X, Y, Z, A: Should I invent names for generations
alexander savina
"Generation Ya-Ya-Ya", "No beer, no sex! Things and phenomena that will be destroyed by the generation of millennials and the generation of Z, "How much are you millenial?" - you have hardly ever come across a discussion of millennials and what they are good at and, on the contrary, are bad. Narcissism, obsession with social nets, the habit of constantly changing work and impenetrable laziness - all these features already seem to us embedded in millenials by default.The discussion gradually switches to the next generation Z and how it will change the world.
Conversations about how exactly generations replace each other and form the surrounding reality are not the first day. The most famous theory on this subject belongs to the Americans Neal Hove and William Strauss - they published seven books on the topic, the first of which, "Generations", was published back in 1991. Generations in the United States, the authors explain, alternately follow each other: Hove and Strauss identified four “archetypes” of generations following each other — the so-called prophets, wanderers, heroes, and artists. According to researchers, the new generation replaces the old one about once every twenty years, and the full generational cycle, therefore, takes about eight decades. At the same time, the change of generations is associated with socio-political events: Hove and Strauss presented them as a cycle of "rise", "awakening", "recession" and "crisis". So there were several generations that you probably heard more than once - the great generation (they were born from 1901 to 1924), the silent generation (1925-1942), baby boomers (1943-1960), generation X (1961-1981 Years), Generation Y, or Millennials, (1982–2004) and Generation Z (from 2005 to our time).
The framework of generations is evaluated differently (there are many disputes, in particular, about millennials - some believe that those born from 1980 to 1994 belong to this generation), but most agree on what events shaped them. For the great generation, this is the Second World War and the Great Depression, for the silent - the Cold War, the space race and the idea of the American dream, for the baby boomers - the Vietnam War, Watergate and the resignation of Nixon, Martin Luther King and the Kennedy assassination. Generation X was affected by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic and the rapid development of pop culture with the advent of MTV, and the Millennials on September 11, the election of Obama and the development of the Internet. The generation Z, which has not yet come into full force, is distinguished from the rest primarily by the fact that it cannot imagine its life without technology and social networks - these are children who, most likely, saw the diskette only as a save icon on a computer, and probably , give up books in which you can not increase the illustrations with your fingers.
What is more important for the formation of generations in Russia - the public mobile Internet, which appeared in the decade of the twenty-first century, or the collapse of the USSR?
The theory of Hove and Strauss concerns residents of the United States and American history - but they are trying to transfer it to other countries. "There is one significant difference: in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, the divide between generations is shifted by 5-10 years compared to America: the first representatives of our" millenniums ", which you often refer to as" games ", were born in 1982 , - Neil Howe told in an interview with The New Times. “This is connected with the more serious consequences of the Second World War for Europe and your country: people came to their senses longer, hence the displacement of the generational framework, and with later social changes, including in family institute, and with time it and the speed of internet penetration. " Howe sees many parallels in the development of different countries - first of all, a single generation affected by World War II ("By the way, it seems interesting to me that the USSR, no matter how familiar it is to it, did not fall apart exactly until the generation that had passed through World War II was in power "), as well as similarities between baby boomers and, for example, students protesting in France in the late sixties.
The theory of Hove and Strauss seems close and logical to us: that after the generation that brought with it protests and drastic changes, their more calmly-minded children come, and vice versa, it seems obvious. Nevertheless, the division of generations into cyclic twenty-year segments raises questions. The first of them, which arises in a person who is far from sociology: what about those who are at the crossroads of several generations, falling into the "intermediate" years? The Independent recently published a column on this topic: its author was born in 1980 and, like many of those who were born between 1977 and 1985, wonders if it belongs to generation X or milleniali? The answer she sees is to consider these people as micro-generation zennials ("xennials"): they had an "analog" childhood with games in the yard and without mobile phones, but now they feel as social networks as millenialy. The problem with this design is that similar situations were in those born in the late eighties and nineties - in Russia, for example, the presence of Sega or Sony Playstation children did not mean a “digital” childhood and the absence of mobile games, and fears that children of generation Z will not communicate with each other live, are still clearly exaggerated.
Generations do not exist in a vacuum, and there are no longer such strict boundaries between them: now culture and information are so widely available that it is strange to think that a more adult person cannot join the “youth” conditionally, and vice versa. If a twenty-five-year-old doesn't want to use snapshot or votes for Trump - does this mean that he is a “fake” millenial?
It is strange to try to apply the theory of generational cycles in countries other than the United States, focusing on universal criteria and not taking into account local realities. Global war is not a reason to say that all its participants (and both winners and losers) face the same problems and have the same goals and ideals. In addition, each country has its own shocks. What is more important for the generation of generations in Russia - the public mobile Internet, which appeared in the tenth years of the twenty-first century, or the collapse of the USSR, which divided people into "born in the Soviet Union" and not?
The theory of Hove and Strauss is in doubt among sociologists. “Historians who specialize in analyzing social and demographic situations will agree that several“ generations ”can be distinguished - but they will not take seriously the idea that they are cyclical, that there is a radical gap between them, or that some types can be distinguished,” believes Claude Fisher, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley - in her opinion, the difference in generations can be assessed only statistically. Sociologist Glen Elder of the University of North Carolina believes that there is a big difference between generations and age groups: the former imply a much longer period of time.
There is no doubt that political and economic changes affect the population. But it is strange to assume that this influence will be absolutely the same, and the generation will be monochrome
The very construction of the theory of cyclically alternating generations seems artificial to many too, if only because the concept of millennials and the ideas about what they will be appeared before those who can be attributed to them grew up in the same year 1991 when the book was published "Generations". If you believe the cycles of Hove and Strauss, the Millennials should face a crisis - but it’s not at all clear what kind of event of the twenty-first century can be compared in scale with the crises that befell the previous “heroes” of the great generation: World War II and the Great Depression.
Attempts to draw global conclusions about the generation Z, which, according to one theory, only enters the labor market, and according to others, have not yet graduated from school, seem to be just as strange. And it is even more strange to predict what those who will come to replace them will be — they have already been called generation A, or alpha generation, and they promise that it will become the richest generation in history and may even fly to explore other planets.
It seems that the only people who actively use ideas about millennials and the Z generation are media and advertisers: simply because it is easier to define the boundary of the audience. For example, Evgenia Shamis, developing the theory of generations in Russia, uses it primarily for business consultations, helping managers look for an approach to people of different ages.
There is no doubt that political and economic changes affect the population: it is obvious that the attitude to the Second World War among those born in the sixties who remember veterans as young and full of energy and those born after 2000 will be different . But it is strange to believe that this influence will be exactly the same, and the generation will be monochrome, that general moods, upheavals and injuries will mean the same destinies, desires, interests and fears. Of course, many of us want to be part of something bigger, and belonging to a generation is a feature of our identity. But is it necessary to focus only on numbers for this?