Skimming the Generational Fringes

A peek at the “microgenerations” that fall in-between our main generational cohorts

Half a year ago, I wrote an informal overview of the eight most recent generational cohorts found in America’s history. These eight groups represent our best-documented socio-historical categories, and they may not reflect new information we discover…or unborn generations in future decades and centuries.

In that piece, I’d delineated these eight generations as follows:

• Hemingrebels (aka “The Lost Generation”)
• GI-Gens (aka “The Greatest Generation”)
• Traditionalists (aka “The Silent Generation”)
• Baby Boomers (aka “Boomers” or “Leapers”)
• Generation X (aka “Xers” or “GenXers”)
• Generation Y (aka “Millennials” or “Echo Boomers”)
• Generation Z (aka “Zoomers” or “Centennials”)
• Generation AA (aka “Alphas” or “Coronials”)

Since each of these cohorts spans a period of approximately 15–20 years, there are inevitably going to be people born “on the cusp” of two adjacent generations. Today, I’ll explore how those “microgenerations” can be defined based on the two groups between whom they build a sociological bridge.

Each microgeneration covers approximately 3–5 years of overlapping birth years from two main generations that border one another. This isn’t an exact science, as some individuals may personally identify to a greater degree with one generation over another. Or, many individuals see themselves in both generations…healing the crevice where their identities might otherwise “fall through the cracks.”

These definitions are specific to the United States. I encourage anyone to freely borrow/steal any terminology from this list, as part of your own lexicon.

Frugal Gatsbians

This microgeneration consists of people born in the middle of the first decade of the 1900s (from approximately 1902 through 1906).

These are the youngest of the Hemingrebels (aka “The Lost Generation”) and the oldest of the GI-Gens (aka “The Greatest Generation”).

Frugal Gatsbians would have been kids during World War I. Their teen years were characterized by the opulence and overconsumption of the Roaring Twenties. However, as adulthood progressed for them, the Great Depression hit. Therefore, they were forced to teach their own children about frugality and resourcefulness despite having experienced the celebratory distortions enjoyed by characters from the era’s signature piece of literature — F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Such “Gatsbian” debauchery along with the rebelliousness embodied by novelist Ernest Hemingway collapsed within their lived realities. The frugality and work ethic that would replace it became a defining trait of GI-Gens (aka “Great Goldens” or “FrugalJewels”) who arose from an abyss of war and poverty.

Prominent Frugal Gatsbians: William J. Brennan, Mike Mansfield, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, Ray Croc, Charles Lindbergh, Bob Hope, Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Ella Baker, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Clare Boothe Luce, Eliot Ness, Carl Rogers, Theodor Seuss, Bobby Jones, Satchel Paige, Lawrence Welk, Anaïs Nin, Iron Eyes Cody, Arthur Godfrey, Virginia Foster Durr, Henry Fonda, Paul Dirac, Ted Poston, Stepin Fetchit, Ogden Nash, Marvel Cooke, Moe Berg, Dolores del Río, Earl Hines, Meredith Willson, Isamu Noguchi, Gene Sarazen, Charles Drew, John Huston, Barbara McClintock, James Sakamoto, William Warrick Cardozo, Anna May Wong, Thomas Dewey, Ayn Rand, Lou Gehrig, Benjamin Spock, Cool Papa Bell, Josephine Baker, Howard Hughes, Grace Hopper, Countee Cullen, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Philip Vera Cruz, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Alice Allison Dunnigan, Karl Yoneda, John Preston Davis, Jovita González, Glen Miller, Count Basie, B.F. Skinner, Roy Acuff, Glenna Collett-Vare, Al Hirschfeld, Big Bill Broonzy

Golden-Builders

This microgeneration consists of people who were born across the mid-1920s.

These are the youngest of the GI-Gens (aka “The Greatest Generation”) and the oldest of the Traditionalists (aka “The Silent Generation” or “the Lucky Few”). The youngest siblings of my grandparents would have fallen into this microgeneration.

Golden-Builders were born right before the Great Depression hit the United States. Thus, their earliest childhood memories were of bread lines and unemployment. This gave them a strong desire to get their country back on track, which they did by enlisting in the military…and tending to the home fires while filling in for our servicemen as domestic frontline workers. They shined as national war heroes (and their supportive families). And then they rebuilt America’s economic and infrastructural systems.

They enjoyed the lingering prestige that came with the “golden” greatness of younger GI-Gens (hence why I also dub them “Great Goldens”). But they also began to adopt some of the stoic “silence” that older Traditionalists would later harbor as these leaders from this microgeneration put their noses to the grindstone to navigate new crises. Marginalization of children became a central value of theirs while they worked through fears over nuclear weapons, censorship, blacklisting, increased globalization, and the rise of Soviet Communism.

Prominent Golden-Builders: Martin Luther King Jr., Johnny Carson, Barbara Walters, B.B. King, Maya Angelou, Paul Newman, Andy Warhol, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsberg, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., Angela Lansbury, Sidney Poitier, Fred Rogers, Burt Bacharach, Robert Rauschenberg, Sammy Davis Jr., Arnold Palmer, Merv Griffin, Noam Chomsky, Malcolm X, Jerry Lewis, Coretta Scott King, Shirley Temple, Ruth Westheimer, Harry Belafonte, Gore Vidal, Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Kubrick, Cesar Chavez, John Coltrane, Walter Mondale, Dick Clark, John DeLorean, Mel Tormé, Eydie Gormé, William F. Buckley, Andy Griffith, Margaret Keane, Howard Baker, Christopher Plummer, Berry Gordy, Anne Sexton, Hugh Hefner, Eartha Kitt, Mel Brooks, Leontyne Price, Evelyn Berezin, Celia Cruz, Bob Newhart, Viola Liuzzo, Miles Davis, Alan Greenspan, Fats Domino, Harper Lee, Chuck Berry, Maria Tallchief, John McLaughlin, Anne McCaffrey, James Dewey Watson, Medgar Evers, Grace Kelly, Albert Bandura, Marty Robbins, Ursula K. Le Guin, Victor Wong, Althea Gibson, Steve Ditko, Adrienne Rich, Ruben Salazar

Silent Nesters

This microgeneration consists of people who were born in the mid-to-late-1940s.

These are the youngest of the Traditionalists (aka “The Silent Generation”) and the oldest of the Baby Boomers (aka “Leapers” or “GrowthPivots”). My dad would clock in at the oldest end of this mini-spectrum, whereas my mom (due to my parents’ six-year age difference) would have been born right after the youngest members of this microgeneration.

Silent Nesters were born just as America was emerging from World War II. This meant their childhoods spanned most of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. They were taught by their parents (GI-Gens) to be obedient and deferential to authority. Because so much of their youth involved a “pivoting” from emphasizing economic self-sufficiency to emphasizing civil rights, they were the first of many future generations who’d come to drive a much sharper ideological split within their cohort than perhaps ever seen in American history.

They had to reconcile everything they’d been taught about respecting their elders with a newfound desire to combat social injustices. That internal conflict placed this generation at a pivotal crossroads as to whether they would take this new “leap” — or if preserving the status quo should be their emphasis. Obviously, the more liberal and progressive “Leapers” became vocal shepherds of equality, equity, and inclusion. The more conservative and libertarian Boomers, on the other hand, resisted such progress due to various fears established during this first half of the Twentieth Century. If that wasn’t jarring enough, it would be compounded by “Empty Nest Syndrome” arising from their many, many children eventually striking out on their own into a world that was, in their view, quite scary.

Prominent Silent Nesters: Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, Tom Selleck, Diane Sawyer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joe Frazier, Stephen King, Crista McAuliffe, Stephen Spielberg, Marsha P. Johnson, Suzanne Somers, Donald Trump, Steve Martin, Connie Chung, Diana Ross, Alice Walker, Nolan Ryan, Jesse Eugene Russell, Angela Davis, Linda Ronstadt, Jerry Springer, George W. Bush, Bette Midler, Cheech Marin, Al Michaels, Cher, George Lucas, Rick Barry, Arlene Raven, Kiki Camarena, David Lynch, Gregory Hines, Vincent McMahon, Rick James, John Ritter, Carl Bernstein, Samuel L. Jackson, Barry White, James Patterson, Stevie Nicks, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Nell Carter, Wilma Mankiller, Ana Mendieta, Priscilla Presley, Larry Echo Hawk, Kathy Bates, Anna Nieto-Gómez, Liza Minelli, Tom Clancy, Patti LaBelle, Carl Weathers, Powers Boothe, Ericka Huggins, John Paul DeJoria, Boz Scaggs, Jim Davis, Pat Riley, Janet Campbell Hale, Sylvester Stallone, Candice Bergen, David Halberstam, Gladys Knight, Leslie Marmon Silko, Naomi Judd, Jimmy Buffett, Henry Winkler, Farrah Fawcett, Sandy Duncan, Bernadette Peters, John McAfee, Patty Duke, Michael Douglas, Bill Richardson, Martin Yan, Jann Wenner, Carlos Santana, Donna Summer, George R.R. Martin, Bubba Smith, Ifti Nasim, Fred Hampton, John Oates, Sally Field, Donny Hathaway

JonesGens (aka “Xoomers”)

This microgeneration consists of people who were born widely across the entire decade of the 1960s, although heavily concentrated between the years of 1961 through 1965.

These are the youngest of the Baby Boomers and the oldest of Generation X (aka “Xers”). Some people say that “Generation Jones” is its own generation entirely separate from the Baby Boom cohort or Gen X. But I’d argue they are, instead, a coalition of younger Boomers and older Xers who have more in common with one another than with people who were born prior to 1960 or after 1969. Members of “Generation Jones” could be referred to as “Gen J” (or JGs, for short).

JonesGens were experts at dealing with the unexpected, since the ten-year span from 1960 to 1969 was rife with chaos and transformation. Born in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, this microgeneration could also be called “Xoomers” (pronounced “Exhumers”), seeing how they were essentially forced to “exhume” the good parts of America that had been forgotten by previous generations…while simultaneously trying to figure out how to rectify the bad parts of America. With the rise of working career women and single-parent households throughout the 1970s, they’d become the original “Latchkey Kids” — before such a lifestyle was normalized for mid-to-younger GenXers.

They held onto the core premise of respecting authority (in most cases), but became increasingly more brazen than their Traditionalist or Boomer parents were about challenging the status quo. This would prove to be valuable when confronting escalated problems that had stemmed from the longstanding racism, sexism, classism, theocracy, homophobia, and intergenerational tensions all rooted in America’s DNA. Much like the Silent Nesters who’d come-of-age two decades before them, JonesGens would struggle to balance principled activism with providing financial security for their families. And so the rift between conservatism and liberalism grew even wider, as the diametrically-opposed ends of this microgeneration faced off against each other.

Prominent JonesGens: Barack Obama, Whitney Houston, Michael Jordan, Quentin Tarantino, Jodie Foster, Leonard Leo, Eddie Murphy, Suzanne Collins, Tori Amos, Dan Marino, Brett Kavanaugh, Lenny Kravitz, Chris Rock, Sunita Williams, Rosie O’Donnell, Michael J. Fox, Garth Brooks, Jeff Bezos, David Foster Wallace, Michelle Obama, Kevin McCarthy, Sandra Bullock, John Thune, Ann Coulter, Tom Cruise, Stephen Hillenburg, Brooke Shields, M.C. Hammer, Tom Ford, Steve Scalise, Katherine Clark, Brett Easton Ellis, Courtney Love, Jerry Rice, Diane Humetewa, Michael Dell, David Brooks, William McCool, Sarah Palin, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Ralph Macchio, Viola Davis, Melissa Etheridge, Charles Barkley, Audrey Niffenegger, Brad Pitt, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Lisa Whelchel, Molly Shannon, George Clooney, Jamie Raskin, Queen Latifah, Kate Spade, Dan Gerhard Brown, Terri Sewell, Peter Staley, Bo Jackson, Wanda Sykes, Pramila Jayapal, Melissa Gilbert, Tammy Baldwin, Rand Paul, John Leguizamo, Tim Scott, John McWhorter, Chuck Palahniuk, Mary Barra, Demi Moore, Carl Lewis, Jim Carrey, Melissa McBride, Keanu Reeves, Mark Kelly, Johnny Depp, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Jim Jordan, Anthony Kiedis, Michael “Flea” Balzary, Robert Frederick Smith, Mariska Hargitay, Jeff Probst, Lou Diamond Phillips, Matt Biondi, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, George Lopez, Meg Ryan, Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Brian Sandoval, Tracy Chapman, Shania Twain, Rosie Perez, Billy Ray Cyrus, Sheryl Crow, Jon Bon Jovi, Paula Abdul, Don Bacon, Wynonna Judd

Xennials (aka “Catalanos”)

This microgeneration consists of people who were born in the very late-1970s and the very early-1980s. It basically straddles the divide between Gen X and Gen Y. Although I’m technically a Millennial, I fall into the younger half of this Xennial microgeneration.

These are the youngest Xers and the oldest Millennials — hence the linguistic mashup of “Xennial” (Xer+Millennial). We are also sometimes known as “Generation Catalano,” in reference to actor Jared Leto’s breakout role as bad boy Jordan Catalano on ABC’s 1994–95 teen angst drama My So-Called Life. Alternately, we were the first subgroup of schoolkids to be exposed to the classic Oregon Trail computer game. For that reason, we could be called “OTGs” (“The Oregon Trail Generation”)…although the “OTG” moniker could be more broadly applied to Millennials as a whole, since it was commonplace in school experiences even for members of Gen Y who were born after 1984.

Xennials had become desensitized to the “Latchkey” experience first endured by JonesGens and mid-to-older Xers. Our childhoods were marked by the rancor of the Reagan/Bush/Quayle years. The 1985 Challenger explosion, the Iran-Contra scandal, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War, and the AIDS crisis have prominent spots in most of our memories. By our adolescence, American society was dealing with gems such as the O.J. Simpson Trial, the Kerrigan/Harding scandal, endless Bobbitt jokes, and Monicagate.

Is it any wonder that we’re so jaded? We get labeled as “angry” and “entitled” — but look at the ridiculous media culture to which we were subjected!

Our microgeneration — along with the mid-to-younger Millennials who came after us — felt helpless due to our collective subconscious awareness of the institutional cards stacked against us. I talk a lot more about this in my four-part series entitled “Confessions of a Gen Y Kid” where I explore the areas of Millennial era K-12 education, pop culture, media exposure, and higher education. In many ways, our existential dilemma mirrored those of our parents who were Traditionalists, Silent Nesters, Boomers, or JonesGens. In fact, since so many of us had parents from the Baby Boomer generation, we’ve often been nicknamed “Echo Boomers” (referring to the 1980s as a second de facto “baby boom”). For this reason, I dub those of us who belong to Gen Y, more broadly, as “EchoGens.”

Prominent Xennials: Beyoncé, Pete Buttigieg, Venus Williams, Kim Kardashian, Colleen Hoover, Britney Spears, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dwyane Wade, Mehdi Hasan, Brooke Owens, Kobe Bryant, Sharice Davids, Kelly Clarkson, Natasha Lyonne, Ibram X. Kendi, Misty Copeland, Jason Momoa, Shawn Fanning, Alicia Garza, Macauley Culkin, Celeste Ng, Matt Gaetz, Nate Burleson, Christine P. Hendon, Lance Bass, John Legend, Ron DeSantis, Jawed Karim, Tia & Tamera Mowry, Ginger Zee, Lauren Esposito, Drew Brees, Jesse Watters, Channing Tatum, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Claire Danes, Serena Williams, Pitbull, Eric Swalwell, Zoe Saldana, Christina Aguilera, Jin Koh, Yashar Ali, Kristen Marhaver, Luis Fonzi, Jennie Finch, Kyle Lohse, Jessica Simpson, Blake Moore, James Franco, Alicia Keys, Monica Simpson, Katrina Lake, Pete Hegseth, Ali Wong, Josh Hawley, Meghan Markle, Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, Tony Dokoupil, Vladlen Koltun, Chris Kluwe, Tiffany Haddish, Mindy Kaling, Jen Psaki, Melanie Harrison Okoro, Wes Moore, Jessica Alba, Brandy Norwood, Angela Benton, Danica Patrick, Katie Halper, Tulsi Gabbard, Rami Malek, Adam Lambert, Steven Chen, John Krasinski, Michelle Kwan, Isa Noyola, Katie Holmes, Byron Donalds, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Hudson, Kourtney Kardashian, Andy Roddick, Chris Pratt, Ilhan Omar, Affie Ellis, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicki Minaj, Chris Hayes, Lucas Kunce, Tara Lipinski, Abigail Spanberger, Wilmer Valderrama, Clay Aiken, Paris Hilton, Karamo Brown, Dolph Ziggler, Ruben Gallego, Danai Gurira, LeAnn Rimes, Tom Preston-Werner, Katie Britt, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Pink, Lori Piestewa, Janelle Monáe, Peggy Fleming, Rosario Dawson, Adam Levine, Rachel Platten, Eli Manning

Zillennials (aka “Bicentennials”)

This microgeneration consists of people who were born in the late-1990s. It basically straddles the divide between Gen Y and Gen Z. They were the first generation to fully grow up in a world dominated by cyberspace.

These are the youngest Millennials and the oldest Zoomers — hence the linguistic mashup of “Zillennial” (Zoomer+Millennial). They could also be called “Bicentennials,” having been born on one side of the new century…and emerging on the other side to begin their childhoods. This microgeneration contained the youngest humans in existence when the Twenty-First Century began…and they’ll be society’s elders once that same century closes out.

Zillennials are the bridge between Millennials and Zoomers. They often display the gutsiness and indignation of Gen Y — but they also harbor the social consciousness and tech-savvy prowess found in Gen Z. As of the date of this writing, they fall between the ages of 23 to 28. Most of their childhood memories are of a post-9/11 world, and their adolescence was tarnished by the Great Recession. The younger members of this microgeneration have had their college experiences heavily upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those of their microgeneration who decide to have children will be forced to grapple with raising kids in a post-COVID world. Gradually, as both Gen Z and Gen AA gain greater maturity and life experience, Zillennials could be the key in bridging the generational divides between Xers/Millennials and Zoomers/Alphas, if a broad-based and formidable American youth coalition is ever to arise and flex its muscles.

Madison Cawthorn is currently the only Zillennial serving in the U.S. Congress. In the coming decades, as younger Zoomers and older Alphas gradually get elected to political office, it will be interesting to see how their ideologies shift compared to the microgenerations that preceded them.

Prominent Zillennials: Simone Biles, Gigi Hadid, Maxwell Frost, Zendaya Coleman, Tavi Gevinson, Rico Rodriguez, Amanda Gorman, James “MrBeast” Donaldson, Wisdom Cole, Osama A. Siblani, Austin Mahone, Dakota Fanning, Gabby Douglas, Taissa Farmiga, Noah Golowich, James “TheOdd1sOut” Rallison, Lili Reinhart, Stephen Curry, Liza Koshy, Mikaela Shiffrin, Patrick Mahomes, Abigail Breslin, Sam Berns, Noah Lyles, Aly Raisman, Jalen Hurts, Megan Thee Stallion, David Dobrik, Reed Alexander, Timothée Chalamet, Jack Andraka, Nyjah Huston, Bella Poarch, Lamar Jackson, Kendall Jenner, Noah Galvin, Jessica Sanchez, Post Malone, Saoirse Ronan, Indya Moore, A’ja Wilson, Jordy Meiselas, Kylie Jenner, Chris Paul, Nicole Maines, Ava Max, Finneas O’Connell, Justin Jones, Tiera Guinn Fletcher, Becky G, Katie Ledecky, Bella Hadid, Caeleb Dressel, Jack Harlow, Taylor Wilson, Dove Cameron, Ariel Winter, Jaden Smith, Karl-Anthony Towns, Nadya Okamoto, Halsey, Brent Rivera, Henry Wanjune Lin, Sasha Zaska, Dylan Minnette, Aru Shiney-Ajay, Damar Hamlin, Benito “Bad Bunny” Martínez Ocasio, Camila Mendes, Khalid Donnel Robinson, Tierra Whack, Lana Condor, Adora Svitak, Easton LaChappelle, Katelyn Ohashi, Steve Lacy, Michael Hofmann Winer, Martese Johnson, Greyson Chance, Matthew Klotz, Chloe Grace Moretz, Deshaun Watson, Lele Pons, Chelsea Miller, Jordan Fisher, Peyton List, Joe Burrow, Danielle Coke Balfour, Sam Chason, Claressa Shields, Andrew Bazzi, Lani Lazzali, Conan Gray, Andrew Jin, Zachary Gordon, Booboo Stewart, Prince Shakur, Jayson Tatum, Alexis Ren, Justin Herbert, Kodak Black, Nolan Gould, Lydia Ko, Cierra Ramirez, Olivia Bee, China Anne McClain, Devin Booker, Coco Gordon-Moore, Bella Thorne, Philip Streich, Amandla Stenberg, Christina Grimmie, Brandon Herrera, Christian McCaffrey, Hailey Baldwin-Bieber, Julian Green, Doja Cat, Noah Centineo, Miles Heizer, Tua Tagovailoa, Erica Cole, Rose LaVelle, Bronson Koenig, Camila Cabela, Ari Strapans Lauv, Cody Christian, Nick Robinson, Lonzo Ball, Ryan Garcia, Ludwig Ahgren, Kyler Murray, Dominique “Lil Baby” Jones

Coronazooms (aka “Alphacentennials”)

This microgeneration consists of people who were born approximately between the years of 2011 through 2015. It basically straddles the divide between Gen Z and Gen AA. They are the oldest members of “Gen Alpha,” which is, at present, the youngest-living generation in America. Members of this Alpha generation are still being born.

These are the youngest Zoomers and the oldest Alphas. Since the newly-minted Gen AA (yep, just like a “Double-A” battery!) is still so new to our society, they are the main generation about whom we know the least. Their shared identity will most likely continue to be in flux as they gradually come-of-age. Due to the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic on the most formidable years of Gen AA’s lives, I suspect we may eventually begin calling them “Coronials.”

For now, I’ve dubbed this final microgeneration as “Coronazooms” (Coronial+Zoomer) — or, alternately, “Alphacentennials” (Alpha+Centennial). They have been the first microgeneration entirely born within the Twenty-First Century.

Coronazooms are the bridge between Zoomers and Alphas. They will remember the earliest years of their childhoods as being tainted by the initial COVID-19 surges (literally forced to use Zoom as a substitution for in-person schooling). As of the date of this writing, they span the ages of 7 to 11. How their adolescence and young adulthood plays out shall be disproportionately shaped by what, if anything, happens with COVID-19 as the 2030s commence.

Prominent Coronazooms: Lorenzo Greer, Mia Talerico, Ryan Kaji, Naudia Greenawalt, Linkin Eger, Ava & Leah Clements, Dannielynn Birkhead, Valentina Paloma Pinault, Blue Ivy Carter, Lyla Grace, Sienna Fizz, Kane Atwood, Diezel Ortiz, Jackson Theron, Harper Beckham, Maya LeClark, Jordyn Yeager, Claire Crosby, D.J. Panton, Everleigh Soutas, Jacob Ballinger, Destiny Morales, Maya Maxwell, Skylynn Floyd, Ellie Ana, Jazzy Skye, Caleb Johnston, Eva Foley, Salish Matter, Ben Hampton, Russell Franke, Blayke Busby, Perri LeRoy, Jaliyah Manuel, Reese Herron

This is just a basic guide. As with anything tethered to history, these descriptors could (and probably will!) evolve — or receive new monikers that aren’t even in our present-day vernacular — as additional historical events unfold.