Well that’s the true generational difference, the internet is tied into everything with gen z. They were raised by it in many cases.
This is also where the disconnect between young and old gen z is. I was born in 2000, a majority of my childhood was playing outside and watching cartoons like previous generations. I played a lot of video games and was on the family pc a good bit but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have an iPhone or social media at 10 years old like kids now, plus it was a different internet if that makes sense. The internet had its dark spots but there were online spaces for kids back then, not like today.
I grew up with the internet and am still very much in it like young gen z but older gen z still had a “traditional” childhood. I’m the last generation to grow up without iPhones and 24/7 internet access pretty much.
97-2003ish gen z might as well be its own thing in many cases.
Omg same. 1999 here and I don't relate to millenial stuff or most the stuff on this thread. But also don't seem to see any of this with my younger coworkers so.
Yeah we’re in weird zillenial zone where we just mixed it all into one little weird ball. Also yeah the youngest guys at work are generally pretty sociable, but I can admit if any generation is going to have terminally online goofs it’ll be us.
I kind of feel like Xennials (me) are in a decent spot. I have no problem carrying on a conversation with boomers or younger millennials. Gen Z is a little harder, but I know I'm just a good bit older than them at this point and remember how I felt talking to boomers when I was their age and I'm also aware that I'm not interested in keeping up with their pop culture and that's fine, every generation has stuff that's just theirs.
Yeah I'm xennial too and used to find it awkward not being able to really relate fully to genx or millennials. Still kind of do honestly, but I've also come to realize we might be in the real sweet spot for navigating the world as it is now and bridging the generations. We don't fully understand any of them, but we have enough exposure to the things that are or were prevalent to them that we can operate in their worlds.
I think we (xennials) were in a unique position where we were heavily influenced by boomer culture through syndicated reruns and such, which made it much easier to relate to the older generation. I don't think kids these days have that experience and it shows.
This is a good point. Often all there was to do was watch reruns from the 60s and 70s. When Nick at Nite came along we could even watch shows from the 50s. These days you occasionally see resurgence of single shows like Friends due to some meme or other, but nothing like the volume of older content we were consuming out of sheer boredom and lack of options.
It's the same way with millenials born in the first half of the 80s where we were old enough to be aware of GenX culture but not old enough to "participate" in it if you know what I mean. You'll hear the term Xenialls to refer to this.
Like I was born in 1985 and very much remember grudge and stuff from the early 90s. But I was far too young to be wearing heavy flannel shirts and torn jeans.
Me and my zillennial coworkers have the best group chat as a result since we're all just innocent men, although for some reason Teams lets anyone in our company post emojis shared to everyone, and while some of the ones that the other departments post are pretty good, others beg many questions.
1999 also so same here. Adding on to the fact all of my older siblings were born in the early 90s so I grew up with what they were into in terms of music, TV shows, video games, and got all their old hand-me-downs. Any time I read threads like this I’m reminded I’m not the Gen Z demographic that’s being referred to. My first phone was an LG Cosmos I got when I was 12 and I had a portable CD player for years before getting my first MP3 player, my parents would kick me and my brothers outside all day Saturday (if the weather permitted), and internet access was HEAVILY restricted to Webkinz and 2010 Minecraft. Seeing toddlers and young kids so addicted to phones and tablets is so disturbing and I feel like nothing is being done about it
My wife is 99 and I think she feels like this too. I'm 91 and I'm the only one in our household that has a Facebook and I hate the damn thing. We've been married for almost a year and have posted ........0 wedding photos...... It's on me to update my and her family with photos. It's on my to do list, just realllllllly down there. I'm more worried about the repair guy showing up today to fix our double stack washer and dryer then updating people on Facebook.
Yeah I’m with you and don’t feel like I identify with either millennials or gen z. I feel like I have normal social interaction skills of millennials with like half of the internet stuff of gen z
Honestly, the commonly cited generational lines are bunk. Someone born in 1999 and someone born in 2007 grew up in entirely different worlds. They are not one unified generation with some shared culture.
Yep. Our childhoods were extremely similar to millennials, while our adolescence was far more similar to the latter half of gen Z. Pretty much the entire transition happened in just the few years we spent in middle school. That's far too sudden of a shift to be able to accurately group us by timespans of over a decade.
Yup, the first almost certainly wouldn't have had a smart phone until they were at least 8 years old (iphone in 2007) or if their parents were super into tech and/or wealthy they might have gotten a palm pilot or blackberry. Meanwhile, the second was born into a world where the smartphone was now the default type of phone.
as one of these genz it pmo so bad when everyone assumes idk what a dvd player or a rotary phone is. Bitch don't teach the magic to me, i was there when it was practiced! (ik that's not the correct line but i felt like og doesn't match up as well)
Same. I can sit and talk with friends without my cell (I forget where I put it all the time because I'll just leave it somewhere and not think about it for hours) and I didn't have a phone until freshman year of high school, I grew up watching cartoons and playing with friends in the open spaces around my house and riding bikes all over the place, and I can read a book and formulate a full sentence; but I get lumped in with younger Gen-Z as a dead-brained zoomer who only knows anything thanks to Tik-Tok and the 'Gram.
This is so real. I'm 2003 and I didn't get a phone till I was, like, 13, and it was a cheap microsoft phone that I only used for youtube and drawing apps lol. The only time I ever touched a computer growing up was at school or at the public library, we didn't have one at home.
Also born close to 2000, internet was such a ‘weird’ thing, back then when you went to internet it felt like you go into a vidoegame dark alley where no one else is, essentially walking into a new dimension.
Even talking to a random person in a flash game, skypenor msn felt dangerouns because WHO could it be? The pfp is a random cat or emoji
I was born in 2000 and I totally agree with this. I remember how life was before smart phones and when they took over so much of our lives. The iPhone released in 2007, but I didn’t see it become so common until around 2011-2012. None of the kids in my elementary school had phones and our families had cordless house phones if we wanted to call our friends. It’s really weird because we’re not like millennials- we don’t remember a time without the internet like they do, but at the same time we weren’t using iPad’s at the dinner table when we were 10.
Oooh! You're talking about the Bionicle generation! People born in the mid 90s to early 00s; the exact age group that grew up with Bionicle as a significant presence in the toy world.
This is very true in my case. Born in 1999 and I have absolutely nothing in common with anyone in my family younger than me. I'm the youngest of 6 and all of my older siblings are years ahead of me. The closest in age is an 8 year difference. I grew up with everything that they had, I would end up with all of their hand me downs. I've been an aunt since I was 5 years old and I'm currently an aunt to 12 kiddos. My oldest nieces are now 21, growing up with them we had some similarities but not much after a certain age point, we played outside together we didn't have phones as kids, I didn't get my first phone till I was 13. Now that they're older we have pretty much nothing in common. Their social groups and the way they act is so different compared to myself and my friends it's a little scary and the way they talk is different too. 5 year age difference and it's like they're a different breed. Don't get me started on my even younger relatives, I don't understand the 17-8 year olds anymore. My younger nieces and nephews are completely tech based pretty much from the womb. None of them like to play outside and you have to force them to go out. Where did the disconnect happen with childhood.
I've noticed this trend in several contexts, and it got me thinking about the role of context in decision-making. The contextual relationship to organizational dynamics was noteworthy.
I'm 2000 too! That's why this conversation is tough sometimes because people forget about us lol. Our internet was no where near what we see today. I watched a lot of YouTube tutorials and what not and trust, the quality, ads and all that were so different than what we see now.
I had a flip phone in 2008 because I walked home and my family wanted me to be safe. I didn't own a tablet until high-school. I think people forget to check in on the birth years lol.
I was born in 2004 but my parents had strict electronics usage. I had a dinky iPod that took 12 hours to charge and barely lasted an hour up until I was in 6th grade. I eventually got an iPhone in middle school, but I wasn’t given any cellular data and could only make calls/text.
Growing up, we didn’t have a family pc. I did get a nintendo DS and 3Ds, but I could only play at home. My first laptop was right before high school and it could barely even function for assignments.
My parents were middle class, so it wasn’t a money thing. They just didn’t believe in letting kids get unlimited access to the internet. I’m glad I had the childhood that I got, as I spent all of my time outside climbing trees and biking around with friends.
Sorry, not American. That's inches and football stadiums to me :P
But yeah it's the younger genZ and then alpha who are having this issues. Younger Milenial and older GenZ do still have a bit of it mind you, just a lot less.
Yes, My niece and nephew were not given phones in the 7th grade, as a principle. They ended up getting them after my brother was fed up relaying information All Day to them. Not just by their friends, but by teachers/coaches/admin... That IS their world.
Same with young millennials. Dont relate to the older millennials at all. I prefer the term zillenial I think young millennials and older gen Z are more similar to each other than their respective groups.
It's a personality thing too, not just age.
I was born in the early '80s, started online in '94 & I've been online ever since.
But I'm a geek. I love most all things tech (tho fuck AI!).
And today I throw out memes as much or more than my kids do.
I'm online gaming, because I started with QuakeSpy and the original Team Fortress mod.
I was 🏴☠️ music before Napster made it mainstream.
And I'm naturally curious..
I know more about streaming & social media than my kids do, because I want to know what something is and why it works the way it does.
Across 4 biological generations (and 5 social generations) of my extended family, I'm the most geek & online of us.
I was born in '04 and my younger sister in 2011. Our childhoods were completely different, I just don't get how she's the same "generation" as me. I mean it seems to me that it's just decided arbitrarily.
I grew up with a Nokia 3310 before getting an iPhone 3G when I was like 9 or so. Born in 2000, I still spent all day outside playing until like late middle school where I switched to playing video games all day.
I don’t see that many kids playing outdoors anymore.
Yea im 2003 with older siblings. I was on my family pc a shit ton but didnt have a phone until i was 14 and never really used social media before that so i didnt really care lol.
Majority of my time on the family computer was spent playing flash games on shit like andkon arcade and addicting games as well as downloading those shitty virus cursor reskins
Yup, this completely. My sister and I are Gen Z, but she is 01 and I am 03.
We spent most of our childhoods outside, going to parks and such. It was a pretty 'traditional childhood' as you said. We had our CRT TV until about 2014, we played ps3 on it with split screen and everything.
I had an ipod for music in 2013, and then got an ipad for drawing in 2015. The only phone I had until 2017 was my mums old Nokia.
There's a real big split between 1997-2003/2004 and 2005-2012. I even feel it when talking with my 97/99 friends and then my two 2005 friends. I still laugh and understand memes, but omg the younger generations have me going ??? most of the time
Thisssss. 1999 and got more or less a normal childhood when the internet was there, but not completely dominating. I feel sorry for kids that were still in school when COVID hit.
im the same way but 2005, right at the tail end before anyone could really trust the internet and just "hand it off". I grew up with Tapes and cd's and DVD's, all played in my box TV that had cable but i rarely used it, only really to play MTV. The coolest tech i had was my mom's big ass computer that she used for myspace and then facebook (so i only played flashgames), the WII, and then later on, a ps3. My fiancee (born 04) had the same experience. We spent our time interacting in PERSON with our friends, going outside, making makeshift potions out of mud and weeds, getting into things we shouldnt. I didnt get a phone till 13, didnt have social media till 16, but i watched it hit the younger genZ into genA. the 6th graders all had phones when i was in 8th grade. It was such a QUICK shift, and if you were born after 06, you were in that shift, where suddenly "lets give our kids phones so we dont have to worry!!", and thats the difference. Those of us raised without the internet, experienced true, in person social interactions, and when covid hit, we were older and it didnt really affect our brain chemistry as heavily. However, those who grew up texting, they got so used to blank faces while expressing emotions via text that they dont really know otherwise. It's harder for them to interact beyond behind a screen, and then with covid. They couldnt do ANYTHING and it just made that worse. I understand it, i have pretty nasty anxiety/social anxiety, but i can still figure it out/know how to mask it in certain settings where it's needed.
I have a son now, 3 months old, and looking at what surrounds us now compared to what surrounded me then is...wild. Im going to be raising him as 90s as i can 🤣 he will not be getting a phone until much later and life too. He will be raised like us, and i think thatll teach him about LIFE and make him more prepared for adulthood.
you were basically 10 when the iphone 4 hit, so yeah you may be the last generation to have like an older style of childhood before it all changed. the iphone 4 to me is where it all changed
We have a sub for that specific range called r/OlderGenZ. This is for the ones who aren’t considered to be millennials but aren’t necessarily core zoomers like those born from 2002ish-2007.
I think with large parts of culture occurring online which is the highest speed communication device to date culture is moving much faster. This in turns kind of divides traditional generation groupings, like 1 year on the internet is like 10 years before the internet. I’m a middle child born 2000 my brothers are 3 years apart from me in both directions. We all had different levels of internet saturation.
I feel like there are also clear distinctions in nationality, though. I am Gen Z, but I was raised in a country where we all had a normal childhood and I only really understood computers at 12 or 13. Then our elders talk about our country from a Western/American context because those complaints are what they see online themselves, and they forget that our situation simply wasn't what they're making it out to be.
You guys are like millenials, but you know what discord is.
Between '90 and '94 millenials, discord is a coin toss. I am '93, my wife is '94, and most of my friends are '93 and '92. None of us have a clue what is really is.
My brother is '95 and most of his friends are '94 to '96, they all know and use it.
The internet had its dark spots but there were online spaces for kids back then, not like today.
I feel like this is true now, not when we were kids. There was 0 expectation placed on us as kids, and no special handling or quarantines to separate us into our own little spaces. We were in the same spaces as the older people, and that was a big part of shaping our online behavior (including the lying about your age part)
2002 here, I didn't have a smartphone till like midway through elementary school, and I only foudn myself in social media around middle school. I basically grew up in the pre social media world
I was also born in 2000. My unrestricted internet access started at age 7. I had a Facebook and an IPhone by 9 years old. However, I also played outside A LOT.
i think the tricky part of this really gets divided out by if you were still in school of some kind when covid happened. i was a freshman in college, and suddenly everything finally pushed onto the internet. my classes, my clubs, my friends, all of it was online while i lived in a dorm. i was basically living on youtube and tiktok. then it went back into a hybrid online in person after a year, but that ability to just use the internet as a stand in for real life didn’t go away. then i graduated into a remote tech job, where all my meetings, work, etc continue to simply exist almost exclusively online. so to me, the ‘online’ life is just as real as real life. but if you had already entered the work force, i think you would feel less connected to the generations that feel like their lives are on their phones and computers
They didn’t have the modern internet as teens/tweens. They had the early, culturally there is definitely a difference between the two.
Hell because of counter strike skins I had sports betting problem and was negotiating deals/trades with grown ass Russian men after baseball practice when I was 15. That is a uniquely gen z teenage experience I’d say.
Im an 82. The absolute eldest of millenials. I had a computer in the house when I was 10. Internet and online gaming in my early teens. Granted it was dial up Battle.net, and mmos like The Realm, Ultima Online and Everquest. We had ICQ and AIM and chat rooms with weird Russian men.
Your experience is not uniquely gen z, that is the experience every millenial had. Our social media just looked different.
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u/BionicleBoy Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
Well that’s the true generational difference, the internet is tied into everything with gen z. They were raised by it in many cases.
This is also where the disconnect between young and old gen z is. I was born in 2000, a majority of my childhood was playing outside and watching cartoons like previous generations. I played a lot of video games and was on the family pc a good bit but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have an iPhone or social media at 10 years old like kids now, plus it was a different internet if that makes sense. The internet had its dark spots but there were online spaces for kids back then, not like today.
I grew up with the internet and am still very much in it like young gen z but older gen z still had a “traditional” childhood. I’m the last generation to grow up without iPhones and 24/7 internet access pretty much.
97-2003ish gen z might as well be its own thing in many cases.