American generation names are confusing

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...or is it something that all Anglophones use?

I mean, look at that, the age brackets don't even make sense



Why don't you simply use, like the rest of the world, the birth years rounded as 0 as reference for a generation?

ie.
"Genereation 90s had the best video games!" (those born in 1990-1999).
"The 70s and 80s had the best music!" (Those born in 1970-1979 and 1980-1989).
Beyond 2000 are referred as 2000s, 2010s...etc

See, easy, Mindblownly simple! Basic intervals in math.


Why these crazy nonsensial terms became so popular in every damn article in english out there? It is like an obsession to be used now in the entire internet.

Nonsense, I am Gen X and grew up with movies/music from 70s/80s but specifically love movies/music from late 90s/early 2000s...

I'm gen x but I find animation was at its best in the 1930-40s and the late 1980s to mid 90s. I don't see why I can't enjoy things that happened to be popular with the Silent Generation and Millennials.

Also, many English speaking Americans tend to think the USA is the only country with English as a widely used language because of their blatant sense of exceptionalism. Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand... it's like we don't exist unless they want to annex us. Also they think American is a language. It's not.

My sister was on an a 3 month exchange program in the mid 1980s in Atlanta USA (following the 1984 Olympics Atlanta schools and families promoted international exchange programs where foreign high-school students stay with a local family). Both the family she stayed with and the school teachers and students could not understand a word she said in her Australian accent. And to make matters worse my sister couldn't understand a word spoken in US standard southern accent. She said a translator would have seriously helped all involved.

Many Americans she spoke to back then only heard English spoken in North American (including Canadian) or British. their ears were not tuned to other accents.

I am much the same as my tastes are eclectic, but modern music (electro) and films (action and sci fi) do have a certain freshness and technological edge > older stuff

Because they're defining generational cohorts more by shared experiences than decades. 1989 and 1990 births share more common experiences than either of them shares with a 1981 birth, for example.

Your post is very smug, but that's not the same as it containing the only correct understanding.

Sounds like too arbitrary, what's there a 1981 that had experienced that a 1989 didn't?
Why a 1965 shares more experience with a 1980 more than 1989 vs 1981 ? surely a 10 years breacket generation would have more shared experiences than a 15/18 years brackets.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 14 Feb 2026, 7:09 am, edited 3 times in total.

The ie. are just conversational examples of usage of these terms, like those you find in a dictionary.

The topic is purely about these terms, literally.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 14 Feb 2026, 7:13 am, edited 2 times in total.

That's the widly common usage of generations, right there; this how it had been since ever.

It is not weird for a younger generation to like stuff from older generations but that's not the topic. The topic is purely about language.

Gen X is the gulf between the end of the baby boom and their kids, as described in books like Boom, Bust and Echo. That's their shared experience, whereas boomers and their kids both experienced being large cohorts.

Meanwhile, for shared experiences, a kid born in 1989 probably used the internet as a child, a kid born in 1981 almost certainly didn't. A kid born in 1989 watched 9/11 happen while at school, a kid born in 1981 was at work while it happened.

They're no more arbitrary than decades, and are widely talked about to the point most people in the cultures that use them are familiar with the approximate boundaries even if there's room for debate over exactly where to draw those lines.

Decades have the same problem though, the '90s ended on September 11th, 2001; the '80s began in 1979. If the worst case scenario for Y2K unfolded the '90s would have ended at midnight on January 1st, 2000.

Often some bleeding over in language between generations, accelerated now because of social media. A lot of Americanisation of language was going on in the 90s due to American dubbed voices in Anime and popularity of American children's programming on cable. Next social media era from 2005 onwards

I can clearly pick up Hannah Montana, iCarly and Victoria Justice in 30-40 something Australian women's speech and even mannerisms.

One can very easily use more plain pointers like ie. early 80s experienced <something> while late 80s didn’t.

Early, mid, late.
Actually… *cough* … this what the rest of the world use in conversations when talking about generations.

I mean after 50 years from now, how many words for generations you are gonna invent? It is not even a practical system, it will be a long list in no time.

While the number-based system is just… well, simple numbers.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 14 Feb 2026, 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don’t let me start about your measurement units.
God. This one makes me boil.

Please, adopt uniformity, reject chaos.