fact sheet with bullets and ordered lists
few years ago, the New York Times ran a piece about “Xennials,” defined as people born during the late 1970s or early 1980s — a generational gray area when the Gen X-ers (those born between 1965 and 1980, roughly) gave way to Millennials (1981 to 1996).“Xennials are straddlers . . . neither here nor there,” the article’s two authors wrote.They pointed out that the oldest Millennials made it to college before the widespread adoption of cellphones and social media. As a result, this group might identify more with the previous generation than with later-born Millennials who had never lived in a world without text messages and Likes.The article even included a short quiz (just for fun, nothing scientific) designed to tell you “which generation you really are, spiritually.”I was born in 1982 — solidly Xennial — and was eager to take the quiz. My responses leaned so heavily Gen X that I was deemed “not even really a Millennial.”All this came to mind recently when I spoke with Jean Twenge, PhD, a professor at San Diego State University and author of the new book Generations , in which she maps out the defining traits and experiences of the six generations of people now coexisting in the United States.What she told me about Millennials’ midlife prospects made me glad to have been born toward the front of the line.