Technology has completely changed the way we live, think, act, and relate to others.
Unlike the cyclical nature of wars, pandemics, and economic crises, technological change is unidirectional.
While the system may change, such as the shift in viewing methods from TV to streaming video, the overall trend is that technology is moving in one direction: toward easier, faster, more convenient, and more enjoyable ways.
Technology and its impact on culture, behavior, and attitudes have broken long generational cycles and given rise to something novel.
Tablet PCs and mobile phones aren't the only technologies.
The first humans to control fire, invent the wheel, plant crops, and use writing also used 'technology'.
Technology is a term meaning 'science or knowledge that is practically used to solve problems or invent useful tools.'
Today's technology includes everything that makes modern life possible, from medicine to washing machines to multi-story buildings.
A large city with so many people living close together cannot survive without modern architecture, sanitation, and transportation, and technology makes all of this possible.
At first glance, technology may seem to have nothing to do with changes in lifestyle culture.
What does allowing same-sex marriage, wearing casual clothes to work instead of suits, and having children later in life have to do with technology? Yet, each of these changes was actually brought about by technology.
--- From "How can we divide generations?"

Sometimes some people don't feel like they belong to a generation.
Because they feel that they are far from the typical generation in terms of attitude, characteristics, and behavior.
But even those who say this are influenced by the generation they belong to.
Consider the following scenario:
Ethan, a 21-year-old college student in a big city, has decided to get married next year and have children soon after.
If it were 1961, it wouldn't have been difficult for Ethan to meet a young woman of his class who, like him, wanted to get married soon after graduating from college.
His family and friends also congratulate him and his choice is considered perfectly normal.
But in 2023, it would be difficult to find a woman of similar age and social class like Ethan who would consider getting married and having children in her early 20s.
His friends and family will also try to persuade him that marriage is too early.
Ethan's desire to get married at that age is perceived as odd, and he is unlikely to find a suitable partner.
Ethan may have different needs than your typical Gen Z, but he's influenced by the fact that he was born in the 2000s.
--- From "Are you a millennial even if you don't feel that way?"

The period from the 1920s to the mid-1940s, when the Silent Generation was born, was a turbulent time, seething with the fervor of change.
They are the generation that experienced life before the Great Depression and World War II.
Unlike the previous GI generation who experienced these events as adults, the Silent Generation were children or adolescents at the time.
Because they were all too young to fight in World War II, their experiences differed from those of previous generations.
The Silent Generation grew up during and was significantly influenced by the mid-20th century upheavals of the Great Depression and World War II, when prosperity and peace were no longer the norm.
Even the late Silent Generation, born in the early 1940s, lived through both the bombing and the rationed food eras of the 1950s, a time of rapid economic and technological development and a sense of hope that things would get better, forming a culture that blends these two memories.

--- From "The Silent Generation"

Young women of that time lived in a world like this.
I could find work, but it was mostly limited to typing work, and high salaries were out of the question.
This was the reality of the job market that the silent generation women had to enter and endure, sometimes for decades.
In 1968, the youngest member of the Silent Generation was 23, and the oldest was 43.
The 1960s were a time of ups and downs for women.
After World War II, gender discrimination was rampant and many women were even fired from their factories as "Rosie the Riveter," but the number of working women continued to increase.
Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon representing the women who worked in American munitions factories during World War II.
Even in the 1950s, the prevailing culture was that women should stay home and take care of their families, but women could not do that.
The late Silent Generation was the first generation in which more than a third of their school-age children had working mothers.
Even in the 1950s, when housewives were highly regarded, these women continued the trend by remaining working mothers after marriage and childbirth.
As recently as 1948, the employment rate of women with school-age children was only 26%, but by 1959, it had increased to 40%.
Technology played a major role in bringing about this change.
In any case, the number of physical labor jobs that are advantageous to men has decreased, and the proportion of service and office jobs where women can demonstrate abilities that are no less than those of men has increased, rather than where women are necessarily superior to men.
But there's a harsh truth behind the rise in women's labor force participation during the 1950s and 1960s.
--- From "Women, Career Women Only in the Typing Field"

After Donald Trump's surprise victory in the 2016 US presidential election, many people began to search for the cause.
The most prominent explanation was the widening class gap in the United States, especially among whites.
According to this theory, white Americans without college degrees were becoming increasingly unhappy and economically struggling, while those with college education were enjoying increasingly greater happiness and economic prosperity.
Income inequality even divided the baby boomer generation into haves and have-nots when it came to death.
All things considered, the baby boomers were not the driving force behind this system, but rather its first victims.
It's not like they reached the top and then took the ladder away, leaving millennials penniless.
A significant number of baby boomers never even got on the ladder in the first place.
Some paid the price with their mental health, others ultimately paid the price with their lives.
--- From "The Growing Gap: The Victims of Income Inequality"

Compared to the two largest generations, Baby Boomers and Millennials, Generation X has not had much of a presence, but has been particularly labeled as the first or last generation.
They are the first generation to have been with TV since birth, the first generation to enter adolescence in the Internet age, and the last generation to experience analog culture such as cassette tapes, outdoor play, paper books, and 'time to be bored'.
As the Cold War reached its peak, it also grew up in a state of imminent nuclear war.
Moreover, unlike the baby boomers, they did not have the delusion that they were safe by hiding under the desk.
In the early 1990s, pessimism and the uncertainty of youth were prominent characteristics of Generation X, but the primary colors, Reagan era, materialism, and certainty of the 1980s were also undeniably their characteristics.
When asked in 1996 how the older generation viewed Generation X, Generation X responded that they seemed to see themselves as 'lazy', 'hesitant', and 'distracted'.
In contrast, when asked to describe himself, he said he was 'ambitious', 'strong-willed', and 'independent'.
They were cynical, but rather than feeling alienated, they considered themselves to be the most important.
Marketers had to pay a high price for realizing this truth, as in 1993, Coca-Cola tried and failed to launch "OK Soda" in a dull gray can that would have been a fitting tribute to the concept of alienation.

--- From "Generation X"

“Millennials can be called many things, but above all else, they are ‘killers,’” one news outlet jokingly declared, as the story of how millennials “killed” everything from napkins to breakfast cereal to marriage continued to resonate.
The title of the article was:
Obituaries: 70 Things Millennials Killed.
'Almost all of them!' It's certainly an exaggeration to say that millennials killed everything, but it's true that this generation has a different side.
Their parents, the baby boomers, were born in an era when contraception was readily available and abortion was legal, making them the most planned and voluntary births in American history.
Millennials grew up in an era of optimism and had high expectations of themselves.
If Generation X took the baby boomers' individualism for granted, the millennials have intensified it.
The individual's ego is not just important, it is of the utmost importance.
Not only that, it's almost always really cool.
This is not a perspective created by millennials themselves.
The culture that shaped millennials' upbringing created a self-centered atmosphere that continues to this day.
Growing up, millennials were surrounded by a hopeful environment, from a strong economy to the computer revolution to the end of the Cold War.

--- From "Millennial Generation"

The idea of ​​handing out awards for outstanding participation, although it was further strengthened by the millennial generation, was not originally from the millennial generation.
So, should we blame the Baby Boomers or Generation X? Probably not.
It is rarely beneficial to hold someone accountable.
This is especially true when the change is large-scale, such as a culture, rather than a specific individual or generation.
Moreover, it is unlikely that parents or teachers intended to overinflate children's egos.
The culture of the time simply gave me the confidence that more praise, higher scores, and participation awards would be helpful, not harmful.
The high expectations of millennials naturally led to disappointment in adulthood.
The disappointment has been particularly strong since the financial crisis hit millennials hardest.
In American culture, millennials grew up hearing that they were inherently great.
According to people, they were kids who were good at everything, but in reality, it was obvious that they weren't that great.
While many millennials plead with their elders to stop being so harsh, they've come to realize that their unfounded confidence in childhood has left them unprepared for the realities they face as adults.
--- From "One Man's Army; Confidence"

For Generation Z, the concept of gender is more fluid.
People can be transgender, meaning they have a gender different from their assigned sex at birth, or they can have an identity that is neither male nor female.
This is commonly called 'nonbinary' and is also abbreviated as 'nb' after the pronunciation 'enby'.
There are also various terms such as 'gender fluid', 'gender queer', 'demiboy', and 'demigirl'.
The language Gen Z uses around gender is largely incomprehensible to their Gen X parents, even their Millennial parents, and was incomprehensible to most people just a few years ago.
For example, there is 'cisgender' (or 'cis', meaning someone who is not transgender but whose body and gender identity match), and there is also AMAB (assigned male at birth) and AFAB (assigned female at birth), which means that gender is nothing more than an assignment given to you by someone else and can be changed at will.
We cannot leave out 'agender' (a person who claims to not have a gender).
Because of this diversity in gender identities, Generation Z considers it important not to refer to others by the wrong gender.

--- From "Generation Z"

When asked why he didn't get his driver's license right away, 19-year-old Juan replied, "Because my parents didn't 'encourage' me to get a license."
If you're a member of Generation X or a baby boomer, you'll probably have to read this sentence twice to understand it.
Until recently, it was teenagers who were throwing tantrums about getting their driver's license, and later it was their parents who would nag them to get it.
That's not the case anymore.
Generation Z youth are putting off not only getting a driver's license, but also independence and all the activities that signify adulthood.
Even in their senior year of high school (age 17 or 18), they drink less, date less, and work less part-time than previous generations of teenagers.
Not to mention sexual intercourse.
In 1991, 67% of 12th graders, who were part of Generation X at the time, had had sexual experience, but by 2021, that percentage had dropped to 47%.

--- From "Slowly, Slower: Slow Growth"

The idea that language can cause harm and even violence has sparked controversy on numerous college campuses in recent years.
A new culture has emerged in which students seek refuge in "safe spaces" where they can retreat if they disagree with the views of campus speakers.
'Safe spaces' began with the belief that people should be protected from emotional harm.
According to the Google Books database, the concept of a "safe space" is a new concept that first appeared in the 1990s and only gained explosive popularity after 2012.
In the 2010s, a new trend emerged: students requesting a "trigger warning" indicating whether a text, video, or event contained "depicts of murder, death, family betrayal, or kidnapping" (as one university put it in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, Kidnapping).
Why? "Because the classroom should always be a safe space for students," wrote Julia, a Temple University student in 2021.
“One way to ensure that students always feel comfortable in the classroom is for professors to issue a warning before teaching about potentially offensive material.” It is unclear whether this method actually works.
A significant number of psychology students found no evidence that water level warnings actually helped students emotionally or otherwise.
Whether effective or not, water level warnings are a fairly new concept.

--- From "Take Care: Concerns About Physical and Emotional Safety"