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Part Gen X, part Millennial... Xennial?
Dec. 22nd, 2021 01:42 pmAs I wrote about my youngest sister turning 40 recently I thought about how the 10 year age difference between us made a difference in how we grew up... and how it didn't. At age 40 my sister is technically a Millennial, while I'm squarely in the middle of Gen X. But she's at the cusp of the Millennial generation; people born just 1 year earlier are Gen X. I see in her (and her age peers) a blend of characteristics from both age cohorts.
That got me wondering, as an aside, what do you call people who are part Millennial and part Gen X? "Xillennial", I figured. I tried searching on that term to see if anyone else is using it. I discovered that the shorter Xennial has already become somewhat common to describe this age group!
Xennials, people born in the late 70s to early 80s, really do straddle some of the cultural divides between generations. My sister matches most of the traits of this subgroup. For example:
— Xennials, like we Gen Xers, grew up using landline phones. They're familiar with hand-written lists of phone numbers on the wall and sharing a phone number with everyone in the household. They may never have "dialed" a phone, though, except at grandma's house. Mobile phones became common around the time they were in college.
— Xennials knew what life was like pre-Internet. Yet the home Internet revolution (which I peg at "later 1990s") happened while they were in high school, so it was also something they grew up with. By the time they were in college digital literacy was considered normal... at least among students. A few writers call Xennials "the AOL generation".
— Xennials, like Gen X, got through school before social media became a dominant force, along with the stresses it puts on adolescents. But social media emerged while they were still generally young enough to embrace it as new technology. One upshot is that Xennials parents, like Millennials, generally are not befuddled by their kids' devices, apps, social media, etc. Even though these things didn't exist when they were kids, Xennials started using social media for themselves before they had kids or while their kids were very young.
Are you a Xennial, or do you have close friends/relatives who are? What do you think about these comparisons?
That got me wondering, as an aside, what do you call people who are part Millennial and part Gen X? "Xillennial", I figured. I tried searching on that term to see if anyone else is using it. I discovered that the shorter Xennial has already become somewhat common to describe this age group!
Xennials, people born in the late 70s to early 80s, really do straddle some of the cultural divides between generations. My sister matches most of the traits of this subgroup. For example:
— Xennials, like we Gen Xers, grew up using landline phones. They're familiar with hand-written lists of phone numbers on the wall and sharing a phone number with everyone in the household. They may never have "dialed" a phone, though, except at grandma's house. Mobile phones became common around the time they were in college.
— Xennials knew what life was like pre-Internet. Yet the home Internet revolution (which I peg at "later 1990s") happened while they were in high school, so it was also something they grew up with. By the time they were in college digital literacy was considered normal... at least among students. A few writers call Xennials "the AOL generation".
— Xennials, like Gen X, got through school before social media became a dominant force, along with the stresses it puts on adolescents. But social media emerged while they were still generally young enough to embrace it as new technology. One upshot is that Xennials parents, like Millennials, generally are not befuddled by their kids' devices, apps, social media, etc. Even though these things didn't exist when they were kids, Xennials started using social media for themselves before they had kids or while their kids were very young.
Are you a Xennial, or do you have close friends/relatives who are? What do you think about these comparisons?
