While bored and scrolling through Twitter, I stumbled on a New York Times article that described millennials as being over the age of 22. Confused (I’d always somewhat identified as a millennial), I did some research. It turns out that the cutoff year for millennials is 1994, meaning that none of us (college-age people) are actually millennials. Which was shocking, and absolutely changed my life. I suppose it makes sense– the starting age for millennials are the 1980s, which means that many of them have settled down, had kids, bought homes, and generally been more grown-up than all of us.
But then I realized that meant we were part of Generation Z.
This I fully disagree with.
I don’t know if you’ve ever interacted with anyone from Generation Z, but it is genuinely terrifying. They are more attractive than we ever were at any point, they multitask better than us, have more followers, and overall have bypassed that awkward, weird phase that everyone else seems to have gone through. Which is truly and absolutely unfair. Generation Z grew up at a time when technology was at its prime, when many apps were already updated to look like what they do today. Snapchat, Instagram, all forms of social media had ironed out their kinks by the time they were old enough to use them. They never had to struggle with technology, where never hindered by it. Basically, they’ve been living the life, and I do not identify with them in any way at all, especially since most of them are still in middle school.
Then I saw a Twitter user recommend that people born from 1995-2000 should be its own generation. Another recommended calling it the Cryptid Generation. The Oxford Dictionary defines cryptid as “An animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti.” This makes sense to me– five years of kids who didn’t quite make it to millennials but definitely are not Generation Z, and whose existence is usually not recognized. We’re always on the line, and nobody really points their fingers at us for being the “typical [insert generation here]”. We are kids who were born before 9/11, where their early developmental years were not spent in a time of panic or a war on terror, but also cannot remember a time before the Iraq War. Kids who remember when Obama was elected the first time, and the excitement around it, but also were too young to necessarily have fully-formed political opinions. The Cryptid Generation still grew up during the Great Recession, but were young enough to not be looking for employment or handling their own finances. The Cryptid Generation came of age during a transitional period, where the world hadn’t quite found its footing with its dependency on technology. We’re frugal like millennials, but distracted like Generation Z. We use technology like millennials, but are solidly in on memes like Generation Z (something millennials don’t have as good of a footing on). Basically, we are truly the Cryptid Generation, the yetis. And I’m cool with being a yeti.