u/Emotional_Plastic_64

I was born in 1998 , so I’m Gen Z (early Gen Z) and one funny thing I feel like a lot of us experienced were people lying about having a phone at home during the smartphone boom. Some would exactly say “ I have a phone at home but my parents won’t let me bring it to school” this was in middle school so I know some were lying and some might of been telling the truth.

By 2012, when I entered high-school social media and smartphones were already everywhere and everyone had one. However , iPhone were in their peak so instead of people saying their parents wouldn’t let me them bring their phone to school..people started saying “I have an iPhone at home but my parents won’t let me bring it to school” even though we all know they had a Samsung and it was okay to just have a Samsung or some Android.

Ok hear me out…so people on here are always arguing about generations but what they are really arguing about is what decade they associate most with their age bracket decade. For example, the age bracket 10-19 is when we start forming identities, start getting views and influenced from people other than our family, 20-29 basically the first year of adulting so the time for non life threatening screw ups and building up more knowledge of the world, skills, someone else (dating, relationships,friendships etc) and getting to know yourself and so on with each decade of our lives. However, each decade of life brings a lot of differences, well let’s take the decade of the age 10-19…someone who spent most of that decade in the 2000s were more likely to hang out and socialize at the mall or skate park etc, someone that age from the 2010s likely socialized a lot on social media I.e Snapchat and Instagram while someone who is that age in this decade is most likely socializing in discord or tiktok.

I breaks up the years like this
xxx8-xxx9/xxx0-xxx1 - will usually spend the vast majority of an-age bracket in one decade while having a buffer of the age the decade before or after.

xxx6-xxx7/xxx2-xxx3 - these years usually spend majority of an age bracket in one decade like the previous years listed above but spend more time in th decade prior/after which is more like a solid chunk rather than a buffer. However, they still spend majority of that age bracket in one defining decade.

xxx4-xxx5 - these years are hybrids they can relate to both decades. I.e someone born in 1994/1995 remembers what it was like being a 20 something in the 2010s but they also had the experience of navigating a pandemic while still figuring themselves out at 20 something.

Example
My 20s from June 2018 - June 2028. I only spend 1.5 years of my 20s in the 2010s compared to someone born in 1990-1993 who had totally different experience of being a 20 something since they spent theirs in the 2010s, however I spend 8.5 of my 20s in the 20s,my 20s are majority defined (so far) by covid, inflation, death of monoculture etc…that’s a total different experience