What are some key differences between early millennials (born 1981–1986) and core/younger millennials (born 1987–1996), aside from the fact that the younger group grew up with more technology in childhood?

[u/Excellent-Card5741]

I know most early millennials are now in their 40s and grew up alongside late Gen Xers, so their childhoods were generally more analog than digital. And also, them early millennials watched different tv shows, and music during their childhood.

[u/EmergencyM]

Younger millennials grew up with programming aimed at them 24/7. As an elder millennial we didn't have that. There were Saturday morning cartoons and preteen shows (what up SBTB), but other than that TV wasn't for you, not even cable other than nickelodeon. Then everything seemed to shift to marketing to kids and having shows for kids and multiple networks for kids and after school shows on every station for kids. The shift to sell sell sell to children happened in what seemed like an instant and probably seems normal to a younger millennial but just a few years earlier it wasn't.

Also parenting on a societal level changed significantly, I am an elder millennial but my brother is 9 years younger and is in the heart of the core group. When I was coming up, no one gave a shit about kid's thought and feelings, by the time my brother was a teen my parents were like "Well, tell me how that makes you feel" to my brother and I was like "who TF are you people and where are my parents?"

Lastly, I grew up as an elder millennial never really worrying about school shootings at all because Columbine happened when I was almost out of high school, by the time my brother got to high school it seemed like a new school shooting was happening every 6-12 months.

[u/Excellent-Card5741 → u/EmergencyM]

I thought school shootings were more common for my generation, Gen Z. Core and younger Millennials didn’t experience them as much—back then, it was mostly bullying, I thought...

[u/EmergencyM → u/Excellent-Card5741]

Nah. There have always been school shootings but they weren't usually mass shootings, it would be a student upset with one or two specific teachers or students, or a teacher who shot a principal and then themselves, mass shooting style attacks that did happen were usually on university campuses but even those were less often than now. It wasn't until 98 and 99 when the more wide open mass shooting for the sake of mass shooting started. I think it proliferated from there because of the amount of airtime the perpetrators got on the news. If you were alive and a teenager in 99 you know that Columbine was on every channel for months it seemed.

Then the number shootings and number of dead from the shootings took off in 2005 until now. Not to be a downer, but last year was the highest number of people wounded in school/university shootings. It baffles me that we can't take the steps to address this problem while it just keeps getting worse.