It’s not shocking that a magazine called Time would be interested in the march of human generations. But the weekly’s much-discussed cover story on the late-’80s to mid-’90s “millennials,” Generation Me Me Me glossed past (as do the inevitable retorts) the possibility that the year of one’s birth just isn’t very important. A broad study three years ago, based on perhaps the largest available data sets measuring American youth, was skeptical that “generational” cohesion—of the sort we obsess over—exists at all.
…The two psychologists’ findings seem common sense. A woman born in Boston, raised in a bilingual environment, with two siblings; who served in Iraq with the Air Force; is married with two children; subscribes to HBO; and earns $52,000 a year working in commercial property administration, is supposed to share primary character traits with a man from a fourth-generation Wyoming family, monolingual, single, no kids, earning $24,000 as a painter, so long as they were both born in 1991, and are Facebook friends?
Fair play to Time, I suppose, for achieving their aim of getting tons of people chattering about their story, even if only to complain about it. Guitar magazines can only look on enviously, wishing that their next pointless cover story on “The 106 Greatest Shredders of All Time or at Least Since the Last List and Until the Next One” could attract so much attention. Generational analysis is astrology for people who fancy themselves too educated and sophisticated to take astrology seriously. The perfect marks, in other words.
May 14, 2013 @ 2:16 pm
I read Reddit to see what you youngsters are up to. Mostly video games and pets, I take it. Get a job, hipster!
May 14, 2013 @ 3:38 pm
Hey, Animals Being Jerks is an awesome subreddit, and I have four jobs, so you're not the boss of me!
May 15, 2013 @ 12:57 pm
Your relevant facts are no match for my entertaining narrative.
May 15, 2013 @ 2:15 pm
As a reddit 'hobbyist' you might say, Noel, we kiddies love it when presented with evidence that teachers are redditors.
Are you trying to be the coolest teacher, or just trying to hold onto the crown? 😛
May 15, 2013 @ 2:06 pm
Such is the way of the world.
May 16, 2013 @ 1:37 pm
One of my students caught me and said, "You're on Reddit?!"
I feigned ignorance: "What's Reddit? – this was just a link…"
He believed me – for about two seconds (I have a good straight face).
I'm not even the coolest science teacher where I work. But here's the coolest scientist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo