to go back in time to before the

[vdeane]

2. how aggressively TikTok uses info such as your contacts, search history, and location. I know that basically all social media apps can access that stuff, but I haven't seen any of them use it nearly as aggressively as TikTok does. Things I literally just searched for on Google will pop up first thing upon opening TikTok. It suggests constantly that I follow my contacts' accounts. By comparison, Snapchat for example will tell you if someone is in your contacts if you search for them, but it won't shove all your contacts into your feed.

I think you might be underestimating how much other social media companies do similar things.  There are lots of reports of people talking about something and then seeing ads for a related product - as if Facebook and Google are getting data from their phone's microphone.  Facebook is also known to have "shadow profiles" on people (both those with accounts and those who never signed up or deleted their account) created from contact info and one's travels online (this is why Facebook, Google, and others have encouraged website owners to embed their code; any button to sign in with one of those services or share a page gathers data on you whether you click the button or not), and LinkedIn encourages users to let it scoop up their contacts and send connection requests to every single person you know.

[thspfc]

2. how aggressively TikTok uses info such as your contacts, search history, and location. I know that basically all social media apps can access that stuff, but I haven't seen any of them use it nearly as aggressively as TikTok does. Things I literally just searched for on Google will pop up first thing upon opening TikTok. It suggests constantly that I follow my contacts' accounts. By comparison, Snapchat for example will tell you if someone is in your contacts if you search for them, but it won't shove all your contacts into your feed.

I think you might be underestimating how much other social media companies do similar things.  There are lots of reports of people talking about something and then seeing ads for a related product - as if Facebook and Google are getting data from their phone's microphone.  Facebook is also known to have "shadow profiles" on people (both those with accounts and those who never signed up or deleted their account) created from contact info and one's travels online (this is why Facebook, Google, and others have encouraged website owners to embed their code; any button to sign in with one of those services or share a page gathers data on you whether you click the button or not), and LinkedIn encourages users to let it scoop up their contacts and send connection requests to every single person you know.

I've never used Facebook so you're probably right.

[kphoger]

Please. Everyone is 100% capable of moderating their smartphone usage.

The word "capable" in your statement can be fuzzy.  If they have the desire to, and they are capable, then why do they not?

If we treat every overindulgence of a thing as a legitimate addiction, the actual real and dangerous addictions will be watered down to people and they'll get worse.

Sounds good on the surface.  But I'm not sure people will suddenly stop thinking heroin addiction is serious.

And what's your point anyways? That we shouldn't have smartphones because some people are addicted?

I don't know.  Maybe.  I've shared on here multiple times in the past that I switched to a dumbphone in December 2020.

Of course I don't believe that everyone should get rid of their smartphone.  But, for me, that's what it took to "moderate my usage".

[achilles765]

Autistic Gen Xer here.  Pariah pre-internet.  Internet was a great equalizer.

Autistic older millennial. I agree with this statement very much. While there are obviously negatives to the internet, I have found it much easier to connect and interact with people and it's opened up the floodgates of information. I still read physical books and love them, but being able to just Google it when I have a question is simply joy inducing to me.

[Max Rockatansky]

Intriguing how many late 30s people in this thread are okay with identifying as Millennials.  I can't say that I feel the same at 40, but then again I didn't really grow up with technology and had an older sibling.

[abefroman329]

Intriguing how many late 30s people in this thread are okay with identifying as Millennials.  I can't say that I feel the same at 40, but then again I didn't really grow up with technology and had an older sibling.

I'm 44 and could qualify as an Elder Millennial (I had a boss who was a few months younger than me and did so), but I think I fit the description of Gen-X better (especially the bit about being the only generation who knew how to program a VCR and set the time).  I really don't consider myself a digital native just because my fourth-grade classroom had an Apple IIe.

[hotdogPi]

I don't really know which generation I'm in. It doesn't help that named generations only last 18 years while actual generations last an average of 25. I think of myself as a millennial and not a Zoomer, but mostly because if I was a Zoomer, that would put myself three generations after both my parents who are both on the tail end of the baby boom. As for the name Zoomer, while I did use Zoom before the pandemic by about two years, it wasn't while I was growing up; I was already at UMass Lowell. And I was born before the turn of the millennium.

[J N Winkler]

Intriguing how many late 30s people in this thread are okay with identifying as Millennials.  I can't say that I feel the same at 40, but then again I didn't really grow up with technology and had an older sibling.

There is a degree of arbitrariness to these categories.  Older millennials and younger members of Gen X are often described as "xennials."  As a Gen Xer myself, I tend to feel I have more in common with people born from 1970 onward than with ones born in 1965, the very first year after the Baby Boom ended.

It has also been argued that division into named generations is of limited usefulness (even to sociologists) and that what matters is where the various age cohorts stand in regard to life transitions such as learning to drive, completing formal education, starting employment, buying a home on a mortgage, marrying/entering into a long-term intimate partnership, having children, taking care of aging parents, retirement, etc.  As an example, an older millennial who was established in a career by 2008 (when the Great Recession started) is not necessarily in the same boat as a younger one who graduated from college that year to find there were no jobs.

I don't really know which generation I'm in. It doesn't help that named generations only last 18 years while actual generations last an average of 25. I think of myself as a millennial and not a Zoomer, but mostly because if I was a Zoomer, that would put myself three generations after both my parents who are both on the tail end of the baby boom. As for the name Zoomer, while I did use Zoom before the pandemic by about two years, it wasn't while I was growing up; I was already at UMass Lowell. And I was born before the turn of the millennium.

Assuming the age stated in your profile is accurate, you are solidly Gen Z (Baby Boom from 1946 to 1964, Gen X from 1965 to 1980, Millennials from 1980 to 1995, Gen Z from 1995 onward), but this is no guarantee you will have the "typical" Gen Z experience, whatever that is.

[kphoger]

I self-identify as both Gen X and Millennial.  Born in 1981.

[1995hoo]

There is a degree of arbitrariness to these categories.  Older millennials and younger members of Gen X are often described as "xennials."  As a Gen Xer myself, I tend to feel I have more in common with people born from 1970 onward than with ones born in 1965, the very first year after the Baby Boom ended.

....

I find that interesting, because I was born in 1973 (I hit 50 a couple of weeks ago) and I feel like I have more in common with people born in the 1940s and 1950s than I do people born in the 1980s. During my Boy Scout years I was often more comfortable around the adult leaders than I was around the other Scouts, perhaps because for several years I was the only troop member of my age and as I became one of the "older Scouts" I felt like I had less in common with the younger kids. But setting that aside, I've often thought that someone my age had a childhood that was far more similar to those of my parents' generation than it would be to the childhood experience even by kids born in the 1980s. Not just because of the ubiquitous electronics, either, although I'm sure that's part of it. I think another factor is that people around my age were probably some of the last kids to grow up with free rein to go where we wanted unsupervised (often within some limits–my mom told us where our "boundaries" were if we went out on our bikes and the sole exception to our "boundaries" was for trips up to 7-11 to buy Cracked and Mad Magazines once a month). We didn't wear bike helmets. The neighborhood where my family lived until I turned 10 years old had a rule at the community pool that kids nine years old were old enough to come to the pool unaccompanied by an adult (I wonder what the age limit is there now!). My brother and I used to ride the subway by ourselves in New York when we were visiting our grandparents and my mom wasn't concerned because she knew I knew where I was going.

[kalvado]

I self-identify as both Gen X and Millennial.  Born in 1981.

I self-identify as an old fart.

[triplemultiplex]

Side note: why did they decide AI was going to make art and literature instead of cleaning bathrooms and toilets?

This x1000.
The accumulation of human knowledge to get us to the point where some machine can churn out hack rehashes of what's already been done?  Why?
We are collectively making a dumb move here.  It won't be long before AI writes and generates entire movies or plays or albums or galleries.  Might as well just close the loop and have AI watch those shows and bitch about them on social media.  If it makes someone money, it'll happen.  Hell if there are enough idiots to buy NFT's, surely someone will find a way to make money generating AI content for an AI audience.

[kphoger]

It won't be long before AI writes and generates entire movies ...

Instead of the current climate, in which a bunch of 19-year-olds churn out remakes of whatever their parents get nostalgic over.

[Rothman]

Millennials can be rather silly.  No other generation is ashamed of their moniker as some Millennials are, to the point where some are insistent that they aren't Millennials, but "Xennials" or however it's spelled. 

It seems they want to let the Boomers win.  As long as the Boomers keep pointing at "Millennials" as entitled and lazy, there will be Millennials that believe them to the point they deny their own generation.

To that I say, grow up and accept who you are.  Doing otherwise is playing into the Boomers' hands.

[Max Rockatansky]

FWIW I've seen alternate studies which place the Millennial start year at 1982 or 1984.  Either way, I'm not accepting a label forced upon me by others that I don't necessarily agree with.  All the same, labels in general are something I've always found irksome.  I rather not define myself or others by perceived general stereotype.

[Max Rockatansky]

It won't be long before AI writes and generates entire movies ...

Instead of the current climate, in which a bunch of 19-year-olds churn out remakes of whatever their parents get nostalgic over.

Irony being back in the 1980s remaking 1950s era movies almost always produced a superior film.  The Thing and The Fly come to mind most prominently for me in that regard.

[triplemultiplex]

When I was younger, "Millennial" meant someone who was coming of age round about the Millennium; so like Reagan babies.  Seems to have drifted over time.

I'm like 40 now and when people older than me whine about how people my age or younger are 'entitled' or 'whiny' or some other pejorative, I think they are blinded by the gigantic advantage they themselves had.  Boomers were handed a society that was basically world peace (compared to all of human history before 1950), plenty of upward mobility, wages you could support an entire family on, practically free college, pension systems for when folks retired... And they dismantled basically every bit of it out of their own self interest.  And now that they're old, the Boomers want public policy to keep catering to them as they resist changes to entitlement programs, environmental regulation, and investment in infrastructure.  Who is really entitled here?

I defy any old person to try and repeat their life now under the system they helped create.  College puts you 100k in debt.  You need two incomes just to raise one goddamn child.  Better not accidentally get pregnant, depending on where you live. Housing is so goddamn expensive; there's another half million of debt if you want to own something that isn't a rat hole because the Boomers stopped building small houses like 50 years ago.  Transit wherever you live probably sucks because of Boomer divestment so you're probably stuck slogging through traffic in your little used shitbox to get to your main job and then to your side hustle.  Millions are one broken leg away from devastating medical debt because the Boomers made health care ridiculously expensive while jealously guarding their precious government-run Medicare.

That's just a taste.

[GCrites]

There's a reason people older than them dubbed them the "Me Generation". They could see the collectivism and care for society as a whole that previous generations (yes, including Republicans) had vaporizing before their eyes. And people wonder why all of a sudden cults and communes started getting big around 1970. People were so used to collectivism that when it started drying up they freaked out and got into that stuff as a defense mechanism.

Almost all Americans in the '50s would do whatever it took to try and stop COVID. Deniers would be total outcast weirdos, not a "legitimate opinion" like they are considered today. In fact there were a couple virus scares in the '50s and people did exactly that. 1953 and 1956 if I remember right from seeing something about it a couple years back.

[Scott5114]

I wonder if there will ever be a resurgence of collectivism as younger people take the reins of society, or if we're just permanently fucked now.

[Rothman]

I think the cycle of younger people growing up to be old jerks is never going to be broken since our society is set up that the older you get, the chances are the more you benefit from the system.

[thspfc]

Every generation ever is the "me generation"  because "me"  is human nature.

[Max Rockatansky]

There's a reason people older than them dubbed them the "Me Generation". They could see the collectivism and care for society as a whole that previous generations (yes, including Republicans) had vaporizing before their eyes. And people wonder why all of a sudden cults and communes started getting big around 1970. People were so used to collectivism that when it started drying up they freaked out and got into that stuff as a defense mechanism.

Almost all Americans in the '50s would do whatever it took to try and stop COVID. Deniers would be total outcast weirdos, not a "legitimate opinion" like they are considered today. In fact there were a couple virus scares in the '50s and people did exactly that. 1953 and 1956 if I remember right from seeing something about it a couple years back.

Perhaps collectivism was an anomaly?  Let's not forget, people didn't exactly universally do all they could to mitigate the Spanish Flu pandemic.  There certainly was a "me first" attitude present in society post-World War I.  The amount of bitching about rationing I see scattered throughout the World War II CHPWs tends to make me believe that collectivism in the mid-20th century is more myth than it was reality. 

Also, regarding my comments above regarding movie remakes.  I'm watching the 2020 remake of the Invisible Man at present moment.  So far this is a pretty damn good remake of the 1933 movie. 

[Rothman]

Keep in mind the communes of the 1970s were mostly trust fund kids and they mostly dissolved into small business ventures.

[kphoger]

Almost all Americans in the '50s would do whatever it took to try and stop COVID. Deniers would be total outcast weirdos, not a "legitimate opinion" like they are considered today. In fact there were a couple virus scares in the '50s and people did exactly that. 1953 and 1956 if I remember right from seeing something about it a couple years back.

Polio.  It affected children especially, and people didn't even know how it was spreading.  Other than not going to the pool for a while because people were worried it spread through water, my parents don't remember a whole lot being different during that time.

[GCrites]

There's a reason people older than them dubbed them the "Me Generation". They could see the collectivism and care for society as a whole that previous generations (yes, including Republicans) had vaporizing before their eyes. And people wonder why all of a sudden cults and communes started getting big around 1970. People were so used to collectivism that when it started drying up they freaked out and got into that stuff as a defense mechanism.

Almost all Americans in the '50s would do whatever it took to try and stop COVID. Deniers would be total outcast weirdos, not a "legitimate opinion" like they are considered today. In fact there were a couple virus scares in the '50s and people did exactly that. 1953 and 1956 if I remember right from seeing something about it a couple years back.

Perhaps collectivism was an anomaly?  Let's not forget, people didn't exactly universally do all they could to mitigate the Spanish Flu pandemic.  There certainly was a "me first" attitude present in society post-World War I.  The amount of bitching about rationing I see scattered throughout the World War II CHPWs tends to make me believe that collectivism in the mid-20th century is more myth than it was reality. 

Also, regarding my comments above regarding movie remakes.  I'm watching the 2020 remake of the Invisible Man at present moment.  So far this is a pretty damn good remake of the 1933 movie.

I can definitely see a "me" generation happening during Prohibition because there were "too many rules" then the Depression when it was every man for himself. The New Deal put an emphasis on collectivism.