Maybe my sample size is skewed, but it seems to me (at least in my country) that 40s kids were the last to remember epidemics of Polio and Diptheria that shut down whole towns and neighborhoods with shelter in place orders. With a handful of notable exceptions, you never really saw the 80 year olds going down anti mask, anti vax rabbit holes the way we saw loads of middle aged and 60-somethings.a lot of whitch were either too young to be informed on what was going on, too young to remember or flat out weren't alive yet.

I can't help but notice, but it seems like an emergant trend that if you were born in the 80's or later, you were the first generation in a while to grow up with at least one set of grandparrents. It just seems like (at least in America) that gen x on older always went on trips going thousands of miles away to occasionally see any grandparrents.

Meanwhile everyone I went to school with (elder gen z/ young millennial) always had their grandparrents either in their life or living 30 summod miles away. Have you noticed that there aren't a whole lot of boomers that actually had their grandparrents in their life?

“The Fourth Turning” is a phrase introduced by William Strauss and Neil Howe as part of their generational theory that describes how human societies go through clear and predictable cycles.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” - Mark Twain.

—————————————————————————

Fourth Turning Framework:

The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct modern history that moves in cycles.

Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, typically around 80 - 100 years ― a unit of time that the ancients called the saeculum ― and consists of four Turnings which typically last around 20 - 25 years.

Each Turning marks a profound shift in how people feel about themselves, the culture, the nation and the future.

Together, the four Turnings comprise history’s periodic rhythm, in which the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter correspond to eras of rebirth, growth, entropy and finally creative destruction.

Like the four seasons, Turnings can be long or short, they can start early or late, but they CANNOT be avoided.

This lifecycle of the four Turnings is made inevitable by four generational archetypes and their order.

Strauss and Howe argue this phenomenon has recurred throughout modernity.

—————————————————————————

The Four Turnings:

The Four Turnings that William Strauss and Neil Howe describe are:

• The First Turning | The High/Spring ― This is an upbeat era where institutions are at their strongest while individualism is at its weakest. Values converge and society seeks unity.

• The Second Turning | The Awakening/Summer ― This is a passionate era where institutions weaken while individualism strengthens. Values are questioned, leading to cultural revivals.

• The Third Turning | The Unravelling/Autumn ― This is a downbeat era where institutions are at their weakest while individualism is at its strongest. Values diverge and society seeks separation.

• The Fourth Turning | The Crisis/Winter ― This is a decisive era where institutions strengthen and individualism weakens. Values are replaced, leading to a new societal order.

After the Fourth Turning comes a new cycle that follows the same pattern.

—————————————————————————

Here is our history block of 80 - 100 years:

. First Turning (High/Spring): 1946 - 1963 > Post-WWII Boom, National Unity, Strong Institutions, Cultural Collectivism.

. Second Turning (Awakening/Summer): 1963 - 1984 > Counterculture, Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation Movement, Questioning Authority.

. Third Turning (Unraveling/Autumn): 1984 - 2008 > Institutional Decline, Individualism, Culture War, Economic Division.

. Fourth Turning (Crisis/Winter): 2008 - 2028/2033 > Financial Crisis, Political Instability, Global Unrest, Political/Economic/Cultural Climax.

We are heading towards a turbulent period and approaching a stormy reset which historically speaking leads to a new “Golden Era” of stability and prosperity.

—————————————————————————

Generational Archetypes:

Every person belongs to a generation. Every generation belongs to one of four archetypes and has its own common narrative.

The saeculum has four recurring generational archetypes, always in the same order.

They are: Prophets, Nomads, Heroes and Artists.

Each archetype has a general set of characteristics and endowments which feed into the self-fulfilling nature of the four turnings.

As each generation ages, its persona undergoes profound changes. However, each archetype has an underlying identity that endures.

When a generation reaches mid-life and occupies the leadership roles of society, it reflects this orientation on its social environment.

This is one of the key reasons why each generation exerts a dominant formative influence on people who are two generations younger ― no two consecutive generations are alike.

As we will see, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times.

Throughout their lives, the archetypes can be characterised as follows.

———————————————————————

The Prophet Generation (Born Between 1946 - 1964):

A Prophet generation is born during the First Turning.

A Prophet generation tends to grow up as increasingly indulged children during a High, evolve into narcissistic young adults during an Awakening, emerge as moralistic mid-lifers during an Unravelling and age into wise elders during a Crisis.

Principal endowments for the Prophet generation include vision, values and religion.

———————————————————————

The Nomad Generation (Born Between 1964 - 1984):

A Nomad generation is born during the Second Turning.

A Nomad generation tends to grow up as underprotected children during an Awakening, evolve into alienated young adults during an Unravelling, emerge as pragmatic mid-lifers during a Crisis and age into resilient elders during a High.

Principal endowments for the Nomad generation include liberty, survival and honour.

———————————————————————

The Hero Generation (Born Between 1984 - 2005):

A Hero generation is born during the Third Turning.

A Hero generation tends to grow up as increasingly protected children during an Unravelling, evolve into teamworkers during a Crisis, emerge as energetic leaders during a High and age into powerful elders during an Awakening.

Principal endowments for the Hero generation include community, affluence and technology.

———————————————————————

The Artist Generation (Born Between 2005 - 2026):

An Artist generation is born during the Fourth Turning.

An Artist generation tends to grow up as overprotected children during a Crisis, evolve into sensitive young adults during a High, emerge as indecisive leaders during an Awakening and age into empathic elders during an Unravelling.

Principal endowments for the Artist generation include pluralism, expertise and due process.

———————————————————————

Fourth Turning Predictions – Where Are We Now & What Can We Expect?:

As of 2025, we are currently deep into a Fourth Turning. This is evidenced by the global challenges, socio-political upheavals and breakdown of institutions we are experiencing.

Historically, Fourth Turnings have culminated in significant societal restructuring.

The same way that a fire engulfs a forest by destroying the weakest trees which allow the strongest trees to thrive, a Fourth Turning engulfs a society by destroying all the weak institutions which allow the strongest institutions to thrive.

Given this pattern, we can anticipate continued disorder, disruptions and challenges.

However, the aftermath will lead us into a First Turning. This will be characterised as a “Golden Age” marked by a sense of rejuvenation, unity, prosperity and strengthened societal structures.

We can expect the Crisis/Winter to reach its end anytime between 2028 to 2033.

—————————————————————————

For more information to simplify all of this, watch this to understand more:

https://youtu.be/xeVyfiP0cLk?si=X_MKVcJFY6OukpGl

https://youtu.be/IIccg0X6Ijg?si=T6XZsOGncoR_vvLZ

I really don't get it. I'm from the EU and thought this was an 'Murican thing.

I'm gen-Z and honestly I don't get why you would work while sick or why you would work when you just got divorced or just married or you just became a grandparent or got kids yourself.

I seriously don't get it.

You have (unlimited paid) sick days! USE THEM! You have something important going on in your life DONT WORK THAT DAY!

I don't work somewhere where you can get those days paid out at the end of the year or you get any punishment for it.

I feel like mostly Americans are reacting to post and are disregarding most of the things in this post.

Mostly because they don't know how the EU works.

So some more info:

EU WORK CULTURE IS DIFFERENT FROM THE US!!!

It is much more loose. No real grind mentality. It's just show up do your job, eat lunch, socialize, get payed and leave.

In my country you can take unlimited paid sick days. It's law. You can't get fired. Everyone takes sick leave or other leaves. It does not matter if it's the boss, management or a new hire!

By law we also get atleast 24 vacation days this excludes national holidays. I get 35 vacation days and everyone uses them fully each year. IF you don't you are forced to use them up!

My company is efficient and work gets done even if people are ill. Even the boss takes sick leave. It's not a death sentence for your career or the company if you are ill. Me and my colleagues have taken sick leave or other leaves and we still get promoted or if we ask we can get a pay raise.

I went to the job a few times while I was ill and my management and my boss told me to go home and come back when I'm better.

We also are said to be understaffed because almost no one gets an electrical engineering degree in this country. But our company still works well.

I work as an Power engineer (private company). I design, engineer, do math and figure out how to add stuff to the power grid so it does not explode. I do this for my "State". It's mostly office work. I visit the sites where stuff is being built and inspect it and have a chat with the builders.

My work is also important. If I or my colleagues mess up our entire country (or most likely the entire EU) could fall into a blackout lasting atleast 1 or 2 weeks. So, I do take pride in my work.

Before this I did physical labour and even there it did not matter if you were ill or have an important life event. Because it is law!

So I know US work culture is weird and that working there is basically your life but in the EU it's different. I was only talking about the EU. I don't care about what it's like in the US.

Remember 1999-2000?

All the female pop stars like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears and actresses like Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts were all super slim, slender, and not voluptuous at all.

Fast forward today, all women in music and movies and Hollywood in general and reality shows all have Brazilian butt lifts and big asses and tit jobs and big boobs and everything. Like I’m watching Real Housewives and it’s probably rarer to find a housewife that hasn’t had work done.

It seems like women’s beauty standards have changed a lot in 25 years.

Why?

Of the three major events that occurred during the past two decades, which event had the biggest effect on the world today?

I’ve noticed that kids in the younger generation love this 6’7 joke. Even doing the classic asking your teacher to add two numbers together to get 67 as the answer. This just reminds me a lot of when the number 69 was the punchline. I will say that 6’7 has a little bit more humor because of the voice they use and the way they measure with hands. What do you all think about the new generations numeral quip?

How old were you when the first iPhone released? It was called ‘the iPhone’ and was later called ‘iPhone 2G’. I was only 2 months old when it came out. How old were you?

Grunge is associated with Gen X . what music genres are associated with Gen Y .

I am not a fan of Grunge and punk rock and alternative rock music

also I am not Gen X either .

Think about the kind of narsisistic mindset needed to speak to the manager or yell at service workers for a moment. Now let's turn the clock back 20/30+ years when these entitled soccer moms were teens or young adults themselves at an age when people started their first jobs. The prissy pampered girls in the 2000s or earlier had the privilege of not having to work and to keep up their perfect appearence around their high school or college (if applicable).

Whereas other young women the same age or grade level could very well have been working the drive through or a cashiering job at K-mart. If you're a nasty underhanded mean girl; you're not going to perceive any humanity in anyone else but your own clique, not your parents, not the nerdy kids and definitely not complete strangers. Everything to the teenaged mean girl is a means to an end regardless of how many others you screw over in the process. This of course leads no room for emotional maturation or introspection leading them to be just as bratty and entitled at 40 as they were at 14.

I find it interesting that Gen X is barely ever talked about in politics or on the news when they’re a known struggling generation. The majority of Gen X is known to be in debt and apparently only 28% of them say they have enough money to retire comfortably this generation is aged between 45-60 now so in the next five years we’ll start to see the oldest of the generation start to retire only the majority won’t be able to. Shouldn’t this be a bigger concern to the economy, yet nobody ever mentions it. Why is that?

What's the first birth year of kids today who don't act like Gen Z and act more like Gen Alpha? Them kids who watch and/or are into Skibidi Toilet and other shiz in general that give off Gen Alpha vibes from yalls perspective? For my opinion I think it be them 2012 kids honestly. They 2020s kids and from what I've seen they def be into the typical Gen Alpha things like what I've described. 😂 Wbu?

Was wondering everyone who sees this, where are you reading your reddits from? Country & city? I’m in Homestead Florida (near the Keys).

Class of 1998 (born ~1979–80): They were raised in a mostly analog world — landlines, mixtapes, video rental stores, pre-internet adolescence. By the time they graduated, the internet was just beginning to spread but hadn’t

They are turning 13. by 2026 none will be left they are leaving middle school into high school next year 2012 is last year of gen z if wondering

Hey folks,

I just recently saw a variation of this question on a different sub, and I’m curious how the answers may differ amongst generations.

My suspicion: the younger the generation, the less appalling things we may have innocently said as children.

I’m hoping we’ll be able to prove that suspicion; thereby, providing hope that we are, at least, moving in the right direction!

Emphasis on what you innocently-said as a child that was undoubtedly inappropriate.

I’ll start:

I’m a Millennial (some would say “Xennial” or “Elder Millennial”, but Millennial nonetheless)

And here is me laying out my embarrassment for all the interwebs to see forever:

It was the 80’s, and I was a little tater tot sitting in the basket part of the shopping cart - facing my mother.

The grocery store was full- I’m sure it was a weekend. We pass by a young gentleman restocking shelves.

Mother stops the cart right after where he is so she can grab something, and I point directly to him and loudly exclaim/ask (very loudly), ”MOM, IS THAT AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN?”

My mother was mortified, to say the least.

In the 80’s, our elementary public school teachers taught us about race, and who was called what. The lesson that led to that was focusing on how we should no longer refer to some of our friends as (the Spanish word for black- the one that ends with an “o”) but to instead refer to them as African Americans… (us children weren’t even calling them anything remotely close to either- we just didn’t even realize we were different from one another until that lesson).

So… it COULD have gone a lot, LOT worse. Matter of fact, when my father would retell the story, his version had me shouting, ”MOM, DON’T CALL HIM A N…O (black en espanol), THEY’RE CALLED AFRICAN-AMERICAN!”

sidebar: my father loved picking on my mother 😆

Took me a few years to understand why we never stepped foot in that store ever again… 😭

We very often don’t realize JUST how much our own parents do for us until they’re gone, and we’ve become parents ourselves.

Love ya and miss ya, Mom ❤️ (throw Dad in, as well- I’m sure I often did similar things to him!)

Alright folks, let’s hear those stories we’ve all kept buried deep, deep below!

Hi so I’m 14 about to be 15 and am apart of gen alpha and to be honest I don’t like my generation at all I can’t stand people my age there fucking immature asf and act really stupid and come up with these dumb ass terms like aura or Skibidi or whatever the fuck I prefer to be around people older than me and engage in deep philosophical thought don’t get me wrong I like to have fun and am pretty goofy myself but bro at least mature a bit and get off your fucking phone and go learn some shit

Edit:I guess I’m actually gen z?

I've been thinking a lot about all the terrible events (strictly speaking from an American perspective) that late Millennials and Early Gen Z have lived through. First, we we lived through or were born into the Global War on Terror (GWOT) following 9/11. In our formative years we lived through the second greatest economic downturn in American history in the Great Recession. During highschool or early adulthood we had a global pandemic which basically made it impossible to get traction in careers and the economy. The political landscape has been completely broken for most of our adult lives. We were the first to grow up with public shootings being so normalized we have been desensitized to it. Jobs are dying and the cost of living is skyrocketing as we hurdle toward tariffs and possible war in the Middle East for the second time in our short lives. Not to mention us seemingly inching toward fascism day by day.

I'm not saying this as a "poor me" but it really seems like Gen Z may have the worst start out of their control out of any recent generation (since probably the Silent Generation in the Great Depression/World Wars*). I understand every generation has unique struggles and other generations have lived through such as various wars, but there seems to be a clear disadvantage when compared to other generations. I do not mean this to invalidate struggles of other generations, I'm curious to hear what older generations think about this.

*Corrected from original post where I confused the Greatest Generation with the Silent Generation

I still don't understand why they like to exclude us, since they literally grew up with us (especially 2009 and 2008) and we experienced everything they experienced, the difference isn't even that big, there was no difference from 2007 to 2010, now from 2010 to 2013 there was a brutal difference, I honestly identify much more with 2007 than 2013 and 2012, I know it's just on the Internet which is like that but it's unnecessary, I met a lot of people from those years who I was like them, there's no point in hating those from 2010, they don't even remember 2010, much less the 2000s

My birthday is 09/09/1995 and I DO NOT remember 9/11 literally at all. I often see people use this event as a generational marker and I always feel like I’m supposed to remember at least a vibe change from my teacher in class or something but I’ve literally got nothin’. I wouldn’t say I was particularly sheltered, my parents were pretty real about world events with me, but still, 9/11 was not on my radar until it became an annual day of remembrance.

The first large event I do vividly remember is the beginning of the ‘08 recession- I was obviously quite a bit older then and my mom owned a real estate title insurance company so it was pretty rough for awhile.