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Don't identify with the the Millennials and their avocado toast? Nor with Generation X and their fond memories of MTV actually playing music videos? If you were born between 1977 and 1983, then there's a good chance that you're actually a Xennial.
Dan Woodman of University of Melbourne says that this micro-generation is deserving of its own name. The associate professor of sociology says that if your childhood occurred just before the Internet became widespread, but came to age during the dot-com bubble, it can be hard to identify as either a Millennial or a Generation X'er.
“The idea is there’s this micro or in-between generation between the Gen X group – who we think of as the depressed flannelette-shirt-wearing, grunge-listening children that came after the Baby Boomers and the Millennials – who get described as optimistic, tech savvy and maybe a little bit too sure of themselves and too confident,” Professor Woodman told Mamamia.
"Around technology they do have a particular experience – we hit this social media and IT digital technology boom in our 20s."
"It was a particularly unique experience. You have a childhood, youth and adolescence free of having to worry about social media posts and mobile phones. It was a time when we had to organize to catch up with our friends on the weekends using the landline, and actually pick a time and a place and turn up there."
"Then we hit this technology revolution before we were maybe in that frazzled period of our life with kids and no time to learn anything new. We hit it where we could still adopt in a selective way the new technologies."
"We learned to consume media and came of age before there was Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and all these things where you still watch the evening news or read the newspaper."
And while it may seem ridiculous to have a micro generation, people seemed to identify.
Sweet, there is a nice term for my generation: "xennial". The cynicism of gen x and optimism of Millennials but not as tech savvy
