From boomers to zoomers, every generation has its own name and characteristics, like Gen Xers were the latchkey kids, while millennials were the first to grow up with the internet. Here's how each generation is defined and how they got their names. Generations are characterized by groups of people born within the same 12 to 26 year span.
There is no official commission or organization that decides what each generation is called or when it starts and ends. Instead, different names and birth year cutoffs are haphazardly developed in media, pop culture, jargon, and by demographers and sociologists. R epresenting the smallest share of adults in America: the Greatest Generation, or those born between 1901 to 1927.
Also known as the GI Generation, this is the generation that came of age during the Great Depression and later fought and one World War II. Next is the Silent Generation, describing adults born between 1928 through 1945. Their Silent label was coined by Time Magazine in 1951, referring to their image as conformist and civic-minded.
The most well-defined generation of the 20th century has to be the infamous baby boomers, named after the post-World War II spike in birth rates that began in 1946 and ended in 1964. Then there's Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980. This generation was first named Baby Bust due to relatively low birth rates, but this name didn't stick.
Instead, the label was taken from the title of a novel by Douglas Coupland. As more women went to work, Gen Xers were of the first daycare generation. Millennials adopted their name - also from a novel - by the early 2000s after rejecting the Gen Y label.
Born between 1981 and 1996, this generation was shaped by self-focused individualism. The cohort was deeply affected by the Great Recession. Where the millennial era ends, the Gen Z era begins.
Born between 1997 and 2012, this generation has also been donned iGen for having grown up with a smartphone, or Homelanders for growing up in the age of Homeland Security post-9/11. The newest of them all: Generation Alpha, those born between 2012 and 2024. Every nine seconds, a member of Gen Alpha is born in the US, The children of millennials, this generation is on track to become the largest generation in history.
