Quite recently, my mom and aunt were arguing about whether or not grouping people by their generations was necessary. Honestly, I don’t see why we have them; I just know they have always been there.
The conversation started off with a question: Could my sister and I be considered millennials? I thought that no, we weren’t millennials because we were born in the 90’s. However, apparently the Internet says that I, at least, am.
It wasn’t hard to discover that my mother was in Generation X, but my sister and I were different. Some websites change the dates for when Generations Y and Z ended and began, putting my sister in a different generation each time. I, apparently, am a part of generation Z, the millennials, which doesn’t make much sense to me since I always considered millennials those that were born in the year 2000 or the couple years following, not in 1998, but I suppose I am proven wrong. This is terrifying! I have been scared of those that I called “millennials” for years now, and then it turns out I’m one of them? Something just doesn’t seem quite right.
Why do we have to group people of a certain age into groups called generations? Is there even a specific reason?
According to my sister, “It’s an efficient way to track human social progress through grouping and generalization. It makes things simple.” It seems like a logical answer, but it has its flaws. What is with humans immediately grouping things together? It seems like that just makes discrimination all the easier to exist, but we still do it anyway. Sure, it can be an unconscious method, but it’s always present in every form of society we have ever created.
My aunt considers the grouping of generations as discrimination, and I agree with her. As she stated, “We should not be judged by our age, gender, or sizes of our boobs.” Yet, we are judged by all of this, and it’s wrong.
I understand that generations can be important for society to know just where you may fall in the timeline, but is it really necessary in this day and age? I mean, at this moment in time we as a people are trying to move past racism and sexism, but still hold true to a discrimination of age. It seems contradictory, does it not?
I’m not saying that we should do away with the categorization of generations but rather that we should do away with the stereotyped prejudice instead. The millennials are the technology kids, the stereotypical can’t-go-without-their-phones-for-five-minutes generation, while Generation X is apparently self-reliant and can balance their work and personal lives. The stereotypes are so single-sided that it seems like neither generation can be a part of what the other was. I’ve known adults my mother’s age that are even worse at putting their phones down than their kids my age, and I’ve also known kids my age that have been able to balance their work and personal lives. These stereotypes are just another way we can discriminate people, and this time it’s specifically brought out by the use of generation-labeling in society.
This “primitive sociological grouping” probably wasn’t meant to cause arguments over its existence, but it did. As I said before, this was a conversation I had with my mother, my aunt, and my sister, and we couldn’t share the belief that the generation-labeling was there for a reason, but also that it was seemingly wrong by how it separated us in society.
Special thank you to Jennifer Armendariz-Izaguirre, Kari Armendariz, and Samantha Izaguirre.
