I (gen z) was recently having a discussion with a millennial friend who told me that millennials grew up optimistic only to have their dreams crushed, while zoomers never really had any optimistim to begin with. It's an over generalization sure, but still food for thought.

'Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.' - George Orwell

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I am isn't it, and what is seems weird and scary to me" It will happen to you

I'm a rare case of a Millennial from a dad of the Silent Generation. The feeling of having "missed out" in World War II, was very real. Particularly the compulsion of doing something great to outshine the older generation who had fought in what was viewed as the most consequential event in the history of humanity. My father joined the army in the hopes of some conflict with "the Cossacks" in the 1950s. When that didn't pan out, he joined the Foreign Service. He ended up going from the Dust Bowl of Alberta during the Depression to a wealthy Canadian Ambassador, but when he died he still had this sense of disappointment at having missed out in what he saw was a moral conflict. He still talked about the War a fair chunk of the time in his final years.

I’d say the generational trauma of the Great Depression definitely still affects my family today. My grandparents lived through the Depression and passed those values on to my father who is constantly worried about having enough money. This shrewdness about money was then passed onto me as a millennial.

There's a common characteristic for all generations. They say theirs is the best 😀😎👍

In France, most of the people born after 2000 would ask what year you were born in in opposition to age or grade. We also refer to each other as years like « yeah, he’s a 2004 » The older generations find this quite odd

Here in Brazil the USA style cohort names (boomers, millenials, zoomers, etc.) aren't really a thing. As a very active Catholic, however, it's not unusual in our circles to name generations after who was the Pope when they were baptised; I myself am of the JPII Generation. I'm not sure if only Brazilian Catholics do that, or not, but I assume it's an exclusively Catholic thing.

As a 21 year old (which I guess would place me near the beginning of Gen Z), Tiktok is my first experience of feeling too old for something. I know a lot of other people my age use it, but it just feels like something for people younger than me and that's one reason why I can't get into it.

As an iraqi zoomer it's really interesting because all I've ever known is political instability whilst my parents, who were born in 1970, grow up in a really prosperous Iraq (that changed in the 90s though). I guess be both have generational trauma but their lives have not been definied by it.

Being an older Gen X'er (1969- ), I remember that before the book came out labelling us that way, our generation was often referred to as the "Baby Bust" for the return to smaller family sizes that succeeded the Post-WWII baby boom. It was a tremendous missed opportunity to call us the "Baby Busters". :) The most poignant thing I hear and feel about Gen X'ers is that because there are so few of us compared to surrounding generations, other generations don't spend much time thinking about Gen X'ers at all, but Gen X'ers spend A LOT of time thinking about themselves. It may be a stereotype, but I think both sides of that stereotype seems to have a fair grain of truth to them. Great video, as per usual, J.J.!

As a paraguayan zoomer Ive always found very interesting how generations work differently depending on the country, the silent generation here usually grew up very very poor, we had a war with Bolivia wich brought national pride but at the same time would cause even more economic issues; the boomer genereation also grew up poor and would have to endure the early phase of our longuest dictatorship, they're very conservative and christian and of course tons of siblings, we have a lot of relatives due to that. The Gen x's on the other hand grew up during the epicenter of the dictarship, however a lot of them would start to rebel, they were the first who started to recieve a ton of american pop culture influence like in music or fashion; the millenials saw first the end of our dictarship, the return of democracy and our economy recovery little by little, culture an technology was of course gettin bigger and bigger but since we were still a poor country it was years behind what was going on in North America or Europe. Finally we gen z, thanks to the internet would experience a masssive change in terms of society, conomics and politics, our way of thinking is a whole new thing for our elders, we still have to endure with a lot of bad conservative ideas that sadly still remain, but year by year things change fast, luckily one day we will elect leaders who would care at least a bit about their people and not themselves and of coursen end corruption step by step and keep growing our economy Great video JJ, btw

I was born in late 1993 and I find it funny how there seems to be a great emphasis put on being a "90s kid" by those of us born in that decade despite the fact most proper childhood cultural experiences of "90s kids" are firmly cemented in the 2000s.

I just think of myself as an 80’s kid and 90’s teen. That means I straddle X and Millennial so it doesn’t make sense to me at all.

I live in Poland, so a country that only recently got "westernized" and experienced technological development, and so, despite being born in a mid-gen-Z year of 2003, the experiences stereotypically associated with "90's kids" and other millenials still heavily applied to my childhood. For example now the kids get their first phones when theyre like 6 or even youger, meanwhile i hadnt had a phone until middle school and a smartphone until i started high school.

I’m literally on the line between millennial and Zoomer, I don’t know what I’m supposed to identify as but whatever it is old people hate me.

In Italy among younger people is very common to ask the year of birth instead of the actual age because people born in each year have very specific stereotypes attached to them, and knowing just the age of someone sometimes doesn’t mean knowing their year of birth

My grandparents were holocaust survivors and I still have some inherited elements of it. All of their parents were murdered when they were quite young and they had no model of parenting behaviour so when they raised my parents, they didn't really do normal things like hugging their children because they were never hugged. My parents modelled after their parents and raised me in a similarly odd way. I'm kinda hoping to break the chain of neurosis

Speaking to your commentary on generational trauma, here's my 2 cents: When generational trauma was first proposed as a mainstream concept back in the 1990s, it was largely accepted or embraced because it was used as a way to explain some of the psychological and neurological issues affecting children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. It seems we're only now seeing pushback against the concept of generational trauma when someone applies it to Americans descended from slaves or African Americans. Now, it would appear that fewer people are willing to give the idea credence if it can be used to understand or recognize possible psychological issues for people of African descent. Which I have to admit is very telling in how we choose to see psychological trauma, as well as reveals a bias in viewing African Americans as capable of bearing the effects of an institution that still affects them to this day. The argument against the idea that African Americans are not being affected by generational trauma connected to slavery appears to based on the idea that once slavery ended, all forms of trauma that were connected to that institution disappeared. But we know for a fact that this isn't true. From Jim Crow to lynching to prison exploitation to segregation to economic disenfranchisement, all of these markers born from the US institution of slavery affected African Americans for generations. And arguably, has led to passing along generational trauma that has had a significant impact on their collective and individual psyches.

I think generational experiences also have a lot to do with the specific familial environment you are raised in. For example, both of my parents were born in 1964, which is usually regarded as the last year of the boomer generation, but my mom was the first of five kids and my dad was the last of five. So my mom has a lot of the cultural experiences of a gen x-er because her younger siblings and my dad has a lot of the cultural experiences of a boomer because of his older siblings, the oldest of whom was 17 years older than him. It certainly is much more nuanced than people make it seem.

I think there was another KZfaq who made the claim that the closer you are to the transition points of the generational barriers, the more likely you are to find the concept of generations to be ridiculous.

Funny you mention John Green’s thoughts on TikTok considering how both him and Hank are blowing up on the platform as of late. Let’s all appreciate the fact that both of the Green brothers can somehow keep with the times while still being themselves.

Interesting what you said about germany. My grandfather was born in munich in 1947 moved around the world, finally settling in dc in 1978. My mom and her siblings definitely grew up with the strange impact of the war, being bullied for being a "jerry" in school often. He also had multiple behavioral disorders, like depression and bipolar, which was 100% exastrubated by the environment that he grew up in (no playgrounds, just rubble and old guns, and very abusive parents). These sicknesses also permeated through to my mom and her siblings, who grew up going back to germany in the summers where their step-grandfather (high-up nazi) terrorised everybody around. Also interesting is that my grandmother, who grew up in woodbridge ontario in the 1950s, inherited a very hippie mindset as the flipside result of the war. I think my grandfather fell in love with her because it was an escape from the world that he grew up in. Ironically, I remember getting called an "ami" by an old german man in a derogatory way while hiking in the alps when i was young. Overall, germany is complicated and that generation born right after the war inherited a world that wanted to beat them down and a lifetime of guilt.

I remember watching this video when it came out and it really opened my eyes to broader conversations around generations. Being Gen-Z myself I grew up constantly hearing people talk about millennials to the point where I thought that just referred to a young person. It’s fun to see zoomers being the new kids and I think you do a good job about talking about them which I feel isn’t very common among older people. I was very inspired by this video to talk about what defines Gen-Z on my own channel and I have JJ to thank for getting me interested :)

I’m curious how we will look back on COVID as a generation thing, most Zoomers are in their teen years and those seem to be the years that shape us the most culturally. On the other hand, melenials are probably the ones going to be the most economically affected by it, and might see it in a similar way to how the silent generation and older boomers saw the Great Depression

In Russia, a lot of generations are usually split by when they were born, because often the dictators at the helm of the country where there for long periods of time. I’m part of the Putin generation (born in 2003), my older brother was part of the Yeltsin/ 90’s generation (born in 1988), and my mom is part of the Brezhnev generation (born in 1968). My generation is known as the one that’s good with gizmos, and “has no respect for the fallen in WW2”. Also we by far have travelled way more on average than all of the other generations, due to how open Russia has been during our time. Also we are more likely to know English at some sort of basic level. My older brothers generation, by older generations, is known as the ones corrupted by “western trash” - to clarify, stuff like porn (websites), junk food, alcohol, tobacco, which was regulated heavily by the Soviet Union, whereas in the 90’s it wasn’t uncommon to see teens engaging in these activities since there was no regulation all of a sudden. By younger generations they are known as the ones that had the most freedom within Russia, since they had a lot more press freedom and what not back then, and stuff was less regulated. My moms generation is remembered as the freest one in the Soviet Union, as you could make jokes about Brezhnev and not be sent to gulag (which was nice). Putin’s generation, however, ended up being in their 40’s around the 90’s. This was problematic, because they still had a decade till retirement, and all of a sudden the country radically changed. This led to a massive spike in people who are nostalgic for the predictability of the Soviet Union, which you can observe in politicians such as Putin and Lukashenko. They also think within the paradigm of the Cold War, because of their nostalgia.

The field of epigenetics suggests that trauma can travel genetically through people for several generations

You really nailed that point about not having so many family members to have drama with. I always felt like I was missing out on something when hearing my parents and especially grand parents talk about all it their cousins and aunts and things.

As someone born in 97, I love to tease my older co-workers about not recognising things which used to be very popular back in late 90s/00s. It's very much in line with Spider-man calling Empire Strikes Back a very old movie, which made many Marvel fans feel old.

I feel like location plays a huge role when it comes to different generations. I was born in 1998 but have more in common with millennials than zoomers. In Qatar, we got everything super late compared to the west, and being in a lower-middle-class family didn't help either. I grew up on NES super Mario, VHS, no internet (got dial-up when I was like 9), no mobile phones etc.

I'm a zoomer, and my parents were born around the same time as you J.J., with their parents around the same time. I grew up with a lot of things my parents did, like: VHS and Cassette tapes, 90s Nick and CN shows, Grunge music, etc. However, I don't really feel like I relate to other zoomers. Maybe it's because I've been homeschooled, but I feel like I connect more with people from other generations.

I’m a bit biased, but I say zoomer humour is actually funny.

I have to say, I really respect your video format. You take a cultural phenomenon, examine it from your personal and cultural stand point, examine the idea, and then you get a whole nother video that next week to take a tour through viewers' experience of the same phenomenon. Absolutely a delight

In South Africa we call kids born after the end of Apartheid “born frees” I was born in 1993 so on the bubble and it was so odd growing up knowing what your parents and grandparents saw. I can’t imagine what hardcore overt state-sponsored racism must do to a person. It’s hard to ask the kind of questions that would help you understand.

It’s amazing at how many generational identifiers my family so easily fit into. I was born in 1994 to a Finnish immigrant father and an American mother. My maternal grandmother and great-grandparents immigrated to the US from Germany post-WW II. The trauma of the war bled through the generations, and my great grandmother would often relive the horrors of the Russian invasion of her Polish village, as well as stories of her many brothers before they went missing in the war. However, my upbringing was less shaped by post-war European immigration to the US than it was the turn of the century technology that influences so much of our lives today. My father assimilated quickly and even refused to speak Finnish in the house, stating it was useless because he’s “now an American.” He even lies to people and says he’s from Boston, despite obviously being foreign-born due to his accent. In regard to the technology/societal changes: I can still remember when you could meet your family at the gate in an airport without needing a ticket. I have fond memories of flying to see my grandmother and being able to deplane, run up the ramp, and give her a hug- the best immediate gratification a child could ask for. Other random millennial memories I have include: -using my grandmother’s dial-up internet connection to make a hotmail email address -having a family PC running Windows 98 -reading the dictionary and encyclopedia set for fun -watching my black and white TV with rabbit ears in my room as a kid -being obsessed with Barney and Teletubbies -rewinding VHS tapes -bringing floppy discs to school -playing Snake on my first cell phone (a blue Nokia that didn’t have a color screen) -not being allowed to send text messages because they used to cost $0.10 each It’s funny how nostalgic 20 years ago can feel nowadays.

Great video! I recently talked with my parents (boomers) about the different generational experiences. The most striking difference was the notion of growth and perceived crisis. For them, they started out poor but life and the economy become always better. Better wages, more consumer products, more liberties (social, religious etc) , the possibility to travel, first in the neighbouring country and then even to different continents! But from my perspective, there was just one crisis after another: 9/11, recession, debt crisis, Euro crisis, frequent terror attacks, refugee crisis, climate crisis, and now the pandemic. Therefore, I think I have less expectations for the future. Things just don't have to become naturally better, I never developed the same optimism of my parents. However, compared to them, it's much easier for me to accept/deal with negative developments. They think things could be muchbetter, I often say "well, things could bworse". Now that sounded much bleaker than it actually is^^

I like the term zillenial, the old gen z and young millennials together growing up together with new technology in a unique way

I'm an indian catholic so i can confirm that my parents and my grandparents have 9 -12 siblings and i have 2 😊

I grew up as an only child, fed and clothed by a poor single boomer mom in a very conservative state. She went through a lot of trauma, so I became what is known as a latchkey kid, supposedly in gen x. But I don't relate to that generation, or any one really. It’s hard to understand what my mom went through since she won’t talk about it and almost all of our family has passed away or has disowned her. These videos are a great lense into understanding how other families live their lives and their perspectives. Thanks for doing this.

I miss the time the 1980-1996~ was called Gen Y.

JJ, my much older brother is about your age (born in 1986), and I was born in late 1997. This sounds silly, but a big generational difference between us is that he grew up as a little kid playing 2D linear Mario games, while I grew up as a little kid playing 3D open World Mario games. We both grew up as huge Mario fans (like yourself!), and sometimes him and I ponder to what degree growing up in these distinct Mario eras affected how we think and problem solve

I'm not from a Catholic family but a Middle Eastern Muslim one and the crowded family with dozens of cousins is pretty relatable. There is a joke we say in my parent's hometown when we met someone in the gatherings: "Are you one of my cousins?"

I watched the second video first, but I'm still right there with you. I'm a year younger than you again and even though I am American, black and from South Carolina I feel we still share a common sense of the world.

1- thank you for your always thought-provoking, informative and entertaining content! 2- (oops, I wrote an entire article. Please bear with me and give it a whirl.) I used to think that generational trauma was pure boohokey (how do you spell that?) Perhaps this viewpoint was influenced by being raised by my politically conservative baby-boomer parents. However as I've gotten older and learned to face life's challenges and crisies (again, sp?) with fortitude and growth, and with an educational background in psychology and with the privilege of a butt-ton of therapy to foster that resilience-based growth, I've come to appreciate the extent to which even seemingly slight and insignificant (but actually hugely impactful) aspects of what I thought was just my inborn personality were actually shaped by my exposure to and development of my own intergenerational trauma and that of my family members, as well as the ways in which each person's own generational trauma came (and comes) into contact with that of our family members and friends and wildly exacerbates the situation. Some will view this attitude as an excuse. As you said, we all have a personal responsibility to grow beyond our upbringing rather than throwing our hands up and shouting "but I'm limited by the constraints of my upbringing!" But I have come to realize that realistically acknowledging and validating our challenges and limitations is actually the first crucial step to finding effective and sustainable ways to move past them. This is true not just of emotional/cultural limitations but of biological ones as well. So, for example, I have severe ADHD (can you tell by the extremely long opening sentence of this comment and my frequent use of parentheses?) and I spent my entire life being told that I could overcome the symptoms of my extreme executive function if only I motivated myself and tried harder. In short, my failure to compensate to the degree that would allow me to appear neurotypical was, in essence, a moral failing. I believed that narrative well into my adulthood, all the while burning myself out trying to overcome what felt to me like very normal limitations. After all, they were *my* normal. But it only took me so far, and that was neither impressive nor particularly functional. And then, in my late 30s, I got what I and my parents had until then deemed superfluous.... An official ADHD diagnosis. Over time that led me to access medication, but equally, if not even more, impactful, to discover support groups, which brought me to the understanding that so many of my perceived character flaws were actually symptoms of this disorder. Acknowledging this fact soon started to feel remarkably empowering as I discovered that when I stopped banging my head against the doors that my ADHD had locked, I managed not only to avoid tremendous headache and heartache, but I was available and alert enough to discover other unlocked doors leading down the same corridor and allowing me to get to the "places" I'd been fruitlessly trying to get to for decades. But in sharing this exciting knowledge with my family and so many others in my social circle, I was often met with resistance and denial. They feared that validating my struggles would result in that throwing up of hands and that my shortcomings would forever fall upon them as I would supposedly use their presence as as an opportunity to avoid growth. As if that would happen Let me tell you, after a lifetime of believing yourself to be incompetent at opening an unlocked door only to have someone point out the appropriate key just three steps away, you can bet that nothing short of the world's destruction would keep me away from trying to get to that key and opening that door. After all, it was also the key to my self-worth, the key that would prove to me that my struggles were not the result of my own poor choices, that I was not forever destined to be punished by the self-influcted wounds of my own undoing. My pride was too important. The proof is in the pudding, but it has take a long time for some of those around me.to rewrite their pictures of me in their heads. I think the biggest obstacle isn't just that first impressions are lasting ones, but also the difficulty of their having to live with the fact that they blamed me for something that was so clearly beyond me, and refused to give crucial help, even if only in the form of compassion, due to fear of enabling. In short, they pushed me down and kept me struggling , and even if their behavior was rooted in well intentioned and unavoidable ignorance, as I am sure it was, that truth is a very hard pill to swallow. Similarly, I have spent a lifetime pointing fingers in my mind at a parent who was the child of Holocaust survivors, (you're a grownup! Grow past the starting point you were given!) Only to recently discover how deeply entrenched that generational trauma is, and how without recognizing those limitations, there could never be any way to discover the paths to move past them. I see how my own resultant childhood traumas have impacted me, even to adulthood, in ways I earlier couldn't have imagined. As I see the layers and learn to understand them and where they came from, I learn the ways in which I can effectively peel them off and move into the next layers underneath....this process has been a springboard for incredible growth to stop certain intergenerational cycles of harm...but it has also been the springboard for tremendous compassionand love as I can see the ways in which people I care for were hurt. The habit of looking deeply and finding the connections has led me to understand the dynamics of pain that my loved ones have been caught in. And without exposure to an alternative perspective (so often lacking when the trauma has impacted the entire generation, as there is no one untouched by the trauma and still standing close enough to see it as NOT NORMAL) there is no way to move beyond. If the Holocaust still has such an impact of my daily life three generations down, there is no question in my mind that the periodd of African slavery in the US, which lasted much longer than wW2, has a very significant impact on those descended from slaves today. As long as we repeat the false narrative that the struggles of the past don't impact the present, as long as we refuse to acknowledge the validity of the challenges people face, we reinforce blame and helplessness for them, and prevent them from finding the solutions to move beyond.

Growing in a catholic hispanic family meant that my parents would always talk about distant relatives that i never heard of and when i told them, they couldn't understand how that was possible lol. I think many of the characteristics will depend on the socio-economic status, growing as a zoomer in a lower class family meant that i didn't have access to the internet, videogames or a lot of media at a young age, it was only when i became a teenager when i was introduced into this sorts of things, as many families in Peru, that only managed to get out of the difficult econmic situation from the 80s and 90s in the late 2000s and early 10s

it's weird that someone born in 1997 like me falls into the same group as someone born in 2013 while I correspond more to someone from 1992 than someone from 2014

That generational trauma you mentioned about Germany is definetily a thing as far as I can tell! Sometimes when speaking about my deceased grandfather (born in 1928) the question wether or not we can consider him a Nazi comes up and my mother (born in 1959) literally can't give an answer. She seems a) actually clueless but b) also like she's actively trying to avoid thinking too much about this topic. To be clear though, this must be a very hard situation and so I perfectly understand that trauma you mentioned... Learning about the Holocaust and the like while having fond childhood memories of your dad who was around when these things happened must be a very frustrating thing. There is a very fascinating story about the German Green Party politician and member of parliament Jürgen Trittin (born 1954), who supposedly did a trip to a former concentration camp with his father (born in 1923) when he was 15. His father is said to have told him "Look at what we have done. You must never let something like this happen again". The interresting twist: Trittin's father was a former Obersturmführer of the Waffen-SS. As far as I can tell this is rather exceptional though: It seems like "Dad, what did you think of the whole Hitler-Nazi-thing back then? :)" wasn't really something you brought up much in the 50s and 60s. In the late 60s a movement of leftist university students started questioning the apparant non-guilt of their parents' generation which led to a more open thematisation of the topic in the public. This was what happened on the streets however and I believe that in many family homes things went on as before. On another note: The GDR also has some legacy in the cultural contact of generations: My mother was born and raised in Western Germany and whenever young people state rather left leaning political views, she will always talk about how much she fears that clueless young people who haven't whitnessed Eastern Germany's cruelties will re-establish a GDR-like gouvernment. On the one hand side I believe that whitnessing the actions of the East German state must of course engrain itself into your memory and you'll always more cautious about a potential danger if you remeber a similar danger being a big thing. On the other hand side I also believe that the heavily anti-communist sentiment of the political culture of the Adenauer-Erhard-Kiesinger-era must have left it's traces. However we are all in some way or another children of our times and I do not in any way want to put myself above my mother's generation. By the way: Many people who lived in the GDR seem to be rather nostalgic for the "good ole days", which can be quite the disturbing culture shock within Germany to be frank. There is the term Ostalgie (East-algia as in nostalgia) for this sentiment. When going on a flee market in Dresden, Saxony I was very surprised by the massive amounts of GDR, SED and FDJ stuff people were buying and selling. This of course might be a rather noisy and shocking minority and I do not wish to provide a very negative perspective upon Eastern German people born up until the early 80ies since I have a very limited contact to this demographic and others probably know a lot more about this than I do. This is just a "Wessi"'s (colloquial, sometimes condescending term for a West German person) broad experience ;)

12:30 What an excellent description, and view of generational trauma, that looks at it quite logically. Thanks for the change in perspective!

That "catholic family" comment was super relatable to me. While my parents both have a rather average amount of siblings, my grandparents had a ton, which resulted in mind-boggling stuff like my mother having somewhere between 35 and 50 cousins (no one can remember exactly how many), and my family being rather matriarchal in terms of family structure, since most of the men in my family who lived in the first half of the 20th century died in WW2.

I'd say the Greatest Generation isn't quite gone just yet, there's still plenty of them left for them to be considered a living generation

I really enjoyed this video as a fellow millennial. Learning about your background and family was also really cool

In many, even most, ways I see myself as more X than Millennial (born '83). However, I do relate heavily to the Millennials in regards to being in college and just 'starting life' when 9/11 happened, and hitting the post-school work force only a few years before the financial chaos of '08. I'll never forget standing at my cash register day after day seeing the newspapers for sale behind me proclaiming the financial news and knowing things were truly shifting, a marked 'moment in history' was being experienced.

Born 1987. Middle class family in Ohio, USA. I saw internet go from Netscape Navigator to Broadband by the time I graduated high school. 9-11 was the trauma of my youth. I don't remember Desert Storm. My psyche was George W. Bush during my formative years.

I’m a zoomer (born in 2004) and both my parents are Gen Xers who had me later in life. They immigrated to Canada from Egypt (Dad) and Japan (Mom) and on the surface fit a pretty typical stereotype of immigrants who came here in the 80’s-90’s, though what’s interesting is that since my parents come from drastically different cultures, our understanding of generational divides vary greatly, so in our household we’ve never really been like “oh, people born in the 70’s are so…” because our ideas of people born in certain eras vary so greatly.

as a quebecer im really happy i found this channel cause it feels like you actually tackle topics directly related to me and my experiences which i really dont get from anywhere else

This is a fascinating subject, and expertly explained. Bravo!

I was born in 2001, which according to most charts puts me in the early years of gen Z, bordering on millennials. And indeed, I often feel "stuck" between those 2 worlds, not fully able to relate to either. For example, I love retro gaming and most of my favorite bands are part of the nu metal, metalcore, pop punk and emo scenes that all more or less went on in the early 2000s, but the way I connect to that stuff is often different from the rest of its fanbase, mostly millennials who played these games while they were popular, and discovered all that music on Myspace or whatever, while I'm only able to enjoy that content through retrospective: my first console was the DS, and I only started browsing the web in the early 2010s, albeit still on Windows XP with a shitty connection. Zoomers, on the other hand, seem to have very different interests and cultural elements that I'm partially oblivious to. I tend to avoid TikTok, I absolutely hate the constant hot-headed atmosphere of Twitter, I don't laugh at modern memes (by that I mean, the nonsensical deepfried memes, as opposed to the "witty" memes that used to be more widespread), my political opinions tend to be more moderate or conservative than many zoomers who are more in what I like to call the "woke" category, and in general, I feel like I'm not privy to the cultural references that kids just 2 years younger than me grew up around.

i personally believe that a generation cant truly e defined until most members are dead

I remember when I was young the phrase "generation gap" was used a lot and I can see that most of it was probably caused by the vast differences between WW2 and the Vietnam war. I didn't think there would be such a difference between me and my millennial children, but it seems there is a common opinion that the boomers caused the difficulties in the millennials lives today. I think 30+ years difference between parents and adult children, no matter how much parental love there is, will cause some degree of "gap." Life changes so fast and every decade seems to change for the better and the worse. BTW I love your thought provoking channel and your clear way of expressing ideas - not talking like a speeded up recording like many videos. You also have inflection in your voice which makes it so much more listenable than so many speakers. I'm one of your older subscribers at 65.

This was a great vid! Really dig how you brought it all together world wide!

I was born in 97 which makes me a kind of "zillenial" I guess. I would say big markers of my culture would be things like the Star Wars prequels, the transformers movies, and spongebob. Even though I lived through 9/11, I don't really have any pre-9/11 memories. I also feel like I'm "too old" for tik tok, but some of my friends do use it.

The age that parents have children is really interesting. For the first time, children coming through the schools have parents across four generations. This year I have students with biological parents that range from 26 to 74 years old. And you can tell by the behaviors of the child, how old the parents are.

This is a topic that does have a lot of impact in my life, thank you! I was born in 1972 so I very strongly (and loudly and proudly) identify as Generation X as I’m smack in the middle of it. Whenever I hear about “common experiences of Gen Xers” I stand up and shout “Yes! That is the Gen X experience! I’ve lived that!” My wife, however, was born in 1962. I try to draw her to identify as Gen X as she’s on the cusp of Boomer and X and I don’t think there’s a term for that hybrid generation like there is for Xennials. But even if there is she calls herself a Boomer and the cultural experiences she holds most dear are Boomer ones, despite my trying to get her to identify as X. And I think the reason for that is that she’s the baby of the family, she grew up with four older brothers who were all born between 1949 and 1959, unequivocally Boomers. So because that’s her experience growing up, despite the fact she could identify as X, she grew up with Boomers so she considers herself Boomer.

9:54 I was born in 1999 and my grandmother grew up in the 1950s. She had four siblings and I just have one. I remember whenever me and my sister fought over anything (Toys or Snacks) she would say that my generation doesn't understand sharing. She would go on telling stories about how whenever something was bought for kids at home it used to be evenly divided, without anyone fussing about it. I always doubted that if it was true or she was just saying so to teach us some moral lesson.

I am old enough to remember Latin as a spoken language.

I think something that really shows the generational gap between younger and just a litle older people is their comprehension of meme culture.

So interesting. I certainly feel that I'm living my mother's life in a number of ways: single parent, struggling financially, little hope that my life will change and improve.

I am a millennial, my parents are boomers. In 2015 I was a job-seeker and very worried about. I asked my father how he found his first (and only) job position in the '70s. He replied: "I bought a newspaper, I read job announcements and I found my permanent job position"

Supposedly the dividing line between millennials and zoomers (in North America at least) is that millennials can remember 9/11 and zoomers cannot. I've also seen frustration from fellow millennials that a lot of zoomers' politics seem to be informed by living through the Obama years but not the Bush years that came before them

I really despise being called "the tiktok generation." Tiktok only started being a big thing in 2018 witch actually makes it an alpha generation thing. I aslo also don't like being grouped in with the types of close minden naive people who dont understand things that are only slightly older then them. I still remember using internet explorer in the computer lab in school so when the boomers on the news make a big deal about us being the tiktok generation, I really hate it.

one of the major identifiers of Gen-x is the "latchkey kid". Women entered the workforce in the 70s, and social programs hadn't caught up to the economic realities, which meant that this generation basically had to fend for themselves in the after-early evening time until parents came home from work.

I’m a “zoomer” (born in 2002) and my parents were baby boomers born in the early 60s. It was really interesting being raised with old music and TV shows they watched when they were kids, and being taught values they had from their generation, while also engaging with the current internet culture. It really puts a better and cooler perspective about everything for me

Boomers: You millennials are ruining this country! Millennials: You ruined it in the first place! Zoomers: Both of you are toxic af Gen X: Wow did you guys see that Ducktales remake?

Excited to see how Gen alphas will turn out

its so funny being a working adult zoomer honestly because we are only just barely old enough to be adults, but people forget that we arent all still kids. most of my coworkers are millennials and gen x and one asked me on 9/11 this year where i was 20 years ago on this day and i had to tell her, well i was 2 so. i really have no clue. but on the other hand my coworkers will talk about myspace, or floppy disks, etc, and expect me to not know about them when i do, because ive been chronically online from the age of 3 (in true zoomer fashion)

Thank you ❤️ I really enjoy your videos. Keep up your good work, I really like your balanced mind and way of observe your experiences. Your videos are a good source of joy for me.

3:47 didn't expect the one and only summoning salt song here

The way I understood the line between Gen Z and Millenials is being able to remember a time before and after 9/11. Being born in 1999, I don’t remember anything before that and have pretty much only known a time of American war in the Middle East

I'm from Portugal and I can relate with what you said about catholic countries. My grandparents had a lot of siblings in comparison with my parents (my mom had two brothers and my dad none) and me (I have only a sister). Unfortunately, in Portugal we didn't have a baby boom because we only industrialized in the 60s and we didn't benefit from it due to the colonial war. Great video btw!

im really infatuated by your background stuff. All of your trinkets look so cute and interesting!

The “Some charts say I’m a Scorpio, but some charts say I’m a Libra” got me laughing so hard. My birthday is October 23rd.

In regards to family drama and big families, my god yes. My parents had me in their mid 30s in 89, so as boomer families go, my mother is one of 9, and my father is one of 7. From then, until now, it's nothing but bickering, arguing, prison sentences, disowning, basically anything you can imagine. It's a large cast of very.. "interesting" characters. I myself have a hard time relating to zoomers in many instances. It's clear there are certain generational divides.

I was born in 96' but tbh I have never felt like part of my generation. Part of it is growing up poor, so I missed out on the games and stuff my classmates had. I was also kind of a weird kid, watching documentaries and investigative journalism that was aimed at adults rather than what was popular with kids. I feel like I went from a poor, lonely kid to a struggling mini adult at age 9. By the time I was 14 I was making sure my mum paid her bills on time, renovating our house with her and taking a writing and a woodworking course with her. My classmates getting drunk at weekends at some "foam parties" was like a foreign culture to me.

I am a fellow Dutch-Canadian Vancouverite named J.J., thanks for another great video J.J.!

In Brazil, when it comes to this sort of 'Generational Trauma' you talked about, we have quite a complicated case with our Boomer generation. The military junta which ran the dictatorship here from '64 to '85 was largely backed and incentivized by a large portion of the white, middle to upper class boomers in the country, that still romanticize those days as being the 'golden era' of the country in the last century (despite all the repression of free speech, the terrible economic administration, the persecutions and murders, and so on). This, in many ways, has created a large rift between this section of Brazilian boomers and their X'er / Millennial sons, as well as their Zoomer grandsons, with a significant part of their descendants either being indoctrinated into the same romanticized view of this terrible past, or acclimatized into cold and distant relationships with them.

I think an often forgotten generational/regional phenomenon in Canada stems from the exodus of people from the Maritime provinces to the prairies in the 1970s and 80s. My dad grew up with 17 siblings on Cape Breton Island before moving his family moved to Saskatchewan to find work after the collapse of the Cod fishery.

the german generational trauma you talked about is something i think a lot about from discussions with people i talk to here, in some academic social sciences, activist circles, and regular folk we're a massively depressed and anxious generation, grandchildren of a generation they used to call "Kriegszitterer" (~ "war shiverer"; shell shock), and the kids of the children they brought up with remnants -in der minds and their bookshelves- of destructive fascist pedagogy i find that line of discussion immensely extremely important. and rewarding, especially as a young german myself.

I always found my place in this "generational divide" somewhat confusing but also somewhat apt. My parents were Gen Xers who came of age in Mexico in the 80s meaning that, while still somewhat poor for American standards, they grew up with consumer goods and things like MTV. Once I was born in the mid 90s, Mexico saw a decline in economic stability and a high rate of emigration to the US. My early childhood was defined mostly by 90s-early 2000s internet, N64, and the emo scene, and I came of age in the 2010s so I'd be considered an older Zoomer. Regarding the family thing, yes. I have well over 70 first and second cousins, but only 2 siblings. Because of the age of my parents, I've never really had to deal with overt conservativism and religiosity in my immediate family, though this is very different for my older relatives

In Russia boomers are always associated with huge USSR nostalgia (and particularly Stalin). GenX'ers in their turn, (in my opinion) usually are tough guys with very materialistic values and rationalistic lifeview. They seem to not care about politics and have strong ties with their families. Their generation was also affected by the fall of ussr, as they during childhood they were expecting and preparing to live in completely different system, for example the specialisations that were considered prestige suddenly became irrelevant; free trade economy was a kind of a shock for them

im in a similar weird spot to the xennials, i was born in 1999 so growing up i was considered a millenial but now the definition stops at 1996. at the same time i relate a lot to people born 1994-2000 but feel pretty disconnected from people born only a couple years after me so i feel like im in a similar inbetween situation.

Fantastic video JJ! I found it very informative, thanks for creating content like this!!!

I just finished a book called 'Inherited Fate' (it's in Hungarian so I don't think there is an English version). In it the author mentions how a grandparent's trauma can be grandchildren's cause of anxiety, panic attack and many more problems. The author encourages people to listen or even write down our parents' and their parents' life story and how they are told. For e.g my grandma has been bombarded with criticism throughout her life (by her own family!) from a very young age (when her father gave her a rude nickname - because her feet looked unusual). She never stood up for herself, because noone encouraged her, thus she developed a perfectionism towards herself. She always tells these stories with sadness and grief. Probably that's why I had so high expectations towards myself and was never happy about my looks after I became self-aware and started to analyse everything connected to me.

I'm México a lot of gen z grew with millenial pop culture due to mexican tv airing 90's cartoons

Last time I was this early, it was considered a compliment to call someone a Boomer.

Jesus christ man I've watched your videos exclusively for hours a day for like 2 weeks now and you have soooo much good content I hope I'll never get to the day where i watch through it all and actually have to wait for new uploads 😔

Your videos are like well-written thesis projects. I really enjoy them!

Another J. J. video, huzzah! As a Zoomer born in 2005, I can tell you that kids my age definitely fit the Gen Z stereotype. Making TikToks, using Zoomer slang, wearing streetwear, proficiency on the internet, and a lot of shared cultural memories from the late 2000s - early 2010s. My Gen X-er parents always talk about not having Google and delivering newspapers and watching the Berlin Wall crumble and that sort of thing.

I definitely agree that internet literacy is probably the greatest distinction to be made between zoomers in millennials. It seems to me that the way people interact with and regard each other in my generation (zoomers) is vastly different from how people who grew up before the modern internet do and I think this is reflected in the cultures. It's difficult to put into words all of the ways in which they're different, but it's clear they are, even from going between different online spaces where most of the users are younger or older; it can feel like moving between worlds. But as far as your question at the end of the video, my family loosely follows the trope of the parents coming from nothing and working hard to amass a fortune later in life and then having kids raised with a silver spoon and never really knowing much adversity. Both of my parents, nearly 60, came from this very small Canadian town and were born into large families with even more massive extended members, none of which had very much money to go around. I'm a 20 year old student, musician, and artist who spends far too much time on the internet. I was conceived accidently when my parents were nearly 40 and so growing up, most of the stories people my age hear from their grandparents, I heard from my parents (the typical story of how they had to walk 20km to school uphill both ways in the snow and without shoes comes to mind). My brother, on the other hand, was born in '86 I want to say, and was my idea of a quintessential 90's kid: skateboarding, gamer, anti-authority type. He too follows the scheme of the millennial that is fluent in technology, but is somewhat boggled by the internet (he stay away entirely nowadays, only playing games on PS4 and occasionally browsing reddit). When stood next to my parents, I can't help but call me and my brother privileged and lazy, but in our defense my parents are honestly two of the most hardworking people I've ever met. They got together in high school and some time after graduating they were effectively homeless. For the next ten or so years, they juggled anywhere from 2 to 6 jobs each and raised themselves into the middle class, bringing their parents with them as well as helping some of their brothers and sisters to get there too, whether via generosity or thievery. Then they started their own business in the trades and taught themselves everything to get off the ground. Now, nearly 40 years and two dozen employees later, It's the most reputable business of it's type in the whole region. My brother works under my uncle who works at my Dad's business and I work there too and will for as long I'm getting my degree. I don't know yet what I'll do once I get it, but I think I'm leaning towards politics or history, maybe journalism even. I'm surprised you read all that, but thanks for taking the time. I love your videos JJ :)

9:29 Being from Ireland, I have to say I do relate. My mother has had 3 brothers, and her cousin has 11/12 children.