What generation are you?

pedka@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 106 points –

As a fellow Gen Zer I feel like there is a generational gap. I want to see if I'm trippin or there actually is one.

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If you ask me, these generation labels are bullshit and just a way to put people into a stereotypical box and make them an "other". Not much better than astrology.

I don't get the impression there are even precise definitions of these generational labels.

And I don't think they make any sense at all outside of USA and maybe west Europe.

It's inherently an american concept, which is what also annoys me as some Europeans have started importing the concept even though it makes little sense (I don't really think it makes sense in the US either but the fact that it is imported is just extra stupid).

I think people just love putting other people in boxes. Consider people complexly instead.

i just wanted to know your age without invading privacy. a threshold is better than a number

Well, in that case, maybe this is interesting to you. I ran a user survey last year for my instance and anyone else wanting to answer and one question was age. Here's the age group graph:

The y-axis is number of respondents, x-axis is age group. Obviously this only applies to the people that responded to the survey and thus might not apply in general to the fediverse, but it's probably an indication. And, well, it's mostly smoothly distributed without any major gaps or humps (slight hump at 30-34 but not sure if that's statistically significant).

thats cool. that hump might be random as well

People 25 to 39 are more likely to respond to an age survey on the Internet?

That is also possible, but I think it's more likely to show the actual distribution rather than a bias like that. But sure.

This exactly. At the broadest range you can say there are certain qualities that are more prevalent in one age group compared to another age group, but at the individual person level those trends are meaningless. Any individual person can be conservative or liberal, be caring or selfish, be x or y.

But but there is difference in advancements, science, tech Also doesn't mean genz= this Millenials= that boomers!= this

They are arbitrary but they at least serve as marking posts for real generational trends. I'm not sure there is much benefit in trying to find any categorization that isn't arbitrary, so long as the generations are large enough.