Is naming each generation a useless exercise?
When the New York Times asked readers to suggest new names for the generation after millennials, they received thousands of replies, both from those who had been called on (22 and under) and those who hadn’t (everyone else).
Hundreds wrote in only to ask, Why bother? They argued that this was an empty exercise.
Kiernan Majerus-Collins, the 22-year-old chairman of the Democratic party in Lewiston, Maine, wrote: “Don’t call us anything. The whole notion of cohesive generations is nonsense.”
It was the second-most popular comment on the Times’ Facebook post. He has a point. Malcolm Harris, 29, the author interviewed for the original reader callout, described those jostling to coin a lasting name as hacks and salesmen.
Harris, a New Inquiry editor, is more amenable in his book, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, which makes a case that labels can be useful and help explain the political, economic and social trends that shape our lives. “It can also be less than useless.”
Here are some of the broad trends revealed by the approximately 3,000 responses submitted: There was plenty of support for widely publicized names already coined for the generation born, roughly, between 1995 and 2015: Generation Z, Homeland Generation, Post-Millennials and iGeneration. A significant minority had grown comfortable with “Generation Z,” including Racquel Glassner, 22, of Olympia, Wash.
“I’ve never heard iGeneration before, but that is really horrendous,” she said. “Our whole generation shouldn’t be branded by Apple. Gen Z is the final generation of the 1900s, and a generational title using the last letter in the alphabet seems fitting.” (It should be noted that iGeneration or iGen, a name coined by social psychologist Jean Twenge, had plenty of fans. Twenge herself chimed in on Twitter: “You know my answer.”)
The youngest respondent tracked down was Mari Sobota, 8, a thirdgrader in Madison, Wis., who wrote in to say that her generation would be known for “girl power!”
The oldest respondent to give her age was 91-year-old Annette Benedict, of the Bronx. “I figure you’re not an ageist,” she wrote, a gambit that all but ensured her inclusion. Her suggested name was the Thumbies, for the digit used to operate smartphones. A significant number rejected the selected age ranges, especially 22-year-olds who consider themselves millennials, such as Zach Witkin, of Providence, R.I., who said he could clearly recall Sept. 11, 2001, an unforgettable day for many older respondents. He was 6 then.
Others were glad to escape a generational label so tarnished by, yes, the media.
The most popular Facebook comment came from Alexandra Della Santina, 22, an engineer at Boeing in Philadelphia.
“I wouldn’t mind being called Generation Scapegoat,” she wrote.
“It would be kind of the tongue-incheek dry humour that I see in this generation. And when baby boomers and Generation X or Y or whatever decide to start using us as punching bags instead of millennials, it’s gonna be much harder to whine about us if they’re forced to call us the Scapegoats.”