It is most interesting to see the barrage of information emerging now about the “Millennials” – arguing across the range of points from how they are both going to revive all things good in this world in their own way, to statements that they will be the most dismal failure of any generation yet.
I’m from Generation X (by both demographic and psychographic typologies). I did nearly half of my papers in grad school on inter-generational issues, trying to better understand them as the topic roared into the popular press. From that research and at one time, owning nearly every book published on Generation X, I suggest that we can make the following observations about the recent discussions (and rants and warnings) about the Millennials.
First, we must start with the concept of “generations.”
There are two ways to look at where one generation starts and another ends:
- Demographic trends – including total population, family patterns, general education and income statistics, general education statistics, and similar patterns.
- Psychographic trends – including popular culture, sociological patterns, political trends, aesthetic trends, and general attitudes and lifestyle patterns.
Two further observations and predictions have been made in the discussion on generations:
- Demographic and psychographic patterns break generations into different segments.
- Pundits and the media get these all mixed up creating significant confusion.
The visibility of the generations of the “Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials” is firstly a largely North American phenomena and has been primarily made visibly by their “demographic” characteristics. Without the significant “baby boom” after World War 2, no one would be talking about generations the way we do – based on demography.
Because of the double bubble – first the Baby Boomers and then the Millennials (who are the Baby Boomers children), we now have their silhouette generations as well – Generation X (post Boomer) and whoever the Generation X kids will be called (The post-millennials who are young children to teens at this point in time). These patterns were made highly visible in Canada in David Foot’s book – “Boom, Bust and Echo.”
While demographic trends are easy to see, the psychographic ones are not. However, as marketing 101 will tell you, demographics is far less important than psychographics.
So how should we identify where one generation begins and another leaves off – for purposes other than sensational headlines?
First, we must begin with the concept of “age grades” versus “age cohorts” – technical sociological terms.
- Age grades are the stage of life we go through which certain similar characteristics – ability, family status, independence, primary activities, social patterns, etc… We’re familiar with the popular tags for these: childhood, youth, teenage years, young adulthood, young families, middle age, empty nesters, elderly, etc…
- Age cohorts are groups of individuals going through the same age grade together.
The primary mistake pundits and media make in addressing generations is to begin to label a “generation” by the characteristics of their “age grade.” This usually happens as a generation edges into visibility through their school performance or perceived attitudes or new social norms in their early 20’s. The challenge with this then is that many “generations” are characterized by simply the current trends in teenage behaviour and attitudes.
This mistake was highly visible in early discussions around “Generation X” – where many of the descriptors of this generation were age grade characteristics – which are now being leveled at the Millennials, etc… , such as lazy slackers, delayed in maturity, don’t plan to own a home, don’t want to be tied down, may not get married, and others.
Most youth go through years of having these attitudes – it’s a part of psychological maturity and the process of individuation in that age grade. Today, we have Gen X’ers in control of major world corporations and one is now our Prime Minister – clearly not all are slackers.
So how do we actually categorize a generation?
The answer depends on what you’re categorizing them for. If you are interested in how many children or youth to plan for regarding where to build schools, then we can use demographics to define the number of individuals in the child bearing and raising years and project where they will likely live, based on jobs, housing costs, and other factors.
However, are we really looking at a “generation” in these cases – or just demographic trends? In popular use, when we say “generation,” we typically mean more than demographics. We mean identity, social patterns, views of the world, expectations, work ethics, and a host of other related characteristics.
In reality, demographic based generational profiles do not work very well except for very macro patterns of the basics of life – healthcare needs, birth rates, general housing trends, etc… For these macro factors, we can use broad demographic statistics to project very general trends. However, at any finer grain, these become problematic because it is “psychographic” realities that illuminate the aspirations, identity and motivations for what people choose in all aspects of their life.
We see articles and reports regularly noting “surprises” in how any given generation is acting, because their psychographic motivations were not taken into account in demographic projections.
One interesting example of this was the surprise Vancouver planners uncovered in the 1990’s as wealthy baby boomer empty nesters started surging into the condo markets in downtown. These had been seen as died-in-the-wool suburbanites wanting large yards, large homes, two-car garages and having a penchant for quiet suburban private lives for decades previously. However, suddenly, as their children started leaving home, many 50-somethings moved into the heart of the action – where planners had thought only young people wanted to live. Not all Boomers did this, but the subgroup of the cultural creatives were done with their child rearing chapter and wanted to get back to the energy, lights, amenities, and urban life that they enjoyed before having children.
So how do we understand what psychographic patterns define a generation?
A culture is defined as many things, but at its core, it is a group that shares general values, world views, social patterns and accepted behaviours. We can see a generation as a “subculture” – a small group that shares its own unique aspects of culture, within a larger culture.
The key to understanding a psychographic-based generation based on their subculture values or identity is its ‘coming-of-age’ experience. This happens over approximately 10 years, between puberty and their second federal election.
Why do these two factors bookend the creation of a generation?
It is at puberty where we first begin to individuate at a fundamental level from our parents and begin to see ourselves as an autonomous individual in the larger world. This process is well-studied in psychology. Indeed, the trauma of early teenage years is often the result of this new experience of autonomy and its concurrent “alienation” from the narcissistic world of childhood and the associated struggle to find empowerment and a self-identity that can be the foundation for living in the world.
The experience of our teenage years into our mid-20’s takes us from being a child to being a fully functioning, aware, voting adult – with a highly formed structure of beliefs about what the world is, how it functions and who we are in it – individually, as a community, as a nation. The first federal election is a “trial” and many don’t even vote, but by the second election, we learn a whole lot about ourselves, our nation and our role as a citizen.
Through this coming-of-age process, we form our core beliefs about the world, about ourselves, about the subcultures we want to belong to, about what “normal” is, about what is right, acceptable or wrong, what we can expect to achieve or receive from the world, and how empowered we can be to change our world. These beliefs will vary person to person, but there are core understandings that vary from generation to generation – and these generational attitudes, values and expectations are the core of the political and cultural psychography of a generation.
Cultural cornerstones such as music, fashion, art and trends in many things are critically important during this coming-of-age experience – and many of the core aspects of the identities we build and share in that age-grade last with us for our entire lifetimes. We identify strongly for a few years with the bands, icons and associated subcultures associated with our tastes in music. Later in life, music is less of an “identity” issue and more one of interest or taste, but as one comes-of-age, it and many cultural forms like it are critical.
We can joke about people hitting their “fashion stall-point” based on what generation they’re from, or about how we keep the music from our teens and twenties around with us all of our lives. These are not just the hallmarks of a generation’s culture, they a basis for a “generational identity.” Even if no individual within that generation particularly loved or engaged in any particular cultural practice, combined they form the fabric of that generation’s identity – and they differ from generations on either side.
It is widely accepted that many factors that shape our culture are changing much faster today than they were 50 or 100 yrs ago. Massive change however has been occurring steadily over time under various forces (technology, war, environment, and economics), however the force of change and manufacturing of identities has become an industry in the past several decades. As such, young people entering their “coming of age experience” today will likely have a significantly different view of the world and their position in it than their parents did.
While an “age cohort” is not technically at any moment a “generation” – because the pace of cultural change is accelerating, it is arguable now that the length of a “generation” is now down to approximately 10 years. The scope of change that occurs economically, politically, technologically, culturally, etc… every 10 years now is so significant that it will greatly shape the coming-of-age experience – enough to probably note that we are now in at roughly one decade per new generation – psychographically speaking.
It is not possible to define the bookends of a psychographic generation definitively due to the fact that the cultural context for coming of age is always changing and reinventing itself. Furthermore, no one person defines a generation and vice versa, no generational brand or characteristic defines any one individual within that generation completely – another mistake often made in popular culture. However, understanding this fundamental difference in how generations are characterized is key for being effective in business and government.
One of the most interesting examples of this break in demographic and psychographic cultures is again, Generation X. The demographic structure of the Baby Boomers in North America has that generation ending approximately in 1964, based on when the boom in births returned to the median average over time. Generation X, a name given courtesy of Coupland’s book of the same name, then became the group that started in roughly 1965 and carried forward for at least 10-15 years, depending on which classification you use.
However, for anyone in Generation X, they know that the “psychographic” boundary for Generation X is actually about 1960 – several years earlier (roughly when Coupland himself was born). This difference is because the coming-of-age experience in the 1970s (when the first Generation X entered puberty) was radically different than the one starting in the mid-50s and 60s (when the Boomers entered puberty).
The differences in growing up in the 70’s and 80’s into adulthood based on technology, sexuality, music, culture, politics and economics was significantly different from growing up in the 60’s. The economic conditions were also significantly different and that shaped family structures and childhood experiences and assumptions for what was “normal.” The attitudes toward children were different. The expectations for what one could accomplish in life were different. The basis for morality was significantly different as organized religion when into freefall – both in prevalence and in believed ethical purity.
The Boomers and Generation X had very different environments in which they came of age and this has made the two quite different at a core level.
Demographics has currently classified three major generations in play today in Canada – the Boomers, Generation X and the Millennials. However, if you look within those broad demographic groups, you’ll find a much finer grain pattern of psychographic generations – and numerous subcultures within each – all of which provide a much better view into the motivations, values, needs and aspirations and therefore predictive behaviour patterns of our population.
These different generation groupings acquire all sorts of witty names depending on who is writing about them – particularly when it’s a marketing or polling company (eg: Environics). In “Sex in the Snow” – Michael Adam’s book based on Environics research, he noted that Canadian demographic generations were becoming more diverse psychographically – adding a new psychographic subgroup to each successive generation.
I’m not intending in this article to offer a new typology for generations. Rather, I’m endeavouring to step back and clarify the concept and methods used by creating “generational labels” to ensure we are not mixing up demographics with psychographics or age grades with age cohorts – and to be clear on what social categorization methodologies are appropriate for our various research purposes.
So the next time you hear someone ranting about this new “slacker, entitled” generation of youth, understand that there is likely some truth to it as each generation does have a different sense of work ethic and entitlement from another generation, but a lot of what you think you’re seeing may not be generational at all – it’s just their stage of life.
What’s more interesting is to look deeper to explore what happened in the world as the younger generation came of age and how empowered this generation thinks it is to address our world’s issues as they make their way forward. What is “normal” to them that is different than was normal to you when you were younger? Or if looking an older generation, what shaped their formative years and how is that world view influencing how they see you or new trends?