stereotypes about young generation essay

Find anything you save across the site in your account

It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”

By Louis Menand

The discovery that you can make money marketing merchandise to teen-agers dates from the early nineteen-forties, which is also when the term “youth culture” first appeared in print. There was a reason that those things happened when they did: high school. Back in 1910, most young people worked; only fourteen per cent of fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds were still in school. In 1940, though, that proportion was seventy-three per cent. A social space had opened up between dependency and adulthood, and a new demographic was born: “youth.”

The rate of high-school attendance kept growing. By 1955, eighty-four per cent of high-school-age Americans were in school. (The figure for Western Europe was sixteen per cent.) Then, between 1956 and 1969, college enrollment in the United States more than doubled, and “youth” grew from a four-year demographic to an eight-year one. By 1969, it made sense that everyone was talking about the styles and values and tastes of young people: almost half the population was under twenty-five.

Today, a little less than a third of the population is under twenty-five, but youth remains a big consumer base for social-media platforms, streaming services, computer games, music, fashion, smartphones, apps, and all kinds of other goods, from motorized skateboards to eco-friendly water bottles. To keep this market churning, and to give the consulting industry something to sell to firms trying to understand (i.e., increase the productivity of) their younger workers, we have invented a concept that allows “youth culture” to be redefined periodically. This is the concept of the generation.

The term is borrowed from human reproductive biology. In a kinship structure, parents and their siblings constitute “the older generation”; offspring and their cousins are “the younger generation.” The time it takes, in our species, for the younger generation to become the older generation is traditionally said to be around thirty years. (For the fruit fly, it’s ten days.) That is how the term is used in the Hebrew Bible, and Herodotus said that a century could be thought of as the equivalent of three generations.

Around 1800, the term got transplanted from the family to society. The new idea was that people born within a given period, usually thirty years, belong to a single generation. There is no sound basis in biology or anything else for this claim, but it gave European scientists and intellectuals a way to make sense of something they were obsessed with, social and cultural change. What causes change? Can we predict it? Can we prevent it? Maybe the reason societies change is that people change, every thirty years.

Before 1945, most people who theorized about generations were talking about literary and artistic styles and intellectual trends—a shift from Romanticism to realism, for example, or from liberalism to conservatism. The sociologist Karl Mannheim, in an influential essay published in 1928, used the term “generation units” to refer to writers, artists, and political figures who self-consciously adopt new ways of doing things. Mannheim was not interested in trends within the broader population. He assumed that the culture of what he called “peasant communities” does not change.

Nineteenth-century generational theory took two forms. For some thinkers, generational change was the cause of social and historical change. New generations bring to the world new ways of thinking and doing, and weed out beliefs and practices that have grown obsolete. This keeps society rejuvenated. Generations are the pulse of history. Other writers thought that generations were different from one another because their members carried the imprint of the historical events they lived through. The reason we have generations is that we have change, not the other way around.

There are traces of both the pulse hypothesis and the imprint hypothesis in the way we talk about generations today. We tend to assume that there is a rhythm to social and cultural history that maps onto generational cohorts, such that each cohort is shaped by, or bears the imprint of, major historical events—Vietnam, 9/11, COVID . But we also think that young people develop their own culture, their own tastes and values, and that this new culture displaces the culture of the generation that preceded theirs.

Today, the time span of a generational cohort is usually taken to be around fifteen years (even though the median age of first-time mothers in the U.S. is now twenty-six and of first-time fathers thirty-one). People born within that period are supposed to carry a basket of characteristics that differentiate them from people born earlier or later.

This supposition requires leaps of faith. For one thing, there is no empirical basis for claiming that differences within a generation are smaller than differences between generations. (Do you have less in common with your parents than with people you have never met who happen to have been born a few years before or after you?) The theory also seems to require that a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X, must have different values, tastes, and life experiences from a person born in 1964, the last year of the baby-boom generation (1946-64). And that someone born in the last birth year of Gen X, 1980, has more in common with someone born in 1965 or 1970 than with someone born in 1981 or 1990.

Everyone realizes that precision dating of this kind is silly, but although we know that chronological boundaries can blur a bit, we still imagine generational differences to be bright-line distinctions. People talk as though there were a unique DNA for Gen X—what in the nineteenth century was called a generational “entelechy”—even though the difference between a baby boomer and a Gen X-er is about as meaningful as the difference between a Leo and a Virgo.

You could say the same things about decades, of course. A year is, like a biological generation, a measurable thing, the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. But there is nothing in nature that corresponds to a decade—or a century, or a millennium. Those are terms of convenience, determined by the fact that we have ten fingers.

Yet we happily generalize about “the fifties” and “the sixties” as having dramatically distinct, well, entelechies. Decade-thinking is deeply embedded. For most of us, “She’s a seventies person” carries a lot more specific information than “She’s Gen X.” By this light, generations are just a novel way of slicing up the space-time continuum, no more arbitrary, and possibly a little less, than decades and centuries. The question, therefore, is not “Are generations real?” The question is “Are they a helpful way to understand anything?”

Bobby Duffy, the author of “The Generation Myth” (Basic), says yes, but they’re not as helpful as people think. Duffy is a social scientist at King’s College London. His argument is that generations are just one of three factors that explain changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The others are historical events and “life-cycle effects,” that is, how people change as they age. His book illustrates, with a somewhat overwhelming array of graphs and statistics, how events and aging interact with birth cohort to explain differences in racial attitudes, happiness, suicide rates, political affiliations—you name it, for he thinks that his three factors explain everything.

Link copied

Duffy’s over-all finding is that people in different age groups are much more alike than all the talk about generations suggests, and one reason for all that talk, he thinks, is the consulting industry. He says that, in 2015, American firms spent some seventy million dollars on generational consulting (which doesn’t seem that much, actually). “What generational differences exist in the workplace?” he asks. His answer: “Virtually none.”

Duffy is good at using data to take apart many familiar generational characterizations. There is no evidence, he says, of a “loneliness epidemic” among young people, or of a rise in the rate of suicide. The falling off in sexual activity in the United States and the U.K. is population-wide, not just among the young.

He says that attitudes about gender in the United States correlate more closely with political party than with age, and that, in Europe, anyway, there are no big age divides in the recognition of climate change. There is “just about no evidence,” he says, that Generation Z (1997-2012, encompassing today’s college students) is more ethically motivated than other generations. When it comes to consumer boycotts and the like, “ ‘cancel culture’ seems to be more of a middle-age thing.” He worries that generational stereotypes—such as the characterization of Gen Z-ers as woke snowflakes—are promoted in order to fuel the culture wars.

The woke-snowflake stereotype is the target of “Gen Z, Explained” (Chicago), a heartfelt defense of the values and beliefs of contemporary college students. The book has four authors, Roberta Katz, Sarah Ogilvie, Jane Shaw, and Linda Woodhead—an anthropologist, a linguist, a historian, and a sociologist—and presents itself as a social-scientific study, including a “methodological appendix.” But it resembles what might be called journalistic ethnography: the portrayal of social types by means of interviews and anecdotes.

The authors adopt a key tenet of the pulse hypothesis. They see Gen Z-ers as agents of change, a generation that has created a youth culture that can transform society. (The fact that when they finished researching their book, in 2019, roughly half of Gen Z was under sixteen does not trouble them, just as the fact that at the time of Woodstock, in 1969, more than half the baby-boom generation was under thirteen doesn’t prevent people from making generalizations about the baby boomers.)

Their book is based on hour-long interviews with a hundred and twenty students at three colleges, two in California (Stanford and Foothill College, a well-regarded community college) and one in the U.K. (Lancaster, a selective research university). The authors inform us that the interviewees were chosen “by word of mouth and personal networking,” which sounds a lot like self-selection. It is, in any event (as they unapologetically acknowledge), hardly a randomized sample.

The authors tell us that the interviews were conducted entirely by student research assistants, which means that, unless the research assistants simply read questions off a list, there was no control over the depth or the direction of the interviews. There were also some focus groups, in which students talked about their lives with, mostly, their friends, an exercise performed in an echo chamber. Journalists, or popular ethnographers, would at least have met and observed their subjects. It’s mystifying why the authors felt a need to distance themselves in this way, given how selective their sample was to begin with. We are left with quotations detached from context. Self-reporting is taken at face value.

The authors supplemented the student interviews with a lexical glossary designed to pick out words and memes heavily used by young people, and with two surveys, designed by one of the authors (Woodhead) and conducted by YouGov, an Internet polling company, of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds in the United States and the U.K.

Where there is an awkward discrepancy between the survey results and what the college students say in the interviews, the authors attempt to explain it away. The YouGov surveys found that ninety-one per cent of all persons aged eighteen to twenty-five, American and British, identify as male or female, and only four per cent as gender fluid or nonbinary. (Five per cent declined to answer.) This does not match the impression created by the interviews, which suggest that there should be many more fluid and nonbinary young people out there, so the authors say that we don’t really know what the survey respondents meant by “male” and “female.” Well, then, maybe they should have been asked.

The authors attribute none of the characteristics they identify as Gen Z to the imprint of historical events—with a single exception: the rise of the World Wide Web. Gen Z is the first “born digital” generation. This fact has often been used to stereotype young people as screen-time addicts, captives of their smartphones, obsessed with how they appear on social media, and so on. The Internet is their “culture.” They are trapped in the Web. The authors of “Gen Z, Explained” emphatically reject this line of critique. They assure us that Gen Z-ers “understand both the potential and the downside of technology” and possess “critical awareness about the technology that shapes their lives.”

For the college students who were interviewed (although not, evidently, for the people who were surveyed), a big part of Gen Z culture revolves around identity. As the authors put it, “self-labeling has become an imperative that is impossible to escape.” This might seem to suggest a certain degree of self-absorption, but the authors assure us that these young people “are self-identified and self-reliant but markedly not self-centered, egotistical, or selfish.”

“Lily” is offered to illustrate the ethical richness of this new concern. It seems that Lily has a friend who is always late to meet with her: “She explained that while she of course wanted to honor and respect his unique identity, choices, and lifestyle—including his habitual tardiness—she was also frustrated by how that conflicted with her sense that he was then not respecting her identity and preference for timeliness.” The authors do not find this amusing.

The book’s big claim is that Gen Z-ers “may well be the heralds of new attitudes and expectations about how individuals and institutions can change for the better.” They have come up with new ways of working (collaborative), new forms of identity (fluid and intersectional), new concepts of community (diverse, inclusive, non-hierarchical).

Methodology aside, there is much that is refreshing here. There is no reason to assume that younger people are more likely to be passive victims of technology than older people (that assumption is classic old person’s bias), and it makes sense that, having grown up doing everything on a computer, Gen Z-ers have a fuller understanding of the digital universe than analog dinosaurs do. The dinosaurs can say, “You don’t know what you’re missing,” but Gen Z-ers can say, “You don’t understand what you’re getting.”

The claim that addiction to their devices is the cause of a rise in mental disorders among teen-agers is a lot like the old complaint that listening to rock and roll turns kids into animals. The authors cite a recent study (not their own) that concludes that the association between poor mental health and eating potatoes is greater than the association with technology use. We’re all in our own fishbowls. We should hesitate before we pass judgment on what life is like in the fishbowls of others.

The major problem with “Gen Z, Explained” is not so much the authors’ fawning tone, or their admiration for the students’ concerns—“environmental degradation, equality, violence, and injustice”—even though they are the same concerns that almost everyone in their social class has, regardless of age. The problem is the “heralds of a new dawn” stuff.

“A crisis looms for all unless we can find ways to change,” they warn. “Gen Zers have ideas of the type of world they would like to bring into being. By listening carefully to what they are saying, we can appreciate the lessons they have to teach us: be real, know who you are, be responsible for your own well-being, support your friends, open up institutions to the talents of the many, not the few, embrace diversity, make the world kinder, live by your values.”

I believe we have been here before, Captain. Fifty-one years ago, The New Yorker ran a thirty-nine-thousand-word piece that began:

There is a revolution under way . . . It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions, and social structure are changing in consequence. Its ultimate creation could be a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. This is the revolution of the new generation.

The author was a forty-two-year-old Yale Law School professor named Charles Reich, and the piece was an excerpt from his book “The Greening of America,” which, when it came out, later that year, went to No. 1 on the Times best-seller list.

Reich had been in San Francisco in 1967, during the so-called Summer of Love, and was amazed and excited by the flower-power wing of the counterculture—the bell-bottom pants (about which he waxes ecstatic in the book), the marijuana and the psychedelic drugs, the music, the peace-and-love life style, everything.

He became convinced that the only way to cure the ills of American life was to follow the young people. “The new generation has shown the way to the one method of change that will work in today’s post-industrial society: revolution by consciousness,” he wrote. “This means a new way of living, almost a new man. This is what the new generation has been searching for, and what it has started to achieve.”

So how did that work out? The trouble, of course, was that Reich was basing his observations and predictions on, to use Mannheim’s term, a generation unit—a tiny number of people who were hyperconscious of their choices and values and saw themselves as being in revolt against the bad thinking and failed practices of previous generations. The folks who showed up for the Summer of Love were not a representative sample of sixties youth.

Most young people in the sixties did not practice free love, take drugs, or protest the war in Vietnam. In a poll taken in 1967, when people were asked whether couples should wait to have sex until they were married, sixty-three per cent of those in their twenties said yes, virtually the same as in the general population. In 1969, when people aged twenty-one to twenty-nine were asked whether they had ever used marijuana, eighty-eight per cent said no. When the same group was asked whether the United States should withdraw immediately from Vietnam, three-quarters said no, about the same as in the general population.

Most young people in the sixties were not even notably liberal. When people who attended college from 1966 to 1968 were asked which candidate they preferred in the 1968 Presidential election, fifty-three per cent said Richard Nixon or George Wallace. Among those who attended college from 1962 to 1965, fifty-seven per cent preferred Nixon or Wallace, which matched the results in the general election.

The authors of “Gen Z, Explained” are making the same erroneous extrapolation. They are generalizing on the basis of a very small group of privileged people, born within five or six years of one another, who inhabit insular communities of the like-minded. It’s fine to try to find out what these people think. Just don’t call them a generation.

Most of the millions of Gen Z-ers may be quite different from the scrupulously ethical, community-minded young people in the book. Duffy cites a survey, conducted in 2019 by a market-research firm, in which people were asked to name the characteristics of baby boomers, Gen X-ers, millennials (1981-96), and Gen Z-ers. The top five characteristics assigned to Gen Z were: tech-savvy, materialistic, selfish, lazy, and arrogant. The lowest-ranked characteristic was ethical. When Gen Z-ers were asked to describe their own generation, they came up with an almost identical list. Most people born after 1996 apparently don’t think quite as well of themselves as the college students in “Gen Z, Explained” do.

In any case, “explaining” people by asking them what they think and then repeating their answers is not sociology. Contemporary college students did not invent new ways of thinking about identity and community. Those were already rooted in the institutional culture of higher education. From Day One, college students are instructed about the importance of diversity, inclusion, honesty, collaboration—all the virtuous things that the authors of “Gen Z, Explained” attribute to the new generation. Students can say (and some do say) to their teachers and their institutions, “You’re not living up to those values.” But the values are shared values.

And they were in place long before Gen Z entered college. Take “intersectionality,” which the students in “Gen Z, Explained” use as a way of refining traditional categories of identity. That term has been around for more than thirty years. It was coined (as the authors note) in 1989, by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. And Crenshaw was born in 1959. She’s a boomer.

“Diversity,” as an institutional priority, dates back even farther. It played a prominent role in the affirmative-action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, in 1978, which opened the constitutional door to race-conscious admissions. That was three “generations” ago. Since then, almost every selective college has worked to achieve a diverse student body and boasts about it when it succeeds. College students think of themselves and their peers in terms of identity because of how the institution thinks of them.

People who went to college in an earlier era may find this emphasis a distraction from students’ education. Why should they be constantly forced to think about their own demographic profiles and their differences from other students? But look at American politics—look at world politics—over the past five years. Aren’t identity and difference kind of important things to understand?

And who creates “youth culture,” anyway? Older people. Youth has agency in the sense that it can choose to listen to the music or wear the clothing or march in the demonstrations or not. And there are certainly ground-up products (bell-bottoms, actually). Generally, though, youth has the same degree of agency that I have when buying a car. I can choose the model I want, but I do not make the cars.

Failure to recognize the way the fabric is woven leads to skewed social history. The so-called Silent Generation is a particularly outrageous example. That term has come to describe Americans who went to high school and college in the nineteen-fifties, partly because it sets up a convenient contrast to the baby-boom generation that followed. Those boomers, we think—they were not silent! In fact, they mostly were.

The term “Silent Generation” was coined in 1951, in an article in Time —and so was not intended to characterize the decade. “Today’s generation is ready to conform,” the article concluded. Time defined the Silent Generation as people aged eighteen to twenty-eight—that is, those who entered the workforce mostly in the nineteen-forties. Though the birth dates of Time’s Silent Generation were 1923 to 1933, the term somehow migrated to later dates, and it is now used for the generation born between 1928 and 1945.

So who were these silent conformists? Gloria Steinem, Muhammad Ali, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr., Billie Jean King, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Berry Gordy, Amiri Baraka, Ken Kesey, Huey Newton, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol . . . Sorry, am I boring you?

It was people like these, along with even older folks, like Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Pauli Murray, who were active in the culture and the politics of the nineteen-sixties. Apart from a few musicians, it is hard to name a single major figure in that decade who was a baby boomer. But the boomers, most of whom were too young then even to know what was going on, get the credit (or, just as unfairly, the blame).

Mannheim thought that the great danger in generational analysis was the elision of class as a factor in determining beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. Today, we would add race, gender, immigration status, and any number of other “preconditions.” A woman born to an immigrant family in San Antonio in 1947 had very different life chances from a white man born in San Francisco that year. Yet the baby-boom prototype is a white male college student wearing striped bell-bottoms and a peace button, just as the Gen Z prototype is a female high-school student with spending money and an Instagram account.

For some reason, Duffy, too, adopts the conventional names and dates of the postwar generations (all of which originated in popular culture). He offers no rationale for this, and it slightly obscures one of his best points, which is that the most formative period for many people happens not in their school years but once they leave school and enter the workforce. That is when they confront life-determining economic and social circumstances, and where factors like their race, their gender, and their parents’ wealth make an especially pronounced difference to their chances.

Studies have consistently indicated that people do not become more conservative as they age. As Duffy shows, however, some people find entry into adulthood delayed by economic circumstances. This tends to differentiate their responses to survey questions about things like expectations. Eventually, he says, everyone catches up. In other words, if you are basing your characterization of a generation on what people say when they are young, you are doing astrology. You are ascribing to birth dates what is really the result of changing conditions.

Take the boomers: when those who were born between 1946 and 1952 entered the workforce, the economy was surging. When those who were born between 1953 and 1964 entered it, the economy was a dumpster fire. It took longer for younger boomers to start a career or buy a house. People in that kind of situation are therefore likely to register in surveys as “materialistic.” But it’s not the Zeitgeist that’s making them that way. It’s just the business cycle. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

• How we became infected by chain e-mail .
• Twelve classic movies to watch with your kids.
• The secret lives of fungi .
• The photographer who claimed to capture the ghost of Abraham Lincoln .
• Why are Americans still uncomfortable with atheism ?
• The enduring romance of the night train .
• Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

Books & Fiction

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Rebecca Mead

By Michael Schulman

By Allison Keeley

By Helen Shaw

Opinion: Troubled youth? Contrary to stereotypes, much of Gen Z is doing just fine

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Recent surveys underscoring the prevalence of mental health challenges among young people leave me very concerned — not just about the findings but also about counterproductive perceptions of younger generations.

A Common Sense Media poll found that 53% of the country’s 12- to 17-year-olds see mental health challenges as a major problem in their schools. And a Gallup-Walton Family Foundation study reported a significant decline in the proportion of Gen Z youths who consider their mental health excellent since 2013. These findings echo a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey indicating 42% of high school students had experienced such persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year that they couldn’t participate in regular activities, up from 28% in 2011.

I’ve already heard adults labeling today’s young people the Hopeless Generation, the Anxious Generation, the Depressed Generation, the COVID Generation and the Troubled Generation. The latest surveys threaten to reinforce such stereotypes.

Opinion: How California could extend mental health care to millions of residents in need

The rules initially blocked me from seeing an out-of-state therapist through telehealth. But depression is depression, whether you live in Texas or California, Alaska or Hawaii.

Dec. 1, 2023

Don’t get me wrong: Given my years of work on youth mental health, I understand that it’s imperative to address this challenge. But while we’re doing that, we can’t forget that many young people aren’t struggling.

While only 20% of those surveyed by Gallup-Walton reported that their mental health was “excellent,” for example, 44% said it was “good,” along with 26% reporting “only fair” and 10% “poor.” We need to address these mental health challenges without labeling an entire generation as troubled.

I have spent the last nine years listening to what adolescents think and feel in focus groups, two nationally representative studies of 9- through 19-year-olds, in-depth interviews with young people from these studies and a school behavioral study. One of the questions I asked is what they want the adults of America to know about people their age.

Thirty-eight percent answered “don’t stereotype us” or “don’t label us,” an overwhelming number for an open-ended question. They emphasized that not all young people share the same challenges.

Op-Ed: The kids who aren’t all right — the pandemic’s lasting toll on youth mental health

We need to avoid thinking children will recover from the past year without mental health support. Young people are resilient, but they are vulnerable.

June 13, 2021

In their words: “Not all of us fall under the umbrella of being problematic drug addicts”; “All kids aren’t troublemakers or irresponsible”; and “We aren’t social-media-obsessed, we aren’t extremely self-involved, our phones don’t define us, and the internet is not going to be the end of us.”

These responses show that we adults have to try harder to hold two ideas in our minds as we parent, teach and raise the next generation. We need to address the real challenges that some young people face without subjecting all of them to unhelpful generalizations.

Yes, adults have long been too ready to attach negative labels to teenagers. This has been true since the dawn of the study of adolescent development in the early 20th century. It was regarded as a time of “storm and stress” then as it is today.

In one of my studies, we asked the parents of 9- through 19-year-olds to describe the typical adolescent brain in one word. Fifty-nine percent used negative words, while 27% used neutral words and only 14% used positive words. But when I asked parents to select from a list of positive and negative words to describe children their child’s age as well as to describe their own child, they were much more likely to be negative about other people’s children than their own.

We also found that parents who used negative words to describe the teen brain were more likely to have children who reported more negative feelings, including anger, sadness, loneliness and worry.

What comes first, young people’s negative feelings or parents’ negative views? We couldn’t fully answer that question, but we could control for factors that might affect how adults see teenagers, such as demographics, the level of conflict between parents and children, and the negative words parents use to describe their children. Our finding of a correlation between views and feelings held up.

The relationship also persisted when we surveyed the same parents and adolescents again nine months later, during the pandemic. To put it another way, the parents who held more positive views of teenagers in general had kids who were doing better during a very rough period in our nation’s history.

Parents in my studies told me again and again that kids live up or down to the views we have of them. Seeing this generation as a troubled or anxious generation could therefore lead adults to act in ways that exacerbate the mental health challenges that some but not all adolescents face.

So what can we do? We as a society certainly need a mental health system that provides access to affordable, high-quality, consistent care more reliably that it does now. We need the education provided by our schools to be more engaging, relevant and meaningful. And we need to mitigate the risks of social media to young people.

Beyond these monumental undertakings, however, all of us can help in smaller, everyday ways. We can work to improve young people’s relationships with the people in their lives, especially the older people — a point that the surgeon general’s 2021 report on youth mental health emphasizes. Our own study found that when adolescents reported that that they were treated with respect, made to feel as if they belong, and helped to grow and learn, they fared well during the pandemic. They got better grades, had a more hopeful view of their futures and were less stressed.

It’s similarly important that we refrain from the age-old pastime of deriding and dismissing teenagers. Let’s remember that while adolescence can be a time of great vulnerability, it can also be one of huge possibility .

Ellen Galinsky is the president of the Families and Work Institute and author of the forthcoming “ The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens .”

More to Read

In defense of helicopter parents

April 23, 2024

Abcarian: The boomer versus millennial grudge match is silly

April 7, 2024

Letters to the Editor: Give ‘Generation Alpha’ a break. Millennial offspring can’t be that bad

March 28, 2024

A cure for the common opinion

Get thought-provoking perspectives with our weekly newsletter.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Entertainment & Arts

Ashley Judd, Aloe Blacc open up about deaths of Naomi Judd, Avicii in White House visit

April 24, 2024

Opinion: California law requires police to fix these bad policies. So why haven’t they?

Doris Kearns Goodwin and husband Dick Goodwin lived, observed, created and chronicled the 1960s

Abcarian: Criminalizing homelessness is unconscionable, but is it unconstutitional?

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Relationships Articles & More

Don’t be so quick to stereotype generations, a new book shows how wrong-headed our assumptions are about different generations and promotes understanding and connection..

We’ve all heard the stereotypes before. The Greatest Generation is “ responsible and hard-working ”; Baby Boomers are “ selfish ”; Gen Xers are “ cynical and disaffected ”; Millennials are “ entitled and lazy ”; Gen Zers are “ civic-minded .” Even though these stereotypes are frequently called into question , they linger in the mind, fed by media, politicians, and business experts.

But, while characterizing generations is a common practice, it’s often counterproductive, says Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London and author of a new book, The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think . Duffy argues that assigning cohorts of people particular traits misses the importance of outside factors affecting their attitudes and actions. Plus, it takes us down a fruitless path of pitting one generation against another, creating division.

“The generation we were born into is merely one important part of the story, alongside the extraordinary influence of individual life cycles and the impact of historical events,” writes Duffy. “Although it is possible to learn something invaluable about ourselves by studying generational dynamics, we will not learn these lessons from a mixture of manufactured conflicts and tiresome clichés.”

As a course corrective, Duffy provides longitudinal data on a multitude of issues—from obesity to views on pre-marital sex to car ownership and much more—showing how generations respond to different social, health, and economic trends. In this way, he separates out truly generational effects from changes that affect all ages at a particular historical moment or changes that affect everyone once they hit a certain age. This makes for fascinating reading, much of it counterintuitive—and instructive.

How we get generational stereotypes wrong

Part of what drives generational stereotyping is uncertainty of the future and worry that our children will not do as well as we did in life, says Duffy. We look for simplistic explanations rather than exploring complex reasons for a generation’s struggle to succeed, missing out on opportunities to work together to ameliorate present problems or prepare for future disaster.

A case in point is our concern over climate change. Many of us fall prey to the stereotype that younger generations are the most concerned about climate change and are leading the fight against global warming (think Greta Thunberg and her movement). But, when Duffy looks at public opinion, he finds that worry about climate change has been rising among all generations, with very little difference between them. And, while younger-generation activism is certainly important for creating visibility, Baby Boomers may be more likely than younger people to take a stand against global warming by changing their actual behavior.

In other words, our generational stereotypes of selfish Boomers and caring Gen Zers can be misleading. Plus, they can cause people to put too much faith in younger generations, thinking they will solve climate change rather than all of us stepping up to do something.

Another persistent myth—that Gen Xers and Millennials are lazier, more materialistic, and less willing to act responsibly than other generations—obscures more important changes that are happening in society. When you look through the data, it becomes clear these stereotypes are ignoring long-term trends in rising wealth inequality, income stagnation, the need for more (and more expensive) education to compete in today’s economy, and devastating market crashes. What some people call “delayed adulthood” has less to do with personality than external realities, like exorbitant housing costs or limited wealth accumulation. To solve the problem, Duffy argues, we need to get away from blaming the victims and prioritize affordable housing and rent control for vulnerable young people.

Sadly, those solutions are harder to enact than sticking to unflattering stereotypes. Older generations often ignore how much the world has changed since they were young adults, failing to recognize that opportunities they enjoyed no longer exist. It’s easier to rely on our cognitive biases and form shorthand stereotypes of the young, where we “overemphasize personality-based explanations for behavior that we observe in others, while underemphasizing situational explanations,” writes Duffy.

“These blunt characterizations reflect a tendency to pick on younger generations for traits that are created by context,” he adds.

Take the current media frenzy over social media’s impacts on Gen Z. This follows a well-worn pattern: Each successive generation has found some kind of new media or technology to blame for the woes of youth, including books, radio, comics, TV, and now social media. While it’s true that social media use is higher in younger generations than past generations—and that could be tied to problems in youth, including mental health declines—evidence for that is inconsistent .

“It’s vital that we resist the lure of these simple answers, as they are likely to distract us from taking necessary action,” writes Duffy.

Acknowledging real generational effects, not stereotypes

Though stereotyping is wrong, Duffy does find actual generational differences in attitudes and behavior that might be instructive. For example, older generations attend religious services more regularly than younger generations, with each generation attending less often than the previous one. With every successive generation, drinking alcohol has decreased, too—one of the most consistent cohort effects discussed in the book. And Gen Zers are reporting more mental health problems compared to prior generations—a trend that may only get worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Knowing these generational trends exist could help us understand how to tackle issues that affect generations differently, perhaps tailoring supports to their particular challenges. For example, if younger generations don’t find social support by attending religious services, perhaps communities need to provide other spaces for them to connect with others around a shared sense of purpose and meaning.

Still, it’s possible that even these clearer generational differences may lessen when you consider extenuating circumstances—like available alternatives to alcohol for younger generations (such as legalized marijuana) or their willingness to report mental health problems more readily. We need to look closely at the data, as Duffy does in his book, to pinpoint real differences rather than imagined ones. Granted, this may be less eye-catching and click-worthy than media hype, but it could help us identify where the real problems are.

Unfortunately, our work is cut out for us. Stereotypes abound when we don’t have direct contact between different groups of people. And, Duffy argues, the U.S. has become one of the most age-segregated societies in the world, with young and old barely interacting (outside of their families, that is). This is problematic, as intergenerational connection is tied to well-being, and its opposite feeds misunderstanding.

“It’s not intergenerational warfare we should be most worried about, but a drifting apart of age groups,” says Duffy. “This powers the stereotypes that exaggerate the division between generations and leads us to miss out on a host of positive benefits from generational connections.”

All in all, if we want to make the world a better place and see thriving future generations, we need to get away from stereotyping and stop pitting generations against each other, which serves no one. Instead, we must find more ways to be together and connect, sharing the necessary work of making the world a better place for current and future generations.

About the Author

Jill Suttie

Jill Suttie, Psy.D. , is Greater Good ’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good .

You May Also Enjoy

This article — and everything on this site — is funded by readers like you.

Become a subscribing member today. Help us continue to bring “the science of a meaningful life” to you and to millions around the globe.

How generational stereotypes hold us back at work

• collaboration
• communication
• personal growth
• productivity

The Psychology Behind Generational Conflict

Older people have groused about younger people for millennia. Now we know why

Ted Scheinman

Senior Editor

Complaining about the young is a longstanding prerogative of the old; just as baby boomers and Gen X’ers today lament the shortcomings of millennials and Gen Z, parents in the 1920s looked askance at their flapper daughters, the mothers of pre-revolutionary France pooh-poohed their “effeminate” sons, and so on back to the fourth century B.C. and Aristotle, who said of Greece’s young people: “They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”

Now, some 2,500 years later, researchers are offering a pair of psychological explanations for this recurring complaint, or what they call the “kids these days effect.” In studies involving 3,458 Americans ages 33 to 51 recruited and evaluated online, John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, measured respondents’ authoritarian tendencies, intelligence and enthusiasm for reading. “While people may believe in a general decline,” the researchers observed in the journal Science Advances , “they also believe that children are especially deficient on the traits in which they happen to excel.”

Authoritarian people, it turns out, are more likely to suspect that today’s youth are lacking in respect for authority, while well-read people are more likely to bemoan that kids these days never seem to be reading. More intelligent people are also more likely to say that young people are getting stupider—a remarkable conviction, given decades of rising intelligence domestically and globally.

At the heart of this denigrating effect is flawed memory, Protzko and Schooler say. Sometimes older people mistakenly recall that kids in the past were more accomplished than today’s kids, who suffer by comparison. “People in their 20s and 30s are going to grow up looking at kids and thinking they’re deficient,” Protzko says. So, while the baby boomers continue to weather volleys of “OK, boomer” from youngsters who blame them for despoiling the earth, older Americans can take comfort in knowing that members of Generation Z will one day hear the inevitable: “OK, zoomer.”

Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Ted Scheinman | | READ MORE

Ted Scheinman is a senior editor for Smithsonian magazine. He is the author of Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan .

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

• Age & Generations
• Demographic Research
• Generation X
• Generation Z
• Generations
• Greatest Generation
• Methodological Research
• Millennials
• Silent Generation

Kim Parker is director of social trends research at Pew Research Center

How Teens and Parents Approach Screen Time

Who are you the art and science of measuring identity, u.s. centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years, older workers are growing in number and earning higher wages, teens, social media and technology 2023, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

Visit us on Vimeo

Subscribe to us on Medium

©2024 Washington University in St. Louis

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Millennials at work: five stereotypes - and why they are (mostly) wrong

Generation Y has been labelled a bunch of lazy job-hoppers who expect everything on a plate. The truth is very different

M illennials will make up half of the global workforce by 2050 . Although generalisations are not helpful, broadly speaking members of this generation, born between 1980 and 1994 and also known as Generation Y, are bound together by the fact they have come of age during a severe financial crisis, have been both the pioneers and guinea pigs of technological change, and are more plugged into a global network than their predecessors.

Now they’re in the workforce, it should be no surprise that they are working differently too. But often those differences are reduced to lazy stereotypes. So what are the myths about millennial workers, and how true are they?

1. Millennials set the bar too high because of a sense of entitlement

“The millennials I know are not willing to settle for mediocre careers – they’re working hard to find work that they are passionate about, even if it means doing a boring low-paid job on the side,” said Sofia Niazi, 29, over a coffee in a small bookshop near Waterloo, London.

Niazi, who is highly qualified with multiple degrees, saw getting a teaching qualification as a pragmatic decision. “For Generation Y, the generation who have lived on precarious zero-hours contracts and are confronting impossibly high rents, there is a lot more insecurity and anxiety,” she said.

As well as working full-time as a teacher, Niazi is a freelance illustrator and co-founder and editor of OOMK, a small, alternative magazine.

She says the fact that work doesn’t pay as well as it used to and no longer guarantees much in the way of security means millennials feel it should at least be fulfilling or it simply isn’t worth it.

“Before, if you were slaving away at a job you didn’t enjoy, at least you could rest assured that you were paying off a mortgage and that eventually there would be some return on your hard work,” she said.

“When you know all the money you earn is not going to guarantee you any security in later life then I think you are less willing to do an unsatisfying job. I think that’s why the idea of ‘playbour’ [work that feels like leisure] is quite important for Generation Y.”

Here then is the paradox of the way work is viewed by many in this generation: they do not want to settle for an unsatisfying job that will barely allow them to get by but, at the same time, they have no choice but to take an unsatisfying job so they can afford to pursue their passion.

It is this desire to match personal values with work that marks out Generation Y, according to Peter Fleming, professor of business and society at Cass Business School in London. “There’s an existential element that is quite prominent in the way Gen Y chooses to work who say: ‘I’m not willing to give up most of my life for this because I’m a person, a human being that wants to be happy.’”

2. Millennials are lazy

When Joel Stein, an American journalist and a member of Gen X, penned his Me Me Me Generation (subscription required) column in Time magazine, he caused a stir. He wrote: “Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance.”

Millennials naturally see things slightly differently. Presenteeism doesn’t make sense to people used to working on the move. Why be anchored to your desk for eight hours when you can reply to those emails and start drafting notes during your commute into work, or even in a cafe? That’s not laziness, that’s just working smarter, as millennials may see it.

“I’ve worked 60 hours per week in insane jobs to scrape money together to live in London,” said Annaliisa Asveit, a former office worker turned musician and sheep-cheese seller. “I know what hard work means.”

Yet millennials themselves hold a more negative view of their generation than Generation Xers, baby boomers or other age groups do of their own peer group, according to research by Pew Research Center, the US thinktank. In a poll, 59% of 18- to 34-year-olds described their generation as self-absorbed , 49% said they were wasteful, and 43% described their generation as greedy. On top of this, only 36% of millennials see themselves as hardworking and 24% see themselves as responsible.

This may say more about the problematic nature of the label “millennial” than anything else. As Leigh Buchanan, editor-at-large at Inc magazine, says : “One of the characteristics of millennials, besides the fact that they are masters of digital communication, is that they are primed to do well by doing good. Almost 70% say that giving back and being civically engaged are their highest priorities.”

About half of millennials globally have shunned work, and even potential employers, that conflict with their beliefs, according to Deloitte’s millennial survey . This suggests millennials don’t have a problem with standing their ground when asked to do something that goes against their values.

3. Millennials work to live rather than live to work

As a student, Ann-Victoire Meillant co-wrote From Millennials with Love , a collection of experiences of her peers in the workplace. “What we found in our research and from contributors is that we didn’t like the phrase work/life balance, but instead were talking about work/life integration.”

“I love what I do. If my client calls me at 10 o’clock in the evening, maybe it’ll bother me if it’s every day, but if it’s once in a while, I’m super happy that I’m able to help with something important to them,” said Meillant, a human resources consultant working in Paris.

For Mihalis Monemvasiotis, 29, work life, creative ambitions and social life are intertwined.

“Finish working at five? How can you finish work at five?” asked the young filmmaker, bemused as he sat back in his chair sipping his coffee in a central London cafe. “Some people are just waking up at 5pm – I have to Skype people in New York at that time, and stay up late waiting for people to wake up in Tokyo.”

Monemvasiotis, who is originally from Greece but lives in London, has blended his work and social lives. He is co-founder of a production company, Pied Piper Pictures, and has also founded Eleven Campaign , a non-profit organisation using football to aid social cohesion – and is able to do most of his work at home equipped with only a phone and laptop.

Sometimes he finishes for the day at 9pm; other times it’s midnight. “In order to have jobs, you have to chase them. Freelance is good money when it comes, but I’ve invested all my savings and time in the organisation and am living month to month,” Monemvasiotis said.

4. Millennials are compulsive job-hoppers

Just as millennials enter the workforce in greater numbers, there is a stack of literature characterising them as job-hopping, needy, deluded narcissists. Books such as Generation Me by Jean Twenge and Not Everyone Gets a Trophy by Bruce Tulgan suggest that millennials are the worst possible employees.

But while it is true many may have one foot out the door – and according to a Deloitte survey two of every three millennials hope to move on from their current employer by 2020 – young people moving on isn’t exceptional to Generation Y. Figures on job tenure for Americans in their 20s today are almost exactly the same as they were in the 1980s . Job-hopping, it appears, is a common feature of being a young worker and not specific to this particular crop.

Different managers deal with Generation Y in starkly contrasting ways, says Prof Susan Murphy, who specialises in leader development at the University of Edinburgh business school.

“Half of managers will say, ‘I really like that millennials demand a different kind of work life’,” said Murphy. “There’s another group who talk old-person style, who think: ‘Those young whippersnappers, I put in tonnes of hours, I can’t understand why they don’t put in tonnes of hours.’”

Tanya de Grunwald, the founder of careers website Graduate Fog and author of How to Get a Graduate Job Now, said attitudes about job loyalty were formed early in a millennial’s career. “I’ve noticed two distinct types emerge,” she said. “If they find a good job fast after graduation, and they feel valued and appreciated in that role, they will typically stay for a long time. They will become institutionalised fairly quickly and be keen to progress within their current organisation, rather than seeking roles externally.

“I’ve noticed that graduates whose career gets off to a bumpier start – say with a string of internships, temp work or freelance work – tend to develop a tougher, more casual attitude towards their employer, and be more likely to switch jobs more regularly,” she said.

Speaking under the glass towers of Canary Wharf, Patrice Thompson, 23, an LSE graduate and a sales support associate in the City, said going to university just after the financial crisis showed her peers that loyalty didn’t always pay off – people who had worked for a company for decades were made redundant.

“I think, as millennials, we’re cautious. This job might not be for ever and we need to develop ourselves, grow, and pursue self-employment so we’re not just reliant on one particular institution.”

This feeling of lack of certainty could make them anxious, said Thompson, who gave a TED talk on intergenerational harmony in the workplace. “They are constantly connected and can see see what everyone else is doing. What’s Kim Kardashian doing? What’s Justin Bieber doing? What’s Beyoncé doing? We’re constantly comparing ourselves with our peers, family members.”

The characterisation of Generation Y as needy employees who crave constant positive feedback may not be far from the truth, however. Of those millennials who said they planned to leave their company in the next two years, 71% said it was because their ”leadership skills were not being fully developed” .

5. Millennials have little time for experienced colleagues

Other things millennials value in the workplace are “reverse mentoring” – the opportunity to teach skills to older colleagues as well as learn from them – and more time spent discussing new ways of working, mentoring and developing leadership skills.

It is this that Chris Gale, 21, has found so enjoyable about his job as a public sector auditor at Grant Thornton, the financial consultants.

He is able to offer social media coaching to older colleagues, which he sees as valuable experience: “I mean for someone my age it’s rare to be in a position where I’m sat down with a senior partner showing them how to develop their online profile, and I just don’t think that kind of role reversal would have happened a few years ago.”

Read on: The trials of Generation Y - the full series

• Millennials: the trials of Generation Y
• Work & careers

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Gen what? Debunking age-based myths about worker preferences

It’s no secret that the relationships between people and their work, and between employees and employers, have changed dramatically in recent years. The composition of the workforce is evolving, too, and quickly. As the youngest workers become an ever-larger share of the workforce—by some measures, Gen Zers could comprise more than one-quarter of the global workforce by 2025 —it’s easy to turn to generational stereotypes for clues about what these employees, and their older peers, want from their work experience. Conventional wisdom supposes that different generations have different attitudes about work. But our research suggests that work preferences are more similar than different across age groups (see sidebar “About the research”).

About the research

To better understand labor market trends, we conducted two surveys of workers. The first survey was completed in April 2022 and comprised a global sample of 13,386 workers from Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The second survey was completed in September 2022 and focused on workers in Europe (16,246 people from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland) and the Middle East (3,164 people from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). Both surveys included people of working age across 16 industries.

Our analysis included only traditional workers, or those respondents reporting a traditional employer–employee relationship in which the employer hires the employee, pays them directly, and manages their work. It excludes nontraditional workers, such as online and platform workers, freelancers and consultants, contract workers, business owners, day laborers, and seasonal workers.

To understand more about how employers can improve their value proposition to attract and retain workers of all ages, we looked past broad generational labels to explore the specific work preferences and drivers of employment decisions across smaller, consistently sized age groups. The data suggest that employees of all ages are looking for many of the same things at work and largely quit their jobs or start somewhere new for similar reasons. One notable difference is that once employees are in a job, the retention factors that motivate Gen Zers to stay aren’t the same as those for other age groups.

For employers, some broader lessons have also emerged: let go of generational stereotypes, focus on the employment factors that matter across all ages, and take a nuanced approach to understanding how different factors interact and affect each individual’s decisions to stay or go, rather than applying a generic range of tactics to broad demographic segments.

Across age groups, employees tend to leave—and start new jobs—for similar reasons

Debunking myths about age-based preferences.

For all of the talk about generational differences in what workers want , our research indicates that many generation-based stereotypes—particularly those about the youngest members of the workforce—are more myth than fact (see sidebar “Debunking myths about age-based preferences”). We compared worker attitudes and behaviors across five smaller, consistently sized age groups: Gen Z (18- to 24-year-olds), younger millennials (25- to 34-year-olds), older millennials (35- to 44-year-olds), Gen X (45- to 54-year-olds), and younger baby boomers (55- to 64-year-olds). And we found that while the rates of attrition do vary by age group, 1 We found that the younger a worker is, the more likely they are to say they considered leaving their jobs. On average, 52 percent of Gen Z respondents are planning to leave, compared with 45 percent of younger millennials, 40 percent of older millennials, 30 percent of Gen X, and 21 percent of younger baby boomers. employees’ preferences are more alike than different, especially when they’re thinking of quitting.

Among those who plan to leave their jobs, the main reasons are the same across age groups: inadequate compensation, lack of career development and advancement, and uncaring leadership. What’s more, the top reasons for leaving their previous jobs are the same for both younger and older workers (Exhibit 1), and are the same reasons different age groups gave for why they might leave their current jobs. These results suggest that many organizations still struggle to address the same issues that their employees care most about: fair and adequate compensation, career development, and caring leaders.

Similar to their reasons for quitting, the top reasons workers give for taking a new job are consistent across age groups: compensation (cited by 46 percent), career development (36 percent), and meaningful work (35 percent), followed by workplace flexibility (34 percent) (Exhibit 2).

For attracting new talent, it seems that the strongest strategies involve both “hygiene” factors, such as compensation, and “motivating” factors, such as meaningful work and career development; it’s not sufficient to provide either hygiene or motivators without the other . This is true even for Gen Zers, who rank meaningful work just as highly as workplace flexibility as a reason for taking a new job. Compared with older employees, Gen Zers also rank compensation as a slightly less important factor.

While fair, adequate compensation has always been a critical hygiene factor, employers must recognize pay as both an opportunity and a risk. Every age group prioritizes adequate compensation, or bemoans its inadequacy, as a factor in their employment decisions. And in the current environment, workers are likely to expect good pay as a basic part of the employee value proposition. We see that compensation alone won’t convince a worker to go or to stay. But the margin of error for underpaying people (or giving the perception that they are underpaid) is now much smaller—especially with a company’s best talent, who may be much more willing to seek a new job if they don’t feel they are paid fairly.

The striking similarities across segments appear to upend conventional wisdom about workforce differences by age or generation. We also see that the reasons people leave evolve over time, so employers have to keep paying attention. It’s not enough for employers to assume that the reasons why people already left are the same reasons why current employees consider leaving in the future—or why they choose to stay.

When younger workers stay, it’s not just about the money

While compensation remains a critical hygiene factor in employment decisions, overpaying doesn’t necessarily translate into greater engagement, more motivation, or more loyalty, particularly when it comes to younger workers. Despite the broad consensus on the reasons why people leave a job or take a new one, the reasons to stay vary much more by age (Exhibit 3). Gen Zers, for example, rank flexibility, career development, meaningful work, and a safe, supportive work environment as more important factors than compensation when they decide to stay with their current employers. The implications for employers are clear, especially in an uncertain economic environment. To care for and get the most out of their current employees and to keep their people aboard, organizations must tailor the employee value proposition in a more nuanced way.

When we look across age groups, employees in the two youngest groups (Gen Zers and young millennials) endorse career development and advancement potential (35 percent of both) as top reasons for staying, while employees of all other age groups do not. Contrary to generational or age-based stereotypes, Gen Zers place the least emphasis of any group on compensation as a reason to stay—a factor that only rises in importance with age—and are less likely to cite compensation than a range of other factors for staying, including reliable, supportive coworkers and a safe work environment. Meanwhile, older employees (Gen Xers and younger baby boomers) seem to value meaningful work slightly more than their younger counterparts, and younger baby boomers care about meaningful work almost as much as compensation.

Work–life imbalance: How life stages affect attitudes at work

If nothing else, the broad and sometimes counterintuitive similarities in attitudes across age groups suggest that the shared, global experience of the pandemic has normalized how people feel, and make decisions about, their experiences at work. This is true even for employees with caregiving responsibilities, many of whom have had to renegotiate roles and expectations both at home and at work. When we look more closely at the responses from caregivers—whether they’re parents, caring for elderly relatives, or have both responsibilities—we see that their reasons for employment decisions are largely consistent with those of their noncaregiver peers. Compensation, for example, remains one of the top factors in all employment decisions across age groups and caregiving responsibilities, as it is an important factor in offsetting the additional financial responsibility of having dependents.

Still, at different stages in people’s lives, certain aspects of work can play an even larger role in their employment decisions in ways that age groups alone can’t explain. While compensation is a universally important factor, it’s not the primary reason why caregivers leave, take a new job, or stay. Notably, among younger millennials, those with dual caregiving responsibilities are less focused on compensation as a reason to leave than those who are parents, caring for elder relatives, or noncaregivers.

Respondents with both responsibilities are also more likely than other caregivers and noncaregivers to consider leaving their jobs, for all groups but the younger baby boomers (who may be more risk averse at this point in their careers). These workers are being pulled in so many directions in and out of work that sometimes a drastic change, like quitting, may seem simpler than trying to make changes (more flexibility or more money, for instance) in their current job. This is especially true of caregivers in dual-career households: if childcare expenses are greater than one person’s income, for instance, then leaving the workforce altogether would make more financial sense for their families.

Intentions to leave follow the same age-related pattern that we observed generally: they decline as age increases. Yet the proportion of workers planning to leave notably increases when respondents have multiple caretaking responsibilities, and disproportionately so for older millennials (Exhibit 1). In that age group, being a parent has only a minimal effect on plans to leave: 38 percent of parents say they plan to leave, compared with 36 percent of noncaregivers. That figure increases to 59 percent among older millennials who care for both children and the elderly.

While there’s little differentiation in how age groups view flexibility as a reason to leave, we see that a lack of flexibility is a top factor for younger millennials who are parents. This result could reflect younger workers being newer to caregiving and still settling into the role, whereas older workers may be more accustomed to the competing responsibilities or have older children whose needs are quite different than those of younger kids.

Among those who choose to stay, meaningful work ranks more highly among caregivers than it does for their peers (Exhibit 2)—especially for older workers. Among Gen Xers caring for elderly relatives, meaningful work is the top reason they choose to stay, and the second most common reason for Gen X parents and dual caregivers. This may be because older caregivers have fewer household responsibilities and are more focused on work as a meaningful part of their lives at that stage (at the expense of flexibility, perhaps), while younger caregivers may find more meaning in caring for children or relatives than in work. For older millennials and Gen Xers with dual responsibilities, a safe workplace environment is also a top three reason to stay, suggesting that a physically and psychologically healthy environment is a nonnegotiable aspect of work for those who are already under so much pressure from multiple caretaking responsibilities. By contrast, safe workplace ranks lower for respondents in those age groups with other caregiving responsibilities (or none at all), particularly among older millennials.

These findings highlight both the importance of looking at life stages and personal circumstances in addition to chronological age and the disproportionate impact of life stages on younger workers’ employment decisions. Some of the nuanced differences between caregivers of different age groups may also explain some of the other age-related trends we observed.

Workplace flexibility is another key factor for why people choose to stay at a job, but our results suggest that employees in different age groups could value it for different reasons depending on their stage of life and related responsibilities. Gen Z employees, for instance, may want the flexibility to travel and have a more active social life, while older millennials may want flexibility to manage the demands of caretaking (for more on caregiving, see sidebar “Work–life imbalance: How life stages affect attitudes at work”).

To improve your employee value proposition, let go of generational stereotypes

Our research confirms that across ages, people’s expectations and needs at work are largely the same, and they often don’t match the generational stereotypes that seem ubiquitous. Instead of tailoring the employee value proposition and work experience by generation, it’s much more worthwhile for organizations to focus and take action on the factors that nearly all employees want—namely, compensation, career development, caring leadership, flexibility, and meaningful work—while appreciating the nuances of how they want them based on their stage in life, personal circumstances, and individual preferences.

To win the competition for scarce talent, leaders must treat their current and prospective employees as unique human beings, rather than as members of a demographic segment. The following steps can help employers better address the needs of their workers across the age spectrum.

Offer employees the full package

One of our more surprising findings is that Gen Z, the workforce’s youngest employees, is less concerned about compensation than public opinion suggests. Indeed, among Gen Zers—the age group most likely to say they’ve considered leaving a job—meaningful work matters nearly as much as compensation to those who took a new job. With even the youngest workers looking for much more than a paycheck, employers must consider all that they’re offering to current and potential employees. The results indicate that many employees are looking for much more than a transactional work experience, and that for organizations investing in each one of these factors, there are natural interdependencies with others that we tested. If people want to stay or leave because of career development, elements such as workplace flexibility and caring leaders (or the lack of them) directly affect their potential for development. If younger workers are mandated to work in the office, but senior leaders don’t take time to meet with them, or are working remotely themselves, then it seems to undermine the younger employees’ ability and interest in development. When implementing or improving these specific factors, organizations and leaders must consider how they interact and support one another, or not, in practice.

Tailor the work experience to individuals

Beyond the broad similarities in employee preferences, we see some nuances by age group and by other factors (such as caregiving), especially in the reasons people stay. These results suggest the circumstances under which this more individualized, data-based approach to the employee value proposition is the best way to address workers’ preferences. How can leaders and managers do so in a way that builds an environment of trust and respects employees’ boundaries and priorities? For one, it’s critical to create an honest, open dialogue between the individual and the organization so employees’ preferences and responsibilities are clear, and to ensure that they have a stake in their work experience. In the work context, it’s also important to focus on the constraints employees must manage rather than their feelings about those constraints. If a working parent needs certain norms (such as standard working hours or in-office mandates) relaxed so they can tend to their work and home lives, then anchor the conversation on practical adjustments and solutions rather than the employee’s feelings about the problem, which they may not be comfortable sharing.

Create ‘micro’ milestones to develop your workforce of the future

On the whole, Gen Z’s employment decisions and preferences suggest a desire for a holistic, sustainable work experience where they can start building their careers. While these workers care about a range of factors, the opportunity to develop and advance is top of mind: the lack of these opportunities is the top reason why Gen Zers plan to leave a job, and career development is their top reason for taking a new job and for staying, along with flexibility. Career development and advancement is also a top three reason why younger millennials choose to stay.

To keep younger workers for longer, it’s important to show them they have a future at the company by investing in their learning and growth—and to think outside the box when doing so. Beyond the traditional career trajectory of working hard, performing well, and moving up in an organization’s hierarchy, there are other ways to foster employees’ growth that could also bolster their longer-term economic potential . For example, opportunities to build new skills or have new experiences (working on a critical initiative or moving laterally into a new type of role) can help employees develop more quickly than a title change every few years. These types of “micro” milestones can provide all workers—but especially the younger ones who are so eager to grow—with a more dynamic career path, more actionable feedback on their progress, and a stronger feeling of being valued by their organizations.

Rethink the four ‘Ws’ (and one ‘H’) of work

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the “where” and “how” of labor can look very different than we’d ever imagined  and still work for many organizations. Yet organizations could still do more to reimagine where and how work happens, as well as the “when,” “why,” and “what.” With respect to “when,” a nonlinear workday could give employees more flexibility to define their schedules beyond a standard 9-to-5 schedule (which costs organizations nothing). This would not only fulfill a highly ranked work preference but also encourage more productivity, especially for employees who might be juggling caregiving and work during certain hours of the workday. These elements, along with “why,” enable employees to be more purposeful in their presence at work. If in-person work is happening, or required, teams should coordinate their days and times so members can benefit from the group collaboration and connectivity that it confers.

There’s room, too, for flexibility about the nature of the work (the “what”) that employees perform, which can inform other “Ws.” We consider the “what” of work as combinations of activities that are either individual or collaborative, and either synchronous or asynchronous. For example, most individual-contributor work can be done alone and asynchronously, which enables workers to perform these tasks at home if they prefer. By contrast, collaborative work that requires discussion and alignment—for instance, deciding how broadly to integrate generative AI into a business function—is best done synchronously and in person (though it can be done virtually, too). Meanwhile, collaborative work that requires cocreation, especially in cross-functional teams, can be performed asynchronously and virtually.

Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi is a research science expert in the New York office, Angelika Reich is a partner in the Vienna office, and Bill Schaninger is a senior partner in the Philadelphia office.

The authors wish to thank Yueyang Chen, Susannah Ivory, and Mukhunth Raghavan for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Daniella Seiler, an executive editor in the New York office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Talent in a changing market: What now?

European talent is ready to walk out the door. How should companies respond?

Human capital at work: The value of experience

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Generations and Generational Differences: Debunking Myths in Organizational Science and Practice and Paving New Paths Forward

Cort w. rudolph.

1 Department of Psychology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO USA

Rachel S. Rauvola

2 Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago, IL USA

David P. Costanza

3 Department of Organizational Sciences & Communication, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA

Hannes Zacher

4 Institute of Psychology – Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

Talk about generations is everywhere and particularly so in organizational science and practice. Recognizing and exploring the ubiquity of generations is important, especially because evidence for their existence is, at best, scant. In this article, we aim to achieve two goals that are targeted at answering the broad question: “What accounts for the ubiquity of generations despite a lack of evidence for their existence and impact?” First, we explore and “bust” ten common myths about the science and practice of generations and generational differences. Second, with these debunked myths as a backdrop, we focus on two alternative and complementary frameworks—the social constructionist perspective and the lifespan development perspective—with promise for changing the way we think about age, aging, and generations at work. We argue that the social constructionist perspective offers important opportunities for understanding the persistence and pervasiveness of generations and that, as an alternative to studying generations, the lifespan perspective represents a better model for understanding how age operates and development unfolds at work. Overall, we urge stakeholders in organizational science and practice (e.g., students, researchers, consultants, managers) to adopt more nuanced perspectives grounded in these models, rather than a generational perspective, to understand the influence of age and aging at work.

People commonly talk about generations and like to make distinctions between them. Purported differences between generations have been blamed for everything from declining interest in baseball (Keeley, 2016 ) to changing patterns of processed cheese consumption (Mulvany & Patton, 2018 ). In the workplace, generations and generational differences have been credited for everything from declining levels of work ethic (e.g., Cenkus, 2017 ; cf. Zabel, Biermeier-Hanson, Baltes, Early, & Shepard, 2017 ), to higher rates of “job-hopping” (e.g., Adkins, 2016 ; cf. Costanza, Badger, Fraser, Severt, & Gade, 2012 ). Despite their ubiquity, a consensus is coalescing across multiple literatures that suggests that all the attention garnered by generations and generational differences (e.g., Lyons & Kuron, 2014 ; Twenge, 2010 ) has been “much ado about nothing” (see Rudolph, Rauvola, & Zacher, 2018 ; Rudolph & Zacher, 2017 ). That is to say, the theoretical assumptions upon which generational research is based have been questioned and there is little empirical evidence that generations exist, that people can be reliably classified into generational groups, and, importantly, that there are demonstrable differences between such groups that manifest and affect various work-related processes (Heyns, Eldermire, & Howard, 2019 ; Jauregui, Watsjold, Welsh, Ilgen, & Robins, 2020 ; Okros, 2020 ; Rudolph & Zacher, 2018 ; Stassen, Anseel, & Levecque, 2016 ). Indeed, a recent consensus study published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) concluded that “Categorizing workers with generational labels like ‘baby boomer’ or ‘millennial’ to define their needs and behaviors is not supported by research, and cannot adequately inform workforce management decisions…” (NASEM, 2020a ; see also NASEM, 2020b ).

Of equal importance to the theoretical limitations, common research methodologies used to study generations cannot unambiguously identify the unique effects of generations from other time-bound sources of variation (i.e., chronological age and contemporaneous period effects). Given all of this, some have argued that there has never actually been a study of generations (Rudolph & Zacher, 2018 ), and thus, the entire body of empirical evidence regarding generations is, to a large extent, wrong. Still, it is easy to find examples of empirical research that claim to find evidence in favor of generational differences (e.g., Dries, Pepermans, & De Kerpel, 2008 ; Twenge & Campbell, 2008 ; Twenge, 2000 ; see Costanza et al., 2012 , for a review) and theoretical advancements that aim to direct such empirical inquiries (e.g., Dencker, Joshi, & Martocchio, 2008 ). Moreover, some see generations as a useful heuristic in the process of social sensemaking: generations are recognized as social constructions, which help give meaning to the complexities and intricacies of aging and human development in the context of changing societies (e.g., Campbell, Twenge, & Campbell, 2017 ; Lyons, Urick, Kuron, & Schweitzer, 2015 ).

Considering all of this, we are faced with a variety of competing and contradictory issues when trying to sort out what bearing, if any, generations have on organizational science and practice. On the one hand, evidence for the existence of generations and generational differences is limited. On the other hand, the idea of generations is pervasive and is used to explain myriad patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that we observe day-to-day, especially in the workplace. Thus, there exists a tension between what science “says” about generations and what people “do” with the idea of generations. Given this, the continued popularity of generations as a means of understanding work-related processes is worthy of closer investigation. This popularity begs the question, “What accounts for the ubiquity of generations, despite a lack of evidence for their existence and impact?” This manuscript explores two answers to this question.

One answer to this question is a lack of knowledge about what the science of generations tells us, leading to misunderstandings of the evidence about generations, their existence, and their purported impact. Thus, the first goal of this article will be to review and debunk ten common myths about generations and generational differences at work and beyond. A second answer to this question is a lack of knowledge regarding, and exposure to, alternative theoretical explanations for understanding (a) the role of age and aging at work and (b) the persistence of generations as a tool for social sensemaking. More specifically, we argue that, owing to a lack of knowledge about alternative explanations and supported by their ubiquity and popular acceptance (e.g., in the popular business and management press; see Howe & Strauss, 2007 ; Knight, 2014 ; Shaw, 2013 ), generations are more often than not the “default” mode of explanation for complex age-related phenomena observed in the workplace and beyond (e.g., because they are familiar and comfortable explanations, which are easy to adopt, and seem legitimate on their face).

Accordingly, the second goal of this paper is to further advance two alternative models for understanding age and aging at work that do not rely on generational explanations and that can explain their existence and popularity—the social constructionist perspective and the lifespan development perspective. This is an important contribution, because simply pointing out the obvious pitfalls of generations and generational explanations can only go so far toward changing the way that people think about, talk about, study, and enact practices that involve generations. Just advising people to drop the idea of generations without providing alternative models would be counterproductive to the goal of enhancing the credibility of organizational science and practice. Thus, our hope is that by providing workable alternatives to generations, researchers and practitioners will be encouraged to think more carefully about the role of age and the process of aging when enacting the work that they do.

The social constructionist perspective offers that generations and differences between them are constructed through both the ubiquity of generational stereotypes and the socially accepted nature of applying such labels to describe people of different ages (e.g., consider the recent “OK Boomer” meme; Hirsch, 2020 ). The social constructionist perspective helps address and explain the question of why generations are so ubiquitous. Complementing this, the lifespan perspective is a well-established alternative to thinking about the process of aging and development that does not require one to think in terms of generations. The lifespan perspective frames human development as a lifelong process which is affected by various influences—not including generations—that predict developmental outcomes. Despite its longstanding role in research on aging at work (e.g., Baltes, Rudolph, & Zacher, 2019 ), the lifespan perspective has been infrequently considered as an alternative model to generations, perhaps because it has not often been treated in accessible terms.

These complementary approaches—the social constructionist and the lifespan development perspective—offer alternative paths forward for studying age and age-related processes at work that do not require a reliance on generational explanations. Thus, as described further below, these perspectives by-and-large circumvent the logical and methodological deficiencies of the generations perspective. They also offer actionable theoretical and practical guidance for identifying the complexities involved in understanding age and aging at work.

First, we outline and “bust” ten myths about generations and generational differences (see Table ​ Table1 1 for a summary). These myths were chosen in particular, because we deemed them to be the most pressing for research and practice in the organizational sciences, broadly defined, in that they reflect commonly highlighted topics, and bear potential risks if not properly addressed. Then, we introduce and outline the core tenets of the social constructionist and lifespan development perspectives, giving examples of how their applications can complement each other in supplanting generational explanations in both science and practice. Finally, we conclude by drawing lines of integration between these two perspectives, in the hopes that these alternative ways of thinking will inspire researchers and practitioners to adopt alternatives to thinking about aging at work in generational terms.

Summary of ten myths about generations and generational differences

Debunking Ten Myths About Generations in Organizational Science and Practice

Myth #1: generational “theory” was meant to be tested.

The sheer number of empirical studies purporting to test generational “theory” would suggest that such theory was intended for testing. However, this is far from the case. The concept of generations as we know it stems from early functionalist sociological thought experiments, derived from foundational work by Mannheim (1927/ 1952 ) and others (e.g., Ortega y Gasset, 1933 ; see also Kertzer, 1983 ). Adopting the term in a largely historical, rather than familial or genealogical, sense, these authors offered “generations” as social units that account for broad societal and cultural change. Generations were suggested to emerge through “shared consciousness,” which developed across individuals (e.g., those at similar life stages) after common exposure to formative events (e.g., political shifts, war, disaster; see Ryder, 1965 ). This consciousness, in turn, was theorized to shape unique values, attitudes, and behaviors that characterize a given generation’s members, especially to distinguish one generation from its predecessor. These attributes subsequently impact how these individuals interact with and influence society.

Here, a tautology emerges: culture begets generations and generations beget culture. This is a potentially useful perspective for describing macro-scale interactions between social groups and the social environments in which they live—that is, it is useful as a functionalist sociological mechanism, as the concept of generations was intended. However, this perspective also implies that culture, and the generational groups it forms and is formed by, cannot be disentangled. Generational “theory” is not falsifiable, nor was it intended to be. Attempts to empirically study generations have extended these ideas into positivist and deterministic practices for which they were not intended. Even life course research (e.g., Elder, 1994 ), which centers on the impact of social change and forces on individuals’ lives as opposed to societal change, does not directly “test” for generational differences, per se. Instead, it uses generations conceptually in explicating the roles that historical, biological, and social time play in life trajectories.

In fact, Mannheim’s (1927/ 1952 ) work was partly a critique of the overemphasis on absolutist/biological perspectives in the study of social and historical development, including the objective treatment of time (Pilcher, 1994 ). This makes it all the more puzzling and problematic that generational “theory” has been applied to discrete quantitative increments (i.e., age and year ranges to define cohorts), and in a fashion that ignores the “non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous” (i.e., the fact that being alive at the same time, or even being alive and of a similar age at the same time, does not mean history is experienced uniformly; Troll, 1970 , p. 201). When considering the roots of “generations,” it is apparent that the concept has been re-characterized and misappropriated.

Myth #2: Generational Explanations Are Obvious

One appealing, if overstated, quality of generations is that there are unique characteristics that are (assumed to be) associated with various cohorts. Moreover, it is assumed that lines can be drawn between generations to distinguish them from one another on the basis of such characteristics. These characteristics, which are said to be influenced by the various events that supposedly give rise to generations in the first place, “make sense” in a way that give generations an air of face validity. For example, it seems very rational and indeed quite self-evident to many that living through the Great Depression made the Silent Generation more conservative and risk-avoidant and that helicopter parents and the rise of social media made Millennials narcissistic and cynical. These and other observed social phenomena such as job-hopping and materialism are frequently ascribed to generations. However, looking more deeply into the identification of these critical events, as well as the mechanisms by which generations supposedly emerge, reveals a far more complex, nuanced picture than a generational explanation would have us believe.

In order to understand why the events that created generations may, or may not, have been impactful, it is important to understand how the critical events purported to give rise to them are identified. As one example, in their popular book, Strauss and Howe ( 1991 ) offer a taxonomy of generations, developed by tracing historical records in search of what they called “age-determined participation in epochal events…” (p. 32). To Strauss and Howe, such events were deemed to be so critical that they contributed to the creation of a unique generation. This post hoc historical demographic approach benefits from the passage of time: it is far easier to identify critical events retrospectively, rather than when they are actually occurring. Although major events like economic depressions and wars likely qualify as epochal, dozens of other events have been proposed to be critical in the formation of generations, only to fade into historical oblivion within a matter of a few years.

For example, in defining supposedly seminal events in the development of the Millennial generation, Howe and Strauss ( 2000 ) cite the case of “Baby Jessica” (n.b. on October 14, 1987, 18-month-old Jessica McClure Morales fell into a well in her aunt’s backyard in Midland, Texas. After 56 h, rescue workers eventually freed her from the 8-in. well casing 22 ft below the ground; Helling, 2017 ). Why this event should help form a generation is uncertain, as is whether or not Millennials were or have been systematically impacted by her saga and subsequent rescue.

Rather than being obviously generational, explanations for many social phenomena are more likely to be associated with age or period effects, both of which are other time-based sources of variation that are often conflated with generational cohorts. Specifically, there are three sources of time-based variation that need to be accounted for to make claims about generations: age, period, and cohort effects (see Glenn, 1976 , 2005 ). Age effects refer to variability due to time since birth, in that chronological age is simply an index of “life lived” (e.g., Wohlwill, 1970 ). Period effects refer to variability due to contemporaneous time and refer to the effects of a specific time and place (i.e., the year 2020). Finally, cohort effects are those that are typically taken as evidence for generations, referring to the year of one’s birth. To make claims about generations, therefore, it is necessary to rule out the effect of age (i.e., developmental influences) and period (i.e., contemporaneous contextual influences).

There are numerous examples of how these sources of variability are conflated and confused with one another. Consider that popular press accounts of Millennials have until recently painted them to be dedicated urban dwellers who favored ride-sharing services and eschewed traditional families (e.g., Barroso, Parker, & Bennet, 2020 ; Godfrey, 2016 ). However, adults in this age range have more recently been observed moving to the suburbs, buying houses and cars, and having children (e.g., Adamczyk, 2019 ). This is not a generational effect but rather a phenomenon attributable to the fact that Millennials are reaching the normative age where people get married, start families, and purchase houses. This is a product of age and context, not generation or period. The picture becomes even more complex given other contextual factors not necessarily bound to time, for example, when considering that the average age of first conception is higher in urban, compared to rural, areas (Bui & Miller, 2018 ).

Another example comes from data showing that high school and college students are less likely to hold summer jobs today than 20 years ago (Desilver, 2019 ). This is not a generational effect, but rather is attributable to contemporaneous economic conditions. As a final example, after 9/11, there was a modest increase in the number of people enlisting in the United States Army, which is an example of a period effect (Dao, 2011 ). However, this change has also been misattributed in various ways to a generational effect (e.g., Graff, 2019 ). Notably, in ~ 2019 (i.e., when those born in ~ 2001 turned ~ 18 and were eligible to join the army), there were historically low rates of enlistment (Goodkind, 2020 ). If this rate had been particularly high, one might conclude evidence for a generational effect, such that people born in 2001 grew up in a time and place that demanded enlistment. However, this is not the case—growing up in a post 9/11 world did not make this cohort more likely than others to join the army.

In summary, whereas certain historical events might be easily identifiable as epochal, the extent to which recent events are defined as such might not be known for some time. Moreover, this idea assumes that epochal events actually matter for the formation of distinct generations, a key argument in generations theory that is by-and-large untested, and indeed untestable. Moreover, consider that “global” events (i.e., those that affect all members of a population regardless of age, not just those born in a particular time and place, like a global pandemic) almost certainly manifest as period, not generational cohort effects (Rudolph & Zacher, 2020a , 2020b ). Generations and the events that are purported to give rise to them are far from obvious and to attribute current individual characteristics to the occurrence of specific events is misguided. Furthermore, many of the “obvious” generational effects often attributed to such events are much more likely due to other factors associated with age and/or period.

Myth #3: Generational Labels and Associated Age Ranges Are Agreed Upon

Whereas generational labels are well-known and widely recognized, the specific birth year ranges that define each generational grouping and the consistency with which such groupings are applied across time, studies, and location, vary substantially. For example, Smola and Sutton ( 2002 , p. 364) identified a great deal of variation in the start and end years that define different generational groups and the names used to describe various generations, noting “generations…labels and the years those labels represent are often inconsistent” (p. 364).

In their meta-analysis, Costanza et al. ( 2012 ) found similar discrepancies with variations in start and end dates ranging from 3 to 9 years depending on the study, the variables of interest, and the source of the generational year ranges being used. Similar conclusions were reached by Rudolph et al. ( 2018 ) in their review of generations in the leadership literature.

Beyond these definitional inconsistencies, there are notable differences in the way researchers address cross-cultural variability in generational research. The ubiquity of the labels and their pervasiveness in the literature has led researchers from countries other than the USA to use labels (e.g., “Baby Boomers”) when doing so does not make sense, as the events that supposedly influenced individuals and gave rise to these generations in the first place clearly differ from country to country. Moreover, consider that the term “Millennials” is not meaningful in countries that use Chinese, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Sakka, or Kolla Varsham calendars (Deal, Altman, & Rogelberg, 2010 ) and that generations are often labeled based on political or cultural events and epochs. For instance, members of the Greek workforce have been categorized into the Divided Generation, the Metapolitefsi Generation, and the Europeanized Generation (Papavasileiou, 2017 ). In Israel, generations are identified by wars and thus have shorter ranges (Deal et al., 2010 ). The German media has variously labeled younger people as Generation C64, Generation Golf, or Generation Merkel. In China, generations are pragmatically called the Post-50s generation, Post-60s Generation, and so on, whereas in India, the three main generational groups are labeled Conservatives, Integrators, and Y2K (Srinivasan, 2012 ).

One approach researchers have adopted for dealing with the complexities of cross-cultural variation in generational labeling is to ignore the issue and simply use US-based generational labels and years when studying individuals in other countries. For example, Yigit and Aksay ( 2015 ) looked at Turkish Gen X and Gen Y health professionals, roughly using US date ranges for these groups. A second approach has been to use the date ranges associated with US generations but assign country-specific labels to those same periods. Utilizing this approach, Weiss and Zhang ( 2020 ) picked birth year ranges and adopted or developed generational labels in three different countries. For example, for the years 1946–1965, they labeled the generations as the “68er Generation” in Germany, “Baby Boomer” in the USA, and the “New China Generation” in China. A third approach has been to develop country-specific generational groups based on local events that impacted people in that county, a strategy used by To and Tam ( 2014 ) who identified four distinct post-WWII generations in China.

Inconsistencies in labeling have significant conceptual and computational implications for the study and understanding of generations and especially so if one wishes to conduct comparative cross-national and/or cross-cultural research. Importantly, we would argue that the validity of the generations concept and its utility for understanding individual, group, and organizational phenomena is very limited due to a number of factors, including (a) researchers’ inability to agree on the start and end dates for different generations; (b) inconsistencies in the classification and labeling systems that characterize them; (c) disagreement on the specific significant influencing events that supposedly gives rise to them, such as the extent to which the timing of events plays a role, including the length of time that is associated with their influence, and the lag required to observe such influences; and (d) the issue of cross-cultural equivalencies. As such, defining generations represents a moving target, which is a significant liability for science and evidence-based practice.

Myth #4: Generations Are Easy To Study

Although there have been numerous attempts to study generations and generational differences, it is clear that these phenomena have not been studied very well. Indeed, it is not only difficult to study generations as they have been framed in the literature but also impossible. As noted above, research on generations is typically based upon birth year ranges, which is to say that they are derived from information about birth cohorts. A common problem emerges when one tries to study cohort effects in cross-sectional (i.e., single time point) research designs, which are the most commonly applied designs used to make inferences about generations (see Costanza et al., 2012 ). Namely, age, period, and cohort effects are confounded with each other in such designs.

This confounding is best understood through an example. Let us assume that a hypothetical cross-sectional study is conducted in the year 2020 (i.e., the year constitutes the “period effect” in this case). If we reduce the logic of generations a bit and define a cohort effect in terms of a single birth year (e.g., those born in 1980), then the effect of age (i.e., time since birth; 40 years) is completely confounded with cohort. This is because:

In this example, any differences that researchers observe as a function of assumed cohort variability may instead be due to the age of the individuals when they were studied. This pattern would likewise be extrapolated to any age–cohort combinations studied in a single period. The linear dependency among the three effects means that unique effects of age cannot be separated from whatever cohort effect might exist and vice versa.

One common attempt to circumvent this confounding is to artificially group members of different cohorts together to form generational groups. However, this practice is likewise fraught with the same issues raised just above. Another hypothetical cross-sectional study helps to illustrate why: in this study, let us assume that we want to define two arbitrary groupings of birth cohorts, representing people born between 1981 and 1990 (“Generation A”) and those 1991–2000 (“Generation B”), to disentangle age and cohort effects from one another. The variability due to birth cohort in each generation is 10 years; however, as in our previous example, the age range within cohorts is likewise 10 years. Thus, this approach does little to solve the dependency other than shifting the scaling of age. As the rank order of cohort versus age has not changed (relatively older people are in “Generation A” and relatively younger people are in “Generation B”), there is still a correlation between age and generational groups in this study. Moreover, this approach has other limitations, including the loss of statistical power to detect age effects (see Rudolph, 2015 ) and a confusing logic of cohort versus age effect interpretations (e.g., the oldest members of “Generation A” are closer in age to the youngest members of “Generation B” than to the average age of their own generational group).

From a research design standpoint, this issue of confounding represents an unresolvable problem, which has long been known and lamented in the literature (e.g., Glenn, 1976 , 2005 ). Other research designs are unfortunately no better geared than cross-sectional designs to address this issue, or they do not address variability in cohort effects at all. For example, in typical longitudinal designs, cohort effects are held constant (i.e., from the first time point, people’s birth year does not vary) and period is allowed to vary (i.e., as data are collected from the same people across multiple time points). However, in such designs, period effects are conflated with age (i.e., as people “get older” across time). Expanded longitudinal approaches, such as cohort sequential designs (e.g., sampling 20-year-olds at each time point, T 1 − T k , adding successive cohorts of 20-year-olds at each time point) may be able to separate age/aging from period and cohort effects, depending on how “cohort” is defined. However, such studies require immense resources and time (e.g., 20+ years or more of data collection, including long-term data management and subject retention efforts; see Baltes & Mayer, 2001 ). As such, and perhaps not surprisingly, we are unaware of any applications of such designs to the study of generations at work.

An alternative that has been employed by some researchers (e.g., Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008 ) is a cross-temporal approach, often employing time-lagged panels or cross-temporal meta-analyses (discussed further below). Cross-temporal approaches use data collections from members of different cohort groups, collected during different periods, holding age constant (e.g., data from panels of 25-year-olds and 50-year-olds collected in 2000, 2010, and 2020 or research done on college students every year from 1990 to the present). The logic of cross-temporal methods is to compare groups of similarly aged individuals (i.e., to “control” for age by holding its value constant) across time and then argue that cohort effects are more likely the cause of any observed differences than period effects. Among other issues, cross-temporal approaches have been criticized for their reliance on ecological correlations (i.e., correlations among variables that represent group means) and design assumptions (see Trzesniewski & Donnellan, 2010 ; Trzesniewski, Donnellan, & Robins, 2008 ) raising significant concerns about them as a way to study generations. Specifically, ecological correlations can misrepresent relationships when contrasted with correlations among individual observations (see Robinson, 1950 ).

Overall, the methodological and design challenges associated with studying generations are substantial and the conceptualization of generations as the intersection of age and period makes them impossible to study. Thus, studying generations is only “easy” to the extent that one is willing to ignore the issues raised here. Given these concerns, we echo the recommendations of Rudolph and Zacher ( 2017 ), who suggest that “…both research and practice would benefit from a moratorium on time-based operationalizations of generations as units for understanding complex dynamics in organizational behavior” (p. 125).

Myth #5: Statistical Models Can Help Disentangle Generational Differences

Given the design challenges noted above, it is perhaps not surprising that researchers have tried a variety of statistical techniques to resolve the age, period, and cohort confounding problem. Unfortunately, the great majority of generational studies to date have employed the least useful approach to doing so, pairing cross-sectional designs with comparisons of generational cohort means (e.g., typically via linear models, such as t tests or other variants of ANOVA-type models). As noted, cross-sectional approaches control for period effects but confound cohort and age effects with one another and this confounding cannot be resolved statistically through any means. To be clear, this is not a function of a lack of innovation regarding statistical modeling techniques. On the contrary, as long as age, period, and cohort are defined in time-related terms, they will be inextricably confounded with one another in cross-sectional research designs.

With respect to cross-temporal approaches, some researchers have implemented a specific technique referred to as “cross-temporal meta-analysis” (CTMA). CTMA shares certain features with traditional meta-analysis (e.g., studies assumed to be representative of a population of all possible studies on a given phenomenon are taken from the literature and synthesized). In a typical CTMA, age is more or less held constant by narrowing the sampling frame of studies included (e.g., by only considering studies of college age students). By holding age constant and looking at the effects of time on outcomes (i.e., by considering the relationship between year of publication and mean levels of a given phenomenon derived from contributing studies), CTMA models change over time in a phenomenon. However, although age is to some extent held constant, recall that cross-temporal methods inherently confound period and cohort effects with one another. Thus, any identified cohort effect cannot be unambiguously separated from period effects in CTMA. Although research employing CTMA has argued that generations are more likely than period effects to explain observed differences, such work also recognizes that period effects are equally likely explanations for any results derived therefrom (e.g., Twenge & Campbell, 2010 ). Furthermore, a recent paper by Rudolph, Costanza, Wright, and Zacher ( 2019 ) used Monte Carlo simulations to test the underlying assumptions of CTMA, finding that it may misestimate cohort effects by a factor of three to eight times, raising questions about both the source and magnitude of any differences identified.

A final analytic technique that has been occasionally employed to disentangle age, period, and cohort effects is cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling (CCHLM; Yang & Land, 2006 , 2013 ). Applying CCHLM to generational research, age is treated as a fixed effect and period and cohort are allowed to vary as random effects. Importantly, however, decisions about how such effects should be specified are somewhat arbitrary, because it is also possible that cohort and period could be fixed and age random in the population, resulting in different outcomes and conclusions from such models that are largely dependent on analytic decisions rather than reflecting “true” population effects. Thus, without generally unknowable insights into “what” to hold constant in estimating such models, CCHLM results in ambiguous parameter estimates for age, period, and cohort effects.

To this end, a series of simulation studies by Bell and colleagues (Bell & Jones, 2014 ; see also Bell & Jones, 2013 , for further commentaries) has shown that the Yang and Land methodology for separating age, period, and cohort effects simply does not “work.” Even ignoring this issue, CCHLM does little to solve the problem of age, period, and cohort confounding, because the three variables are still linearly dependent upon each other and hence computationally inseparable. Something (typically age) has to be held constant in such models to separate these variables from one another, and even then, ambiguities in how to interpret confounded effects of period and cohort still abound. In short, none of the statistical techniques that have been used to study generations can fully separate age, period, and cohort effects (see Costanza, Darrow, Yost, & Severt, 2017 , for a full discussion) and cannot solve the conceptual or design problems noted earlier. This known issue has befuddled social scientists for quite some time. For example, more than 40 years ago Glenn ( 1976 ) referred to this problem as “a futile quest.”

Myth #6: Generations Need To Be Managed at Work

Given the proliferation of research and popular press articles identifying generational differences, it is not surprising that practitioners and academics have suggested that people in different generations need to be managed differently at work (e.g., Baldonado, 2013 ; Lindquist, 2008 ). There are two main problems with these recommendations.

First, as has been noted, research generally does not and cannot support the existence of generational differences. Conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and statistical issues abound in this literature, and absent clear, convincing, and valid evidence for the existence of generational differences, there is no justification for managing individuals based on their supposed generational membership (NASEM, 2020a , 2020b ; Rudolph & Zacher, 2020c ). Eschewing the notion of generations does not mean that one must ignore that individuals change over the course of their lifespan or that their needs at different stages in their careers will vary. However, it is important to note that there is not a credible body of evidence to suggest that such changes are generational or that they should be managed as “generational differences” at work.

Indeed, as already noted, much of what lay people observe as “generational” at work is likely more accurately attributed to either age or career stage effects masquerading as generational differences. There is a broad and well-supported literature on best practices for HR, leadership, and management (e.g., Kulik, 2004 ) and customizing policies and practices based on those recommendations rather than generational stereotypes makes much more sense. Furthermore, there is a burgeoning literature on the positive influence that age-tailored policies (e.g., age-inclusive human resource practices that foster employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities, motivation, effort, and opportunities to contribute, irrespective of age) for building positive climates for aging at work and supporting worker productivity and well-being (see Böhm, Kunze, & Bruch, 2014 ; Rudolph & Zacher, 2020d ). For example, research suggests that workers of all ages benefit from flexible work policies that allow for autonomy in choosing the time and place where work is conducted (see Rudolph & Baltes, 2017 ).

Second, as alluded to earlier, management strategies that are based on generations have the potential to raise legal risks for organizations. For example, in the USA, provisions of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991 disallow the mistreatment of individuals from certain groups based on a variety of characteristics. Although generational membership is not directly covered by such legislation, under the ADEA, age is a protected class for workers aged 40+. Given the conflation of generational effects with age, life, and career stage, employment-related decisions tied to generations could be interpreted as prima facie evidence of age-related discrimination (e.g., Swinick, 2019 ). Indeed, organizations that market themselves to and build personnel practices around generations and generational differences have been implicated in age discrimination lawsuits (e.g., Rabin vs. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2017 ). Combined with the absence of valid studies supporting generationally based differences, organizations open themselves up to an unnecessary liability if they manage individuals based on generational membership (Costanza & Finkelstein, 2015 ; for a related discussion of various policy implications of managing generations, see Rudolph, Rauvola, Costanza, & Zacher, 2020 ).

Recently, Costanza, Finkelstein, Imose, and Ravid ( 2020 ) reviewed the applied psychology, HR, and management literatures looking for studies about how organizations should manage generations in the workplace. They identified a range of inappropriate inferences and unsupported practical recommendations and systematically refuted them based on legal, conceptual, practical, and theoretical grounds. We echo their conclusion here, regarding advice from managing based on generational membership (p. 27): “Instead of customizing HR policies and practices based on such [generational] differences, organizations could use information about their overall workforce and its characteristics to train recruiters, develop and refine policies, and offer customizable benefits packages that appeal to a broad range of employees, regardless of generation.”

That said, we do not think that the idea of generations should be ignored altogether in the development of management strategies. Instead, the focus should be shifted away from managing assumed differences between members of different generations and toward managing perceptions of generations and generational differences. Considering evidence that people’s beliefs and expectations about age and generations feed into the establishment of stereotypes that interfere with work-relevant processes (e.g., King et al., 2019 ; Perry, Hanvongse, & Casoinic, 2013 ; Raymer, Reed, Spiegel, & Purvanova, 2017 ; Van Rossem, 2019 ), this is a particularly important consideration and is, in and of itself, a topic worthy of further study.

Myth #7: Members of Younger Generations Are Disrupting Work

While it may feel “new” to blame members of younger generations for changes in the work environment, this is a form of uniqueness bias: we think our beliefs and experiences are new, when in reality similar complaints have been levied against relatively younger and older people for millennia. Indeed, generationalized beliefs about the inflexibility and “out of touch” nature of older generations, or the laziness, self-centeredness, and entitlement of younger generations, have repeated with remarkable consistency across recorded history (Rauvola, Rudolph, & Zacher, 2019 ). One of the more obvious examples is in referring to generations with self-referent terminology: New York Magazine wrote about youth in the so-called “Me” Decade (Wolfe, 1976 ) over 30 years prior to Twenge’s ( 2006 ) work on “Generation Me,” Time Magazine’s (Stein, 2013 ) publication on the “Me Me Me” generation, and even the British Army’s recent use of the phrase “Me Me Me Millennials…Your Army needs you and your self belief” in recruitment ads (Nicholls, 2019 ).

Lamentations about young people “killing things” are far from radical as well. Modern claims are made about youth ending an absurd number of facets of life, ranging from institutions such as marriage and patriotism to household products like napkins, bar soap, and “light” yogurt (Bryan, 2017 ). Moreover, similar concerns have been voiced throughout the years regarding the rise and fall of consumer preferences, including concerns about young people upending and revolutionizing romantic relationships and transportation (e.g., Thompson, 2016 ), or being corrupted by new forms of popular media like the radio in the 1930s (Schwartz, 2015 ).

A more realistic explanation exists for both shifts in consumer preferences as well as changes and disruptions in the nature of work: the contemporaneous environment, and innovations and unexpected changes therein. To take a recent example, the global COVID-19 pandemic has tremendously impacted and transformed how and where work is conducted (Kniffin et al., 2020 ; Rudolph et al., 2020 ). While “non-essential” workers are conducting more work virtually and with more flexible hours, other workers deemed “essential” are working in environments with new health and safety protocols and often with different demands and resources in place (e.g., with respect to physical equipment, coworker and customer contact). Even more workers have been furloughed or laid off altogether, with the need to turn to alternative forms of work to maintain income or, when feasible, resorting to early retirement (see Bui, Button, & Picciotti, 2020 ; Kanfer, Lyndgaard, & Tatel, 2020 ; van Dalen & Henkens, 2020 ).

These changes have led to a dramatic pivot for many organization, managers, and individual workers, far surpassing the speed and degree to which more gradual, “generational” workplace changes have supposedly occurred. Not only this, but such changes have had outcomes for workers and society that contradict what generational hypotheses would predict. For example, generational stereotypes suggest that relatively older workers would struggle with technological changes at work while relatively younger workers would thrive. However, the move to work-from-home arrangements has resulted in positive benefits for some, including helpful and flexible accommodations, or health and safety protections, as well as new challenges for others, such as the need to balance childcare or eldercare with work while at home, while still others face newfound isolation and lack of in-person social support coupled with great uncertainty (Alon, Doepke, Olmstead-Rumsey, & Tertilt, 2020 ; Douglas, Katikireddi, Taulbut, McKee, & McCartney, 2020 ). These changes create a diverse set of advantages and disadvantages for individuals of all ages. Rather than blaming those of younger generations for disrupting work and life more generally, societal trends and events are a more appropriate, fitting, and ultimately addressable explanation (i.e., through non-ageist interventions and policies).

Myth #8: Generations Explain the Changing Nature of Work (and Society)

Generations are an obvious and convenient explanation for the changing nature of work and societies. However, as discussed previously, convenience and breadth in applying generational explanations does not translate into validity. Because they can easily and generally be applied to explain age-related differences, generations give a convenient “wrapper” to the complexities of age and aging in dynamic environments (i.e., both within and outside of organizations). However, this wrapper restricts and obscures the complexities inherent to both individuals and the environments in which they operate. Generations are highly deterministic, suggesting that individuals “coming of age” at a particular time (i.e., members of the same cohort) all experience aging and development uniformly (i.e., cohort determinism; Walker, 1993 ). With so many other demonstrable age-related and person-specific factors (e.g., social identities, personality, socioeconomic status) that have bearing on individuals’ attitudes, values, and behaviors, as well as how these interact with contextual and environmental influences, the prospect of generations overriding all such explanations is implausible. Assuming otherwise wipes away a tremendous amount of potentially useful detail and heterogeneity.

Moreover, this perspective stipulates that events in a given time period impact younger people and not older people, such that historical context only influences individuals up to a certain (early) point in their development. This aligns with the idea that identity is “crystallized” or “ratified” at a certain age and development or change is more or less halted thereafter (Ryder, 1965 ). However, ample evidence suggests that this is far from the case, with age-graded dynamics in such areas as personality emerging across the breadth of the lifespan (e.g., Bianchi, 2014 ; Donnellan, Hill, & Roberts, 2015 ; Staudinger & Kunzmann, 2005 ) and alongside external forces (e.g., economic recessions). Our ability to dismiss crystallization claims is not merely empirical: although current methods and analyses used cannot fully disentangle age from cohort, lifespan development theory promotes the ideas of lifelong development, multiple intervening life influences, and individuals’ agency in shaping their identity and context (e.g., Baltes, 1987 ). Accordingly, it is more rational and defensible to suggest that individuals’ age, life stage, social context, and historical period intersect across the lifespan. These intersections, in turn, produce predictable as well as unique effects that translate into different attitudes, values, and behaviors, but not as a passive and predetermined function of an individual’s generation.

Myth # 9: Studying Age at Work Is the Antidote to the Problems with Studying Generations

Age and aging research are neither remedies for nor equivalent approaches to the study of generations. First, there are a broad range of phenomena encompassed in both research on “age at work” and “aging at work” (e.g., see discussion of “successful aging” research components in Zacher, 2015a ). These two areas are related but distinct, spanning the study of age as a discrete or sample-relative sociodemographic (i.e., age as a descriptive device, especially between person), age as a compositional unit property (e.g., age diversity in a team, organization), and age as a proxy for continuous processes and development over time (i.e., age representing the passage of time, especially within-person in longitudinal research). Each of these forms has a multitude of potential contributions to our understanding of the workplace, and these contributions should not (and cannot) be reduced to generational cohort-based generalizations. Second, and as noted earlier, although aging research is confounded by cohort effects, it draws on sound theories, research designs, and statistical modeling approaches (Bohlmann, Rudolph & Zacher, 2018 ). The study of generations at work, however, relies upon theories unintended for formal testing and flawed data collection methods and analyses (Costanza et al., 2017 ).

Moreover, whereas both age and aging research treat time continuously, generational research groups people into cohort categories. This results in a loss of important nuance and information about individuals, with results prone to either over- or underestimated age effects. The practice of cohort grouping also creates a “levels” issue in generational research to which age and aging research are not subject: studying aging focuses on the individual level of analysis, whereas (sociological) generational research “groups” individuals into aggregates and then incorrectly draws inferences about individual outcomes. This mismatch of levels can produce ecological or atomistic fallacies (i.e., assumptions that group-level phenomena apply to the individual level and vice versa), depending on whether group- or individual-level data are used to draw conclusions (Rudolph & Zacher, 2017 ). Thus, although age and aging research present robust opportunities for understanding how to support the age-diverse workforce, generational research provides incomplete conclusions about, and unclear implications for, understanding trends in the workplace. Studying age alone is not a substitute for generational research; rather, it transcends generational approaches and engenders more useful and tenable conclusions for researchers and practitioners alike.

Myth #10: Talking About Generations Is Largely Benign

Talking about generations is far from benign: it promotes the spread of generationalism, which can be considered “modern ageism.” Just as “modern racism” is characterized by more subtle and implicit, yet no less discriminatory or troubling, racist beliefs about black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC; e.g., McConahay, Hardee, & Batts, 1981 ), generationalism is defined by sanctioned ambivalence and socially acceptable prejudice toward people of particular ages. These beliefs are normalized and pervasive, reiterated across various forms of popular media and culture to the point that they seem innocuous. However, generationalism leads to decisions at a variety of levels (e.g., individual, organizational, institutional) that are harmful, divisive, and potentially illegal.

Media outlets play a large role in societal tolerance and acceptance of generationalism (Rauvola et al., 2019 ). New “generations” are frequently proposed in light of current events, and age stereotyping becomes further trivialized with each iteration. Adding to this, an abundance of generational labels “stick” while others do not—“iGen,” “Generation Wii,” “Generation Z,” and “Zoomers” all vie to define the “post-Millennial” generation (Raphelson, 2014 ), and “Generation Alpha” (a name inspired in part by naming conventions during the 2005 hurricane season; McCrindle & Wolfinger, 2009 ) now faces competition from “Gen C” to define the next generation. “Gen C” (or “Generation Corona;” see Rudolph & Zacher, 2020a , 2020b ) has gained traction in the media alongside the recent COVID-19 pandemic, with some suggesting that “coronavirus has the potential to create a generation of socially awkward, insecure, unemployed young people” (Patel, 2020 ). These labels differ markedly by country as well, as noted earlier, adding to the trivialization and confusion. More and more, these labels are also used to add levity, and/or to avoid blatant ageism, to deep-seated sociopolitical divides and conflicts portrayed in the media. Take, for example, the rise of “OK Boomer” alongside resentment toward conservatism (Romano, 2019 ), or the labeling of the “Karen Generation” to encapsulate white privilege and entitlement, especially among middle- to upper-class suburban women (Strapagiel, 2019 ).

Although often treated as harmless banter, this lexicon filters into influential research and policy-based organizations (e.g., “Gen C” in The Lancet, 2020 ), legitimizing the use of generational labels and associated age stereotypes in discourse and decision-making. As suggested above, in many countries, age is a protected class and the use of generations to inform differential practices and policies in organizations (e.g., hiring, development and training, benefits) poses great risk to the age inclusivity, and the legal standing, of workplaces (see also Costanza et al., 2020 ). Whether a generational label is new and catchy or accepted and seemingly mundane, it is built on the back of modern ageism, and generationalism—just like other “isms”—is far from benign.

Moving Beyond Generations: Two Alternative Models

With the preceding ten myths serving as a backdrop, we next introduce two models—the social constructionist perspective and the lifespan development perspective—that serve as alternative and complementary ways of thinking about, and understanding thinking about, generations and generational differences. Indeed, we propose that these are complementary models. Specifically, whereas the social constructionist perspective serves as a way of understanding why people tend to think about age and aging in generational terms , the lifespan development perspective serves as an alternative to thinking about age and aging in generational terms .

The Social Constructionist Perspective

Considering the ten myths reviewed above, it is clear that the evidence for the existence of generations and generational differences is lacking. Moreover, when applying a critical lens, what little evidence does exist does not hold up to theoretical and empirical scrutiny. What, then, are we left to do with the idea of generations? That is to say, how can we rationalize the continued emphasis that is placed on generations in research and practice despite the lack of a solid evidence base upon which these ideas rest? On the surface, this may seem to be a conceptually, rather than a practically, relevant question. However, there is a booming industry of advisors, gurus, and entire management consulting firms based around the idea of generations (e.g., Hughes, 2020 ). In whatever form it takes, generationally based practice is built upon the rather shaky foundations of this science, putting organizations and their constituents at risk—not only of wasted money, resources, and time, but of propagating misplaced ideas based on a weak, arguably non-existent evidence base (Costanza et al., 2020 ). As the organizational sciences move toward the ideals of evidence-based practice, generations and assumed differences between them are quickly becoming yet another example of a discredited management fad (see Abrahamson, 1991 , 1996 ; Røvik, 2011 ).

Borrowed from sociological theoretical traditions, the social constructionist perspective focuses on understanding the nature of various shared assumptions that people hold about reality, through understanding the ways in which meanings develop in coordination with others, and how such meanings are attached to various lived experiences, social structures, and entities (see Leeds-Hurwitz, 2009 )—including generations. Comprehensive treatments of the core ideas and tenets of the sociological notion of social constructionism can be found in Burr ( 2003 ) and Lock and Strong ( 2010 ). The social constructionist perspective on generations, which is based upon the idea that generations exist as social constructions, has been advanced as a means of understanding why people often think about age and aging in discrete generational, rather than continuous, terms (e.g., Rudolph & Zacher, 2015 , 2017 ; see also Lyons & Kuron, 2014 ; Lyons & Schweitzer, 2017 ; Weiss & Perry, 2020 ). The social constructionist perspective has utility as a model for understanding various processes that give rise to generations and for understanding the ubiquity and persistence of generations and generationally based explanations for human behavior. In an early conceptualization of this perspective, Zacher and Rudolph ( 2015 ) proposed that two processes reinforce each other to support the social construction of generations. Specifically, (1) the ubiquity and knowledge of generational stereotypes drive (2) the process of generational stereotyping, which is by-and-large socially sanctioned. These two processes fuel the social construction of generational differences, which have bearing on a variety of work-related processes, not least of which is the development of “generationalized” expectations for work specific attitudes, values, and behaviors. Such generationalized expectations set the stage for various forms of intergenerational conflicts and discrimination (i.e., generationalism; Rauvola et al., 2019 ) at work.

The social constructionist perspective on generations is grounded in three core principles: (1) generations are social constructs that are “willed into being”; (2) as social constructs, generations exist because they serve a sensemaking function; and (3) the existence and persistence of generations can be explained by various processes of social construction. The social constructionist perspective is gaining traction as a viable alternative to rather rigid, deterministic approaches of conceptualizing and studying generations, even among otherwise staunch proponents of these ideas. For example, Campbell et al. ( 2017 ) offer that “…generations might be best conceptualized as fuzzy social constructs” (p. 130) and Lyons et al. ( 2015 ) echo similar sentiments about the role and function of generations. To further clarify this perspective, we next expand upon these three core ideas that are advanced by the social constructionist perspective, providing more details and examples of each, and offering supporting evidence from research and theory.

First, the social constructionist perspective advances the idea that generations and generational differences do not exist objectively (see Berger & Luckman, 1966 , for a classic treatment of this idea of the “socially constructed” nature of reality). Rather, generations are “willed into being” as a way of giving meaning to the complex, multicausal, multidirectional, and multidimensional process of human development that we observe on a day-to-day basis, especially against the backdrop of rapidly changing societies. Adopting a social constructionist framework motivates an understanding of the various ways in which groups of individuals actively participate in the construction of social reality, including how socially constructed phenomena develop and become known to others, and how they are institutionalized with various norms and traditions. To say that generations are “social constructs,” or that generations reflect a process of “social construction,” implies that our understanding of their meanings (e.g., the “notion” of generations; the specific connotations of implying one generation versus another) exists as an artifact of a shared understanding of “what” generations “are,” and that this is accepted and agreed upon by members of a society.

Moreover, and to the second core principle, the social constructionist perspective suggests that generations serve as a powerful, albeit flawed, tool for social sensemaking. Generations provide a heuristic framework that greatly simplify people’s ability to quickly and efficiently make judgments in social situations, at the risk of doing so inaccurately. In other words, generations offer an easy, yet overgeneralized, way to give meaning to observations and perceptions of complex age-related differences that we witness via social interactions. This idea is borrowed from social psychological perspectives on the development, formation, and utility of stereotypes. When faced with uncertainty, humans have a natural tendency to seek out explanations of behavior (i.e., their own, but also others’; see Kramer, 1999 ). This process reflects an inherent need to makes sense of one’s world through a process of sensemaking. An efficient, albeit often flawed, strategy to facilitate sensemaking is the construction and adoption of stereotypes (Hogg, 2000 ). Stereotypes are understood in terms of cognitive–attitudinal structures that represent overgeneralizations of others—in the form of broadly applied beliefs about attitudes, ways of thinking, behavioral tendencies, values, beliefs, et cetera (Hilton & Von Hippel, 1996 ).

Applying these ideas, the adoption of generations, and the accompanying prescriptions that clearly lay out how members of such generations ought to think and behave, helps people to make sense of why relatively older versus younger people “are the way that they are.” Additionally, generational stereotypes can be enacted as an external sensemaking tool, as described, but also for internal sensemaking (i.e., making sense of one’s own behavior). Indeed, there is emerging evidence that people internalize various generational stereotypes and that they enact them in accordance with behavioral expectations (i.e., a so-called Pygmalion effect, see Eschleman, King, Mast, Ornellas, & Hunter, 2016 ).

Third, the social constructionist perspective offers that generations are constructed and supported through different mechanisms. The construction of generations can take various forms, for example, in media accounts of “new” generations that form as a result of major events (e.g., pandemics; Rudolph & Zacher, 2020a , 2020b ), political epochs (e.g., “Generation Merkel” Mailliet & Saltz, 2017 ; “Generation Obama,” Thompson, 2012 ), economic instability (e.g., “Generation Recession,” Sharf, 2014 ), and even rather benign phenomena, such as growing up in a particular time and place (e.g., “Generation Golf,” Illies, 2003 ).

A major source of generational construction can be traced to various “think tank”-type groups that purport to study generations. From time to time, such groups proclaim the end of one generation and the emergence of new generational groups (e.g., Dimock, 2019 ). These organizations legitimize the idea of generations in that they are often otherwise trusted and respected sources of information and their messaging conveys an associated air of scientific rigor. Relatedly, authors of popular press books likewise tout the emergence of new generations. For example, Twenge has identified “iGen” (Twenge, 2017 ) as the group that follows “Generation Me” (Twenge, 2006 ), although neither label has found widespread acceptance outside of these two texts. Importantly, all generational labels, including these, exist only in a descriptive sense, and it is not always clear if the emergence of the generation precedes their label, or vice versa. For example, consider that Twenge has suggested that the term “iGen” was inspired by taking a drive through Silicon Valley, during which she concluded that “…iGen would be a great name for a generation…” (Twenge, as quoted in Horovitz, 2012 ), a coining mechanism far from Mannheim’s original conceptualization of what constitutes a generation.

The contemporary practice of naming new generations has its own fascinating history (see Raphelson, 2014 ). Indeed, the social constructionist perspective recognizes that the idea of generations is not a contemporary phenomenon; there is a remarkable historical periodicity or “cycle” to their formation and to the narratives that emerge to describe members of older versus younger generations. As discussed earlier, members of older generations have tended to pan members of younger generations for being brash, egocentric, and lazy throughout history, whereas members of younger generations disparage members of older generations for being out of touch, rigid, and resource-draining (e.g., Protzko & Schooler, 2019 ; Rauvola et al., 2019 ). Likewise, the social constructionist perspective underlines that generations are supported through both the ubiquity of generational stereotypes and the socially accepted nature of applying such labels to describe people of different ages.

In summary, the social constructionist perspective offers a number of explanations for the continued existence of generations, especially in light of evidence which speaks to the contrary. Specifically, by recognizing that generations exist as social constructions, this perspective helps to clarify the continued emphasis that is placed on generations in research and practice, despite the lack of evidence that support their objective existence. Moreover, the social constructionist perspective offers a framework for guiding research into various processes that give rise to the construction of generations and for understanding the ubiquity and persistence of generations and generationally based explanations for human behavior. Next, we shift our attention to a complementary framework—the lifespan perspective—which likewise supports alternative theorizing about the role of age and the process of aging at work that does not require the adoption of generations and generational thinking. Then, we will focus on drawing lines of integration between these two perspectives.

The Lifespan Development Perspective

The lifespan development perspective is a meta-theoretical framework with a rich history of being applied for understanding age-related differences and changes in the work context (Baltes et al., 2019 ; Baltes & Dickson, 2001 ; Rudolph, 2016 ). More recently, the lifespan perspective has also been advanced as an alternative to generational explanations for work-related experiences and behaviors (see Rudolph et al., 2018 ; Rudolph & Zacher, 2017 ; Zacher, 2015b ). Contrary to generational thinking and traditional life stage models of human development (e.g., Erikson, 1950 ; Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, & McKee, 1978 ), the lifespan perspective focuses on continuous developmental trajectories in multiple domains (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998 ). For instance, over time, an individual’s abilities may increase (i.e., “gains,” such as accumulated job knowledge), remain stable, or decrease (i.e., “losses,” such as reduced psychomotor abilities).

Baltes ( 1987 ) outlined seven organizing tenets to guide thinking about individual development ( ontogenesis ) from a lifespan perspective. Specifically, human development is (1) a lifelong process that involves (2) stability or multidirectional changes, as well as (3) both gains and losses in experience and functioning. Moreover, development is (4) modifiable at any point in life (i.e., plasticity); (5) socially, culturally, and historically embedded (i.e., contextualism); and (6) determined by normative age- and history-graded influences and non-normative influences. Regarding the final tenet, normative age-graded influences include person and contextual determinants that most people encounter as they age (e.g., decline in physical strength, retirement), normative history-graded influences include person and contextual determinants that most people living during a certain historical period and place experience (e.g., malnutrition, recessions), and non-normative influences include determinants that are idiosyncratic and less “standard” to the aging process (e.g., accidents, natural disasters). Finally, Baltes ( 1987 ) argued that (7) understanding lifespan development requires a multidisciplinary (i.e., one that goes beyond psychological science) approach. In summary, the lifespan perspective recognizes that individuals’ development is continuous, malleable, and jointly influenced by both normative and non-normative internal (i.e., those that are genetically determined; specific decisions and behaviors that one engages in) and external factors (i.e., the sociocultural and historical context).

A generational researcher may ask research questions like (a) “How does generational membership influence employee attitudes, values, and behaviors?” or (b) “What differences exist between members of different generations in terms of their work attitudes, values, or behaviors?” Then, likely based on the results of a cross-sectional research design that collects information on age or birth year and work-related outcomes, a generational researcher would likely categorize employees into two or more generational groups and take mean-level differences in outcomes between these groups as evidence for the existence of generations and differences between them. Contrary to this, a lifespan researcher would be more apt to ask research questions like (a) “Are there age-related differences or changes in work attitudes, values, and behaviors?” or (b) “What factors serve to differentially modify employees’ continuous developmental trajectories?” They would seek out cross-sectional or longitudinal evidence for age-related differences or changes in attitudes, values, and behaviors, as well as evidence for multiple, co-occurring factors, including person characteristics (e.g., abilities, personality), idiosyncratic factors (e.g., job loss, health problems), and contextual factors (e.g., economic factors, organizational climate) that may predict these differences or changes.

The lifespan perspective generally does not operate with the generations concept, but does distinguish between chronological age, birth cohort, and contemporaneous period effects. As described earlier, generational groups are inevitably linked to group members’ chronological ages, as they are based on a range of adjacent birth years and typically examined at one point in time. Accordingly, tests of generational differences involve comparisons between two or more age groups (e.g., younger vs. older employees). In contrast to tenets #1, #2, and #3 of the lifespan perspective, generational thinking is static in that differences between generations are assumed to be stable over time. The possibility that members of younger generations may change with increasing age, or whether members of older generations have always shown certain attitudes, values, and behavior, are rarely investigated. Moreover, generational thinking typically adopts a simplistic view of differences between generational groups (e.g., “Generation A” has a lower work ethic than “Generation B”) as compared to the more nuanced lifespan perspective with its focus on stability or multidirectional changes, as well as the joint occurrence of both gains and losses across time.

With regard to the lifespan perspective’s tenet #4 (i.e., plasticity), generational researchers tend to treat generational groups as immutable (i.e., as they are a function of one’s birth year) and their influences as deterministic (i.e., all members of a certain generation are expected to think and act in a certain way; so-called cohort determinism). In contrast, the lifespan perspective recognizes that there is plasticity, or within-person modifiability, in individual development at any age. Changes to the developmental trajectory for a given outcome can be caused by person factors (e.g., knowledge gained by long-term practice), contextual factors (e.g., organizational change), or both. For instance, lifespan researchers assume that humans enact agency over their environment and the course of their development. Development is not only a product of the context in which it takes place (e.g., culture, historical period) but also a product of individuals’ decisions and actions. This notion underlies the principle of developmental contextualism (Lerner & Busch-Rossnagel, 1981 ), embodied within the idea that humans are both the products and the producers of their own developmental course.

Research on generations and intergenerational exchanges originated and still is considered an important topic in the field of sociology (Mayer, 2009 ), which emphasizes the role of the social, institutional, cultural, and historical contexts for human development (Settersten, 2017 ; Tomlinson, Baird, Berg, & Cooper, 2018 ). In contrast, the lifespan perspective, which originated in the field of psychology, places a stronger focus on individual differences and within-person variability. Nevertheless, the lifespan perspective’s tenet #5 (i.e., contextualism) suggests that individual development is not only influenced by biological factors but also embedded within the broader sociocultural and historical context. This context includes the historical period, economic conditions, as well as education and medical systems in which development unfolds. Even critics have acknowledged that these external factors are rather well-integrated within the lifespan perspective (Dannefer, 1984 ). That said, most empirical lifespan research has not distinguished between birth cohort and contemporaneous period effects.

For example, studies in the lifespan tradition have suggested that there are birth cohort effects on cognitive abilities and personality characteristics (Elder & Liker, 1982 ; Gerstorf, Ram, Hoppmann, Willis, & Schaie, 2011 ; Nesselroade & Baltes, 1974 ; Schaie, 2013 ). Possible explanations for these effects may be improvements in education, health and medical care, and the increasing complexity of work and home environments (Baltes, 1987 ). An important difference to generational research is that these analyses focus on individual development and outcomes and not on group-based differences.

In contrast to research in the field of sociology, the lifespan perspective generally does not make use of the generations concept and associated generational labels. Instead, in addition to people’s age, lifespan research sometimes focuses on birth year cohorts (Baltes, 1968 ). However, the lifespan perspective does not assume that all individuals born in the same birth year automatically share certain life experiences or have similar perceptions of historical events (Kosloski, 1986 ). According to Baltes, Cornelius, and Nesselroade ( 1979 ), researchers interested in basic developmental processes (e.g., child developmental psychologists) that were established during humans’ genetic and cultural evolution may treat potential cohort effects as error or as transitory, historical irregularities. In contrast, other researchers (e.g., social psychologists, sociologists) may focus less on developmental regularities and treat cohort effects as systematic differences in the levels of an outcome, with or without explicitly proposing a substantive theoretical mechanism or process variable that explains these cohort differences (e.g., poverty, access to high-quality education). Empirical research on generations is typically vague with regard to concrete theoretical mechanisms of assumed generational differences (i.e., beyond the notion of “shared life events and experiences,” such as the Vietnam war, 9/11, or the COVID-19 pandemic) and typically does not operationalize and test these mechanisms.

In proposing the general developmental model, Schaie ( 1986 ) suggested decoupling the “empty variables” of birth cohort and time period from chronological age and re-conceptualizing them as more meaningful variables. Specifically, he re-defined cohort as “the total population of individuals entering the specified environment at the same point in time” and period as “historical event time,” thereby uncoupling period effects from calendar time by identifying the timing and duration of the greatest influence of important historical events (Schaie & Hertzog, 1985 , p. 92). Thus, the time of entry for a cohort does not have to be birth year and can include biocultural time markers (e.g., puberty, parenthood) or societal markers (e.g., workforce entry, retirement; Schaie, 1986 ). Similarly, the more recent motivational theory of lifespan development has discussed cohort-defining events as age-graded opportunity structures (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010 ). Thus, from a lifespan perspective, cohorts are re-defined as an interindividual difference variable, whereas period is re-defined as an intraindividual change variable (Schaie, 1986 ).

Tenet #6 of the lifespan perspective suggests that individuals have to process, react to, and act upon normative age-graded, normative history-graded, and non-normative influences that co-determine developmental outcomes (Baltes, 1987 ). The interplay of these three influences leads to stability and change, as well as multidimensionality and multidirectionality in individual development (Baltes, 1987 ). Importantly, the use of the term “normative” is understood in a statistical–descriptive sense here, not in a value-based prescriptive sense; it is assumed that there are individual differences (e.g., due to gender, socioeconomic status) in the experience and effects of these influences (Baltes & Nesselroade, 1984 ). Moreover, the relative importance of these three influences can be assumed to change across the lifespan (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980 ). Specifically, normative age-graded influences are assumed to be more important in childhood and later adulthood than in adolescence and early adulthood (i.e., due to biological and evolutionary reasons). In contrast, normative history-graded determinants are assumed to be more important in adolescence and early adulthood than in childhood and old age (i.e., when biological and evolutionary factors are less important). Finally, non-normative influences are assumed to increase linearly in importance across the lifespan (Baltes et al., 1980 ; see also Rudolph & Zacher, 2017 ). Indeed, the assumed differential importance of these influences across the lifespan differs markedly from the cohort deterministic approach implied in generational theory and research.

According to Baltes et al. ( 1980 ), idiosyncratic life events become more important predictors of developmental outcomes with increasing age due to declines in biological and evolutionary-based genetic control over development and the increased heterogeneity and plasticity in developmental outcomes at higher ages. Despite the assumed relative strengths of these normative and non-normative influences across the lifespan, they are at no point completely irrelevant to individual development. For example, in the work context, the theoretical relevance of history-graded influences on work-related outcomes may be a factor that determines the strength of potential effects (Zacher, 2015b ). For instance, experiencing a global pandemic is more likely to influence the development of individuals’ attitudes—not an entire generations’ collective attitudes—toward universal health care than it is to influence their job satisfaction. Moreover, individuals’ level of job security may not only be influenced by the pandemic but also by their profession and levels of risk tolerance.

In summary, the lifespan development perspective offers a number of alternative explanations for the role of age and the process of aging at work that do not rely in generational explanations. Specifically, by recognizing that development is a lifelong process that is affected by multiple influences, this perspective helps to clarify the complexities of development, particularly the processes that lead to inter- and intraindividual changes over time. With a clearer sense of these two alternative perspectives, we next shift our attention to outlining various points of integration between them.

Integrating the Social Constructionist and Lifespan Development Perspectives

With a clearer sense of the core tenets of the social constructionist and lifespan development perspectives, we now turn our attention to clarifying lines of integration between these two approaches. While seemingly addressing different “corners” of the ideas presented here, there are a number of complementary features of the social constructionist and lifespan development perspectives to be noted. First, both perspectives generally eschew the idea that generations exist objectively and are meaningful units of study for explaining individual and group differences. Second, both perspectives offer that the complexities that underlie the understanding of age and the process of aging at work cannot be reduced to rather simple mean-level comparisons. Third, both perspectives are generative, in that they encourage research questions that go beyond common ways of thinking. Fourth, and relatedly, both perspectives provide frameworks for more “directly” studying aging and development—whether in the form of how we collectively understand and conceptualize these processes (the social constructionist perspective), or how individuals continuously and interactively shape their own life trajectory (the lifespan development perspective). Together, rather than relying on determinism, these perspectives capitalize on the subjective, dynamic, and agentic aspects of life in organizations and society, allowing for more rigorous and representative research into meaning, creation, stability, and change in context.

Commonalities Between Social Constructionist and Lifespan Development Perspectives

Beyond these complementary features, we propose six additional commonalities that serve as the basis for a more formal integration of these two perspectives with one another (see Table ​ Table2 2 for a summary). First, both perspectives recognize the role of context, in that both development (the lifespan development perspective) and sensemaking (the social constructionist perspective) occur within social contexts. Second, both perspectives describe processes of action, creation, negotiation, and/or codification. Whereas the lifespan perspective focuses on how these processes create identity, beliefs, and habits or behaviors that emerge over time through active self-regulatory, motivational processes, discovery, and (self)acceptance/selectivity, the social constructionist perspective focuses more so on the development of truths and meaning that emerge from collective dialogues, understandings, and traditions through acceptance and institutionalization. Third, both perspectives acknowledge the fundamental roles of internal and external comparisons. For example, the lifespan perspective offers that successful development is judged both externally (e.g., in comparison with important others, normative age expectations, or timetables) and internally (e.g., in comparison with younger or desired state selves). Similarly, social constructions can be focused externally (e.g., in the form of stereotypes) as well as internally (i.e., to make sense of one’s own behavior or identity).

Commonalities between the social constructionist and lifespan perspectives

Fourth, both perspectives highlight learning and reinforcement processes that are derived from environmental sources. The lifespan perspective offers that adaptiveness (e.g., how successfully someone is developing/aging) and the self (as well as identities, values, behaviors, etc.) are learned from and reinforced by feedback from various aspects of the environment. Similarly, social constructions are derived from and reinforced by multiple environmental sources, including those with perceived status, “weight,” and legitimacy. Fifth, by offering that development is a modifiable, discontinuous process (the lifespan development perspective) and that social constructions are constantly re-defined and re-emerge into public consciousness (the social constructionist perspective), both perspectives focus on continuous evolution, revision, and change. The final commonality to be drawn across these two perspectives is that they both focus on predictable influences that characterize certain spans of time, especially around significant events or “turning points.” The lifespan perspective offers that, although complex and plastic, development does have some predictable aspects and influences due to their significance in the life course (e.g., age-graded events). Complimenting this, many social constructions, although in constant flux and redefinition, fall back on the same key concepts due to their pervasiveness in public consciousness (e.g., the laziness of youth) at certain “key moments” in history (e.g., to explain or cope with societal change).

Limitations of These Alternative Perspectives

Beyond the benefits of considering alternative models to generations, and integrations thereof, it is important to mention the limitations of these alternative perspectives. For example, it could be argued that, because it does not provide formalized predictions, the social constructionist perspective is “hard to study.” Additionally, the lifespan perspective can be criticized, just as it is lauded, for its focus on individual agency: as noted earlier, psychological perspectives often place a premium on studying individual-level mechanisms rather than other levels of influence (Rauvola & Rudolph, 2020 ). Thus, without directed efforts on the part of researchers to attend to these aspects of lifespan development theory in their work, it can be easy to fall into the “trap” of ignoring structural factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, governmental policy, institutionalized discrimination) that have bearing on and may constrain individuals’ agentic influence on their life trajectory (for an integration of the psychological lifespan perspective and the sociological life course perspective in the context of vocational behavior and career development, see Zacher & Froidevaux, 2020 ). Still, and for the many reasons noted throughout this manuscript, we do not contend that generational cohort membership is one of these structural factors, and a generational approach ignores these other forces even more flagrantly.

Recommendations for Adopting Alternative Theoretical Perspectives on Generations

Overall, we argue that organizational researchers and practitioners should move beyond the notion of generations for understanding the complexities of age at work. To do so, we urge the adoption of the alternative theoretical models we have outlined here, as well as considerations of their integration. To this end, those interested in studying the role of age at work should adopt a lifespan, rather than a generational, perspective, whereas those interested in studying the persistence of generational thinking would be well served to consider the adoption of a social constructionist perspective. Moreover, to understand more holistically the role of age and the construction of aging at work, it may be useful to adopt an integrative view on these two perspectives, embodied within the six commonalities between them that we have outlined above (see also Table ​ Table2 2 ).

Generational thinking is problematic because it assumes that aggregate social phenomena can explain individual-level attitudes, values, and behavior. In contrast, adopting a lifespan perspective means taking a multidisciplinary lens to understanding age-related differences and changes at work by specifically focusing on how the interplay between person characteristics and contextual variables serve to modify individual development. Moreover, the social constructionist perspective offers guidance for unpacking the meanings people attach to assumptions that are made about these aggregate social phenomena, further aiding in understanding the complexities at play here. We consider recommendations for research and practice adopting these perspectives, next.

Recommendations for Adopting the Social Constructionist Perspective

The social constructionist perspective on generations highlights a number of potential areas for research and practice. Given their longstanding and culturally/historically embedded nature, the social constructionist perspective recognizes that the idea of generations is not likely to go away, even with a lack of empirical methods or evidence to support their existence. Instead, this perspective calls for a paradigm shift in generational research and practice, away from the rather positivist notion of “seeking out” generational differences and instead toward a focus on studying and understanding those processes that support the social construction of generations to begin with. Considering research, the focus could be on those antecedents (e.g., intergroup competition and discrimination; North & Fiske, 2012 ; i.e., to address the question, “Why do these social constructions emerge?”) and outcomes (e.g., self-fulfilling prophecies—i.e., to address the question, “What are the consequences of willing generations into being?”) of socially constructed generations.

Conducting research from a social constructionist perspective requires adopting methodologies that may not be common in organizational researchers’ “tool kits.” For example, Rudolph and Zacher ( 2015 ) used sentiment analysis, a natural language processing methodology, to analyze the content of Twitter dialogues concerning various generational groups to understand the relative sentiment associated with each. Indeed, it would arguably be difficult to study generations from this perspective by adopting a typical frequentist approach to hypothesis testing. This perspective is less about gathering evidence “against the null hypothesis” that generations or differences between them exist in a more or less “objective” (i.e., measurable) way. Instead, it is more about understanding, phenomenologically, the various processes that give rise to people’s subjective construction of generations, the systems that facilitate attaching meaning to generational labels, and the structures that support our continued reliance on generations as a sensemaking tool in spite of logical and empirical arguments against doing so.

More practically, understanding why people think in terms of generations can help us to develop interventions that are targeted at helping people think less in terms of generations and more in terms of individuating people on the basis of the various processes outlined in our description of the lifespan perspective (i.e., personal characteristics; idiosyncratic and contextual factors). The social constructionist perspective also encourages changing the discourse among practitioners, shifting the focus away from managing generations as discrete groups and toward developing more age-conscious personnel practices, policies, and procedures that support workers across the entirety of their working lifespans (e.g., Rudolph & Zacher, 2020c ). We thus urge practitioners to adopt a social constructionist perspective and shift focus away from promoting processes to manage members of different generations to a focus on managing the perceptions of generations and their differences. By recognizing the constructed nature of generations, the social constructionist perspective decouples beliefs about generations from these broad and overgeneralized assumptions about their influence on individuals.

Recommendations for Adopting the Lifespan Perspective

Just as the social constructionist perspective highlights a number of potential areas for research and practice, so too does the lifespan perspective. To this end, and to move research on the lifespan perspective on generations forward, Rudolph and Zacher ( 2017 ) argued that, at the individual level of analysis, the influence of age-graded and historical/contextual influences are inherently codetermined and inseparable. Accordingly, in their lifespan perspective on generations, they proposed that the influence of historically graded and sociocultural context variables occurs at the individual level of analysis only, and not as a manifestation of shared generational effects (proposition 1). They suggested that future research should focus on individual-level indicators of historical and sociocultural influences. Furthermore, they argued that age, period, and cohort effects are both theoretically and empirically confounded and, thus, inseparable (proposition 2). Finally, consistent with Schaie’s ( 1986 ) general developmental model, they suggested that cohorts should be operationalized as interindividual differences, whereas period effects should be defined in terms of intraindividual changes (proposition 3).

In terms of more practical implications of the lifespan perspective, we urge practitioners to adopt principles of lifespan development in the design of age-conscious work processes, interventions, and policies that do not rely on generations as a means of representing age. Indeed, researchers and practitioners alike should take steps to avoid the pitfalls of “generational thinking,” which yields several dangers that can be overcome by lifespan thinking (Rauvola et al., 2019 ; Rudolph et al., 2018 ; Rudolph & Zacher, 2020c ). First, generational thinking categorizes individuals into arbitrary generational groups based on a single criterion (i.e., birth year) and is therefore socially exclusive rather than inclusive; in contrast, the lifespan perspective conceptualizes and operationalizes age directly as a continuous variable (Baltes, 1987 ). Second, generational thinking reduces complex age-related processes into a simplistic dichotomy at a single point in time; the lifespan perspective adopts a multidimensional, multidirectional, and multilevel approach to represent the complexities of aging more appropriately. Third, generational thinking overemphasizes the role of (ranges of) birth cohorts in influencing work outcomes; in contrast, the lifespan perspective emphasizes interindividual differences and intraindividual development (as well as interindividual differences in intraindividual development). Finally, generational thinking is dangerous because it assumes that generational group membership determines individual attitudes, values, and behavior. In contrast to this, the lifespan perspective, which entails the notion of plasticity, suggests that intraindividual changes in developmental paths are possible at any age and that individuals can enact control and influence their own development.

Conclusions

This manuscript sought to achieve two goals, related to helping various constituents better understand the complexities of age and aging at work, and dissuade the use of generations and generational differences as a means of understanding and simplifying such complexities. First, we aimed to “bust” ten common myths about generations and generational differences that permeate various discussions in organizational sciences research and practice and beyond. Then, with these debunked myths as a backdrop, we offered two complementary alternative models—the social constructionist perspective and the lifespan perspective—with promise for helping organizational scientists and practitioners better understand and manage age and the process of aging in the workplace and comprehend the pervasive nature of generations as a means of social sensemaking. The social constructionist perspective calls for a shift in thinking about generations as tangible and demonstrable units of study, to socially constructed entities, the existence of which is in-and-of-itself worthy of study. Supplementing these ideas, the lifespan perspective offers that rather than focusing on simplified, rather deterministic groupings of people into generations, development occurs in a continuous, multicausal, multidirectional, and multidimensional process. Our hope is that this manuscript helps to “redirect” talk about generations away from their colloquial use to a more critical and informed perspective on age and aging at work.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Abrahamson E. Managerial fads and fashions: The diffusion and rejection of innovations. Academy of Management Review. 1991; 16 :586–612. doi: 10.2307/258919. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Abrahamson E. Management fashion, academic fashion, and enduring truths. Academy of Management Review. 1996; 21 :616–618. doi: 10.2307/258636. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Adamczyk, A. (2019, September 29). Millennials are fleeing big cities for the suburbs. CNBC. Retrieved from: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/29/millennials-are-fleeing-big-cities-for-the-suburbs.html
• Adkins, A. (2016, May 12) Millennials: The job-hopping generation. Gallup. Retrieved from: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231587/millennials-job-hopping-generation.aspx
• Alon, T. M., Doepke, M., Olmstead-Rumsey, J., & Tertilt, M. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on gender equality (No. w26947). National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from https://www.nber.org/papers/w26947
• Baldonado AM. Motivating Generation Y and virtual teams. Open Journal of Business and Management. 2013; 1 :39–44. doi: 10.4236/ojbm.2013.12006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baltes BB, Dickson MW. Using life-span models in industrial-organizational psychology: The theory of selective optimization with compensation. Applied Developmental Science. 2001; 5 :51–62. doi: 10.1207/S1532480XADS0501_5. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baltes BB, Rudolph CW, Zacher H, editors. Work across the lifespan. London: Academic Press; 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baltes PB. Longitudinal and cross-sectional sequences in the study of age and generation effects. Human Development. 1968; 11 :145–171. doi: 10.1159/000270604. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baltes PB. Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology. 1987; 23 :611–626. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.23.5.611. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baltes, P. B., Cornelius, S. W., & Nesselroade, J. R. (1979). Cohort effects in developmental psychology. In J. R. Nesselroade & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), Longitudinal research in the study of behavior and development (pp. 61–87). Academic Press.
• Baltes, P. B., Lindenberger, U., & Staudinger, U. M. (1998). Life-span theory in developmental psychology. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., pp. 1029–1143). Wiley.
• Baltes, P. B., & Mayer, K. U. (Eds.). (2001). The Berlin aging study: Aging from 70 to 100 . Cambridge University Press.
• Baltes PB, Nesselroade JR. Paradigm lost and paradigm regained: Critique of Dannefer’s portrayal of life-span developmental psychology. American Sociological Review. 1984; 49 :841–847. doi: 10.2307/2095533. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baltes PB, Reese HW, Lipsitt LP. Life-span developmental psychology. Annual Review of Psychology. 1980; 31 :65–110. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ps.31.020180.000433. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barroso, A., Parker, K., & Bennet, J. (2020, May 27). How millennials approach family life. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved from: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/05/27/as-millennials-near-40-theyre-approaching-family-life-differently-than-previous-generations/
• Bell A, Jones K. The impossibility of separating age, period and cohort effects. Social Science & Medicine. 2013; 93 :163–165. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.04.029. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bell A, Jones K. Another ‘futile quest’? A simulation study of Yang and Land’s hierarchical age-period-cohort model. Demographic Research. 2014; 30 :333–360. doi: 10.4054/DemRes.2013.30.11. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Berger PL, Luckman T. The social construction of reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Penguin Books; 1966. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bianchi EC. Entering adulthood in a recession tempers later narcissism. Psychological Science. 2014; 25 :1429–1437. doi: 10.1177/0956797614532818. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bohlmann C, Rudolph CW, Zacher H. Methodological recommendations to move research on work and aging forward. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2018; 4 (3):225–237. doi: 10.1093/workar/wax023. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Böhm SA, Kunze F, Bruch H. Spotlight on age-diversity climate: The impact of age-inclusive HR practices on firm-level outcomes. Personnel Psychology. 2014; 67 :667–704. doi: 10.1111/peps.12047. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bryan, C. (2017, Jul 31). RIP: Here are 70 things millennials have killed. Mashable. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/2017/07/31/things-millennials-have-killed/
• Bui, Q., & Miller, C. C. (2018, August 4). The age that women have babies: How a gap divides America. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-birth-age-gap.html .
• Bui, T. T. M., Button, P., & Picciotti, E. G. (2020). Early evidence on the impact of COVID-19 and the recession on older workers (No. w27448). National Bureau of Economic Research. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Burr V. Social constructionism. London: Routledge; 2003. [ Google Scholar ]
• Campbell SM, Twenge JM, Campbell WK. Fuzzy but useful constructs: Making sense of the differences between generations. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2017; 3 :130–139. doi: 10.1093/workar/wax001. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cenkus, B. (2017, November 19). Millennials will work hard, just not for your crappy job. Medium. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/swlh/millennials-will-work-hard-just-not-for-your-crappy-job-82c12a1853ed
• Costanza DP, Badger JM, Fraser RL, Severt JB, Gade PA. Generational differences in work-related attitudes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Business and Psychology. 2012; 27 :375–394. doi: 10.1007/s10869-012-9259-4. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Costanza DP, Darrow JB, Yost AB, Severt JB. A review of analytical methods used to study generational differences: Strengths and limitations. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2017; 3 :149–165. doi: 10.1093/workar/wax002. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Costanza DP, Finkelstein LM. Generationally-based differences in the workplace: Is there a there there? Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Sciences and Practice. 2015; 8 :308–323. doi: 10.1017/iop.2015.15. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Costanza DP, Finkelstein LM, Imose RA, Ravid DM. Inappropriate inferences from generational research. In: Hoffman B, Shoss M, Wegman L, editors. The Cambridge handbook of the changing nature of work. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dannefer D. Adult development and social theory: A paradigmatic reappraisal. American Sociological Review. 1984; 49 :100–116. doi: 10.2307/2095560. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dao, J. (2011, September 6). They signed up to fight. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/sept-11-reckoning/troops.html
• Deal JJ, Altman DG, Rogelberg SG. Millennials at work: What we know and what we need to do (if anything) Journal of Business and Psychology. 2010; 25 :191–199. doi: 10.1007/s10869-010-9177-2. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dencker JC, Joshi A, Martocchio JJ. Towards a theoretical framework linking generational memories to workplace attitudes and behaviors. Human Resource Management Review. 2008; 18 :180–187. doi: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2008.07.007. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Desilver, D. (2019, June 27). In the U.S., teen summer jobs aren’t what they used to be. Pew Research. Retrieved from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/27/teen-summer-jobs-in-us/
• Dimock, M. (2019, January 17). Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins. Pew Research. Retrieved from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/
• Donnellan MB, Hill PL, Roberts BW. Personality development across the lifespan: Current findings and future directions. In: Mikulincer M, Shaver PR, Cooper ML, Larsen RJ, editors. APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Volume 4: Personality processes and individual differences . 2015. pp. 107–126. [ Google Scholar ]
• Douglas, M., Katikireddi, S. V., Taulbut, M., McKee, M., & McCartney, G. (2020). Mitigating the wider health effects of COVID-19 pandemic response. BMJ, 369 . 10.1136/bmj.m1557. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Dries N, Pepermans R, De Kerpel E. Exploring four generations’ beliefs about career: Is “satisfied” the new “successful”? Journal of Managerial Psychology. 2008; 23 :907–928. doi: 10.1108/02683940810904394. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Elder GH. Time, human agency, and social change: Perspectives on the life course. Social Psychology Quarterly. 1994; 57 :4–15. doi: 10.2307/2786971. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Elder GH, Liker JK. Hard times in women’s lives: Historical influences across forty years. American Journal of Sociology. 1982; 88 :241–269. doi: 10.1086/227670. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Erikson EH. Childhood and society. New York, NY: Norton; 1950. [ Google Scholar ]
• Eschleman, K. J., King, M., Mast, D., Ornellas, R., & Hunter, D. (2016). The effects of stereotype activation on generational differences. Work, Aging and Retirement , 1–9. 10.1093/workar/waw032.
• Gerstorf D, Ram N, Hoppmann C, Willis SL, Schaie KW. Cohort differences in cognitive aging and terminal decline in the Seattle Longitudinal Study. Developmental Psychology. 2011; 47 :1026–1041. doi: 10.1037/a0023426. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Glenn ND. Cohort analysts’ futile quest: Statistical attempts to separate age, period and cohort effects. American Sociological Review. 1976; 41 :900–904. doi: 10.2307/2094738. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Glenn ND. Cohort analysis. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
• Godfrey, N. (2016, May 22) Will millennials just uber their life? Forbes. From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nealegodfrey/2016/05/22/will-millennials-just-uber-their-life/
• Goodkind, N. (2020, February 20). Facing falling enlistment numbers, the U.S. Army takes a new approach to recruitment: Mom and dad. Fortune. Retrieved from https://fortune.com/2020/02/20/army-military-enlistment-recruitment-ads/
• Graff, G. M. (2019, September 11). The 9/11 generation comes of age. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-9-11-generation-comes-of-age-11568213715
• Heckhausen J, Wrosch C, Schulz R. A motivational theory of life-span development. Psychological Review. 2010; 117 :32–60. doi: 10.1037/a0017668. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Helling, S. (2017, October 16). Baby Jessica on the 30 year anniversary of her rescue from a well: Her life as a wife and mom. People Magazine. From: https://people.com/human-interest/baby-jessica-on-the-30-year-anniversary-of-her-rescue-from-a-well-her-life-as-a-wife-and-mom/
• Heyns EP, Eldermire ER, Howard HA. Unsubstantiated conclusions: A scoping review on generational differences of leadership in academic libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. 2019; 45 (5):102054. doi: 10.1016/j.acalib.2019.102054. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hilton JL, Von Hippel W. Stereotypes. Annual Review of Psychology. 1996; 47 :237–271. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.47.1.237. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hirsch PB. Follow the dancing meme: Intergenerational relations in the workplace. Journal of Business Strategy. 2020; 41 (32):67–71. doi: 10.1108/JBS-02-2020-0034. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hogg MA. Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes. European Review of Social Psychology. 2000; 11 :223–255. doi: 10.1080/14792772043000040. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Horovitz, B. (2012, May 4). After Gen X, Millennials, what should next generation be? USA Today. From http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-05-03/naming-the-next-generation/54737518/1
• Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (2000). Millennials rising: The next great generation. Vintage.
• Howe N, Strauss W. The next 20 years: How customer and workforce attitudes will evolve. Harvard Business Review. 2007; 85 :41–52. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hughes, J. (2020, February 20). Need to keep Gen Z workers happy? Hire a ‘generational consultant’. New York Times Magazine. From https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/19/magazine/millennials-gen-z-consulting.html .
• Illies, F. (2003). Generation Golf zwei. Munich, Germany: Blessing.
• Jauregui J, Watsjold B, Welsh L, Ilgen JS, Robins L. Generational ‘othering’: The myth of the Millennial learner. Medical Education. 2020; 54 (1):60–65. doi: 10.1111/medu.13795. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kanfer, R., Lyndgaard, S. F., & Tatel, C. E. (2020). For whom the pandemic tolls: a person-centric analysis of older workers. Work, Aging and Retirement . 10.1093/workar/waaa014.
• Keeley, S. (2016, May 25). Derek Jeter has had it with millennials and their lack of interest in baseball. The Comeback. Retrieved from https://thecomeback.com/mlb/derek-jeter-millennials.html
• Kertzer DI. Generation as a sociological problem. Annual Review of Sociology. 1983; 9 :125–149. doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.09.080183.001013. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• King, E., Finkelstein, L., Thomas, C., & Corrington, A. (2019). Generational differences at work are small. Thinking they’re big affects our behavior. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/08/generational-differences-at-work-are-small-thinking-theyre-big-affects-our-behavior .
• Kniffin, K. M., Narayanan, J., Anseel, F., Antonakis, J., Ashford, S.P., Bakker, A.B., Bamberger, P., Bapuji, H., Bhave, D.P., Choi, V.K., Creary, S.J., Demerouti, E., Flynn, F.J., Gelfand, M.J., Greer, L.L., Johns, G., Kesebir, S., Klein, P.G., Lee, S.Y., Ozcelik, H., Petriglieri, J.L., Rothbard, N.P., Rudolph, C.W., Shaw, J.D., Sirola, N., Wanberg, C.R., Whillans, A., Wilmot, M.P., & Van Vugt, M. (2020, In press). COVID-19 and the workplace: Implications, issues, and insights for future research and action. American Psychologist . [ PubMed ]
• Knight R. Managing people from 5 generations. Harvard Business Review. 2014; 25 (9):1–7. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kosloski K. Isolating age, period, and cohort effects in developmental research: A critical review. Research on Aging. 1986; 8 :460–479. doi: 10.1177/0164027586008004002. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kramer MW. Motivation to reduce uncertainty: A reconceptualization of uncertainty reduction theory. Management Communication Quarterly. 1999; 13 :305–316. doi: 10.1177/0893318999132007. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kulik, C. T. (2004). Human resources for the non-HR manager . Psychology Press.
• Leeds-Hurwitz W. Social construction of reality. In: Littlejohn SW, Foss KA, editors. Encyclopedia of communication theory. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE; 2009. pp. 891–894. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lerner RM, Busch-Rossnagel NA. Individuals as producers of their development: A life-span perspective. New York, NY: Academic Press; 1981. [ Google Scholar ]
• Levinson, D. J., Darrow, C. N., Klein, E. B., Levinson, M. H., & McKee, B. (1978). The seasons of a man’s life . Ballantine Books.
• Lindquist TM. Recruiting the millennium generation: The new CPA. The CPA Journal. 2008; 78 :56–59. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lock A, Strong T. Social constructionism: Sources and stirrings in theory and practice. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; 2010. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lyons S, Kuron L. Generational differences in the workplace: A review of the evidence and directions for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 2014; 35 :S139–S157. doi: 10.1002/job.1913. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lyons S, Urick M, Kuron L, Schweitzer L. Generational differences in the workplace: There is complexity beyond the stereotypes. Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 2015; 8 :346–356. doi: 10.1017/iop.2015.48. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lyons ST, Schweitzer L. A qualitative exploration of generational identity: Making sense of young and old in the context of today’s workplace. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2017; 3 :209–224. doi: 10.1093/workar/waw024. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mailliet, A. & Saltz, J. (2017, September 22). ‘Generation Merkel’ yearns for continuity and stability. France 24. From: https://www.france24.com/en/20170922-focus-germany-angela-merkel-youth-generaion-afd-vote-elections
• Mannheim K. The problem of generations. In: Kecskemeti P, editor. Essays in the sociology of knowledge. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul; 1952. pp. 276–322. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mayer KU. New directions in life course research. Annual Review of Sociology. 2009; 35 :423–424. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134619. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McConahay JB, Hardee BB, Batts V. Has racism declined in America? It depends on who is asking and what is asked. Journal of Conflict Resolution. 1981; 25 :563–579. doi: 10.1177/002200278102500401. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McCrindle M, Wolfinger E. The ABC of XYZ: Understanding the global generations. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press Ltd.; 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mulvany, L. & Patton, L. (2018, October 10). Millennials kill again. The latest victim? American cheese. Time Magazine. Retrieved from: https://time.com/5420369/millennials-kill-american-cheese/
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2020a). Categorizing workers’ needs by generation such as Baby Boomers or Millennials is not supported by research or useful for workforce management. National Academies. Retrieved from: https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/07/categorizing-workers-needs-by-generation-such-as-baby-boomers-or-millennials-is-not-supported-by-research-or-useful-for-workforce-management
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine . Are generational categories meaningful distinctions for workforce management? Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nesselroade JR, Baltes PB. Adolescent personality development and historical change: 1970-1972. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 1974; 39 :1–80. doi: 10.2307/1165824. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nicholls, D. (2019, Jan 3). British Army targets ‘snowflakes, binge gamers and me, me, me millennials’ in new recruitment drive. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/03/army-targets-snowflakes-binge-gamers-millennials-new-recruitment/
• North MS, Fiske ST. An inconvenienced youth? Ageism and its potential intergenerational roots. Psychological Bulletin. 2012; 138 :982–997. doi: 10.1037/a0027843. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Okros A. Generational theory and cohort analysis. In: Okros A, editor. Harnessing the potential of digital post-Millennials in the future workplace. Cham: Springer; 2020. pp. 33–51. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ortega y Gasset J. The modern theme. New York, NY: Norton; 1933. [ Google Scholar ]
• Papavasileiou EF. Age-based generations at work: A culture-specific approach. In: Parry E, McCarthy J, editors. The Palgrave handbook of age diversity and work. London: Palgrave Macmillan; 2017. pp. 521–538. [ Google Scholar ]
• Patel, J. (2020, Mar 4). “Generation Corona” will miss out on life’s opportunities. New creative spaces can help. Euronews. Retrieved from https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/03/generation-corona-will-miss-out-on-life-s-opportunities-new-creative-spaces-can-help-view .
• Perry EL, Hanvongse A, Casoinic DA. Making a case for the existence of generational stereotypes: A literature review and exploratory study. In: Field J, Burke RJ, Cooper CL, editors. The SAGE handbook of aging, work and society. Thousand Oaks: Sage; 2013. pp. 416–442. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pilcher J. Mannheim’s sociology of generations: An undervalued legacy. British Journal of Sociology. 1994; 45 :481–495. doi: 10.2307/591659. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Protzko, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2019). Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking. Science Advances, 5 , eaav5916. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav5916. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Rabin v. PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, 236 F. Supp. 3d 1126 (N.D. Cal. 2017).
• Raphelson, S. (2014, Oct 6). From GIs to Gen Z (or is it iGen?): How generations get nicknames. National Pubic Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2014/10/06/349316543/don-t-label-me-origins-of-generational-names-and-why-we-use-them .
• Rauvola, R. S., & Rudolph, C. W. (2020). On the limits of agency for successful aging at work. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice .
• Rauvola RS, Rudolph CW, Zacher H. Generationalism: Problems and implications. Organizational Dynamics. 2019; 48 :100664. doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn.2018.05.006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Raymer M, Reed M, Spiegel M, Purvanova RK. An examination of generational stereotypes as a path towards reverse ageism. The Psychologist-Manager Journal. 2017; 20 (3):148–175. doi: 10.1037/mgr0000057. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Robinson WS. Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review. 1950; 15 (3):351–357. doi: 10.2307/2087176. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Romano, A. (2019, November 19). “OK boomer” isn’t just about the past, it’s about our apocalyptic future. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2019/11/19/20963757/what-is-ok-boomer-meme-about-meaning-gen-z-millennials
• Røvik KA. From fashion to virus: An alternative theory of organizations’ handling of management ideas. Organization Studies. 2011; 32 :631–653. doi: 10.1177/0170840611405426. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph CW. A note on the folly of cross-sectional operationalizations of generations. Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 2015; 8 :362–366. doi: 10.1017/iop.2015.50. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph CW. Lifespan developmental perspectives on working: A literature review of motivational theories. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2016; 2 :130–158. doi: 10.1093/workar/waw012. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph, C. W., Allan, B., Clark, M., Hertel, G., Hirschi, A., Kunze, F., Shockley, K., Shoss, M., Sonnentag, S., & Zacher, H. (2020). Pandemics: Implications for research and practice in industrial and organizational psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice .
• Rudolph CW, Baltes BB. Age and health jointly moderate the influence of flexible work arrangements on work engagement: Evidence from two empirical studies. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. 2017; 22 (1):40–58. doi: 10.1037/a0040147. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph, C. W., Costanza, D. P., Wright, C., & Zacher, H. (2019). Cross-temporal meta-analysis: A conceptual and empirical critique. Journal of Business and Psychology , 1–18. 10.1007/s10869-019-09659-2.
• Rudolph CW, Rauvola RS, Zacher H. Leadership and generations at work: A critical review. The Leadership Quarterly. 2018; 29 :44–57. doi: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.09.004. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph, C. W., Rauvola, S., Costanza, D. P., & Zacher, H. (2020). Answers to 10 questions about generations and generational differences in the workplace. Public Policy & Aging Report , praa010. 10.1093/ppar/praa010.
• Rudolph, C. W., & Zacher, H. (2015). Intergenerational perceptions and conflicts in multi-age and multigenerational work environments. In L. M. Finkelstein, D. M. Truxillo, F. Fraccaroli, & R. Kanfer (Eds.), SIOP organizational frontiers series. Facing the challenges of a multi-age workforce: A use-inspired approach (pp. 253–282). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
• Rudolph CW, Zacher H. Considering generations from a lifespan developmental perspective. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2017; 3 :113–129. doi: 10.1093/workar/waw019. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph CW, Zacher H. The kids are alright: Taking stock of generational differences at work. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist. 2018; 55 :1–7. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph, C. W., & Zacher, H. (2020a). “The COVID-19 Generation”: A cautionary note. Work, Aging and Retirement .
• Rudolph CW, Zacher H. COVID-19 and careers: On the futility of generational explanations. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2020; 119 :103433. doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2020.103433. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph CW, Zacher H. Managing employees across the working lifespan. In: Hoffman B, Shoss M, Wegman L, editors. The Cambridge handbook of the changing nature of work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2020. pp. 425–445. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudolph, C. W., & Zacher, H. (2020d). Age inclusive human resource practices, age diversity climate, and work ability: Exploring between-and within-person indirect effects. Work, Aging and Retirement. 10.1093/workar/waaa008.
• Ryder NB. The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American Sociological Review. 1965; 30 :843–861. doi: 10.2307/2090964. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schaie KW. Beyond calendar definitions of age, time, and cohort: The general developmental model revisited. Developmental Review. 1986; 6 :252–277. doi: 10.1016/0273-2297(86)90014-6. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schaie KW. Developmental influences on adult intelligence: The Seattle Longitudinal Study. 2. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schaie KW, Hertzog C. Measurement in the psychology of adulthood and aging. In: Birren JE, Schaie KW, editors. Handbook of the psychology of aging. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold; 1985. pp. 61–92. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwartz, B. A. (2015, Dec 15). American children faced great dangers in the 1930s, none greater than “Little Orphan Annie”. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/american-children-faced-great-dangers-1930s-none-greater-little-orphan-annie-180957544/
• Settersten RA. Some things I have learned about aging by studying the life course. Innovation in Aging. 2017; 1 :1–7. doi: 10.1093/geroni/igx014. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sharf, S. (2014, July 30). The Recession Generation: How millennials are changing money management forever. Forbes. From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/07/30/the-recession-generation-how-millennials-are-changing-money-management-forever/#774ab150344f
• Shaw, H. (2013). Sticking points: How to get 4 generations working together in the 12 places they come apart . Tyndale House Publishers.
• Smola KW, Sutton CD. Generational differences: Revisiting generational work values for the new millennium. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 2002; 23 :363–382. doi: 10.1002/job.147. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Srinivasan V. Multi generations in the workforce: Building collaboration. IIMB Management Review. 2012; 24 :48–66. doi: 10.1016/j.iimb.2012.01.004. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stassen L, Anseel F, Levecque K. Generatieverschillen op de werkvloer: ‘What people believe is true is frequently wrong.’ [Generational differences in the workplace: ‘What people believe is true is frequently wrong.’] Gedrag en Organisatie. 2016; 29 (1):87–92. [ Google Scholar ]
• Staudinger UM, Kunzmann U. Positive adult personality development: Adjustment and/or growth? European Psychologist. 2005; 10 :320–329. doi: 10.1027/1016-9040.10.4.320. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stein, J. (2013, May 20). Millennials: The me me me generation. Time . Retrieved from https://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/
• Strapagiel, L. (2019, Nov 14). Gen Z is calling Gen X the “Karen Generation”. Buzzfeed News. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/gen-z-is-calling-gen-x-the-karen-generation
• Strauss W, Howe N. Generations: The history of America’s future, 1584 to 2069. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company; 1991. [ Google Scholar ]
• Swinick, C. (2019, December 12). “Ok Boomer”… from internet meme to workplace age discrimination. JDSupra. Retrieved from https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ok-boomer-from-internet-meme-to-99279/
• The Lancet Generation coronavirus? The Lancet. 2020; 395 :1949. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31445-8. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thompson, D. (2016, Feb 11). America in 1915: Long hours, crowded houses, death by trolley. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/america-in-1915/462360/
• Thompson, K. (2012, June 16). Generation Obama: Pursuing their dreams through four years of hard times. The Washington Post. From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/generation-obama-pursuing-their-dreams-through-four-years-of-hard-times/2012/06/16/gJQAQqgthV_story.html
• To SM, Tam HL. Generational differences in work values, perceived job rewards, and job satisfaction of Chinese female migrant workers: Implications for social policy and social services. Social Indicators Research. 2014; 118 :1315–1332. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0470-0. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tomlinson J, Baird M, Berg P, Cooper R. Flexible careers across the life course: Advancing theory, research and practice. Human Relations. 2018; 71 :4–22. doi: 10.1177/0018726717733313. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Troll LE. Issues in the study of generations. Aging and Human Development. 1970; 1 :199–218. doi: 10.2190/ag.1.3.c. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Trzesniewski KH, Donnellan MB. Rethinking “Generation Me”: A study of cohort effects from 1976–2006. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2010; 5 :58–75. doi: 10.1177/1745691609356789. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Trzesniewski KH, Donnellan MB, Robins RW. Is “Generation Me” really more narcissistic than previous generations? Journal of Personality. 2008; 76 :903–917. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00508.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM. The age of anxiety? Birth cohort change in anxiety and neuroticism, 1952–1993. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2000; 79 :1007–1021. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.1007. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM. Generation Me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled--and more miserable than ever before. New York, NY: Free Press; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM. A review of the empirical evidence on generational differences in work attitudes. Journal of Business and Psychology. 2010; 25 :201–210. doi: 10.1007/s10869-010-9165-6. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM. iGen: Why today’s super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy--and completely unprepared for adulthood--and what that means for the rest of us. New York: Simon and Schuster; 2017. [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM, Campbell SM. Generational differences in psychological traits and their impact on the workplace. Journal of Managerial Psychology. 2008; 23 :862–877. doi: 10.1108/02683940810904367. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM, Campbell WK. Birth cohort differences in the monitoring the future dataset and elsewhere: Further evidence for generation me—commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010) Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2010; 5 :81–88. doi: 10.1177/1745691609357015. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Twenge JM, Konrath S, Foster JD, Campbell WK, Bushman BJ. Egos inflating over time: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality. 2008; 76 :875–902. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00507.x. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• van Dalen, H. P., & Henkens, K. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons for financially fragile and aging societies. Work, Aging and Retirement. 10.1093/workar/waaa011.
• Van Rossem AH. Generations as social categories: An exploratory cognitive study of generational identity and generational stereotypes in a multigenerational workforce. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 2019; 40 (4):434–455. doi: 10.1002/job.2341. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Walker A. Intergenerational relations and welfare restructuring: The social construction of an intergenerational problem. In: Bengtson VL, Achenbaum WA, editors. The changing contract across generations. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter; 1993. pp. 141–165. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weiss D, Perry EL. Implications of generational and age metastereotypes for older adults at work: The role of agency, stereotype threat, and job search self-efficacy. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2020; 6 (1):15–27. doi: 10.1093/workar/waz010. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weiss D, Zhang X. Multiple sources of aging attitudes: Perceptions of age groups and generations from adolescence to old age across China, Germany, and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 2020; 51 :407–423. doi: 10.1177/0022022120925904. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wohlwill JF. The age variable in psychological research. Psychological Review. 1970; 77 :49–64. doi: 10.1037/h0028600. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wolfe, T. (1976, Aug 23). The “Me” Decade and the third great awakening. New York Magazine. Retrieved from https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/
• Yang Y, Land KC. A mixed models approach to the age- period-cohort analysis of repeated cross-section surveys, with an application to data on trends in verbal test scores. Sociological Methodology. 2006; 36 :75–97. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9531.2006.00175.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Yang Y, Land KC. Age-period-cohort analysis: New models, methods, and empirical applications. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Yigit S, Aksay K. A comparison between generation X and generation Y in terms of individual innovativeness behavior: The case of Turkish health professionals. International Journal of Business Administration. 2015; 6 :106. doi: 10.5430/ijba.v6n2p106. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zabel KL, Biermeier-Hanson BB, Baltes BB, Early BJ, Shepard A. Generational differences in work ethic: Fact or fiction? Journal of Business and Psychology. 2017; 32 :301–315. doi: 10.1007/s10869-016-9466-5. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zacher H. Successful aging at work. Work, Aging and Retirement. 2015; 1 :4–25. doi: 10.1093/workar/wau006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zacher H. Using lifespan developmental theory and methods as a viable alternative to the study of generational differences at work. Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 2015; 8 :342–346. doi: 10.1017/iop.2015.47. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zacher, H., & Froidevaux, A. (2020). Life stage, lifespan, and life course perspectives on vocational behavior and development: A theoretical framework, review, and research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior .

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Generation — The Differences Between Older Generation Vs Younger Generation

The Differences Between Older Generation Vs Younger Generation

• Categories: Generation Modern Society

About this sample

Words: 655 |

Updated: 11 December, 2023

Words: 655 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., Saez, E., & Turner, N. (2014). Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility. The American Economic Review, 104(5), 141-147.
• Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 167-195.
• Levinson, D. J., & Levinson, J. L. (1996). The Seasons of a Woman's Life. Knopf.
• Mokyr, J. (2002). The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton University Press.
• Pew Research Center. (2018). Mobile Fact Sheet. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
• Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster.
• Roberts, S. G. B., Dunbar, R. I. M., Pollet, T. V., & Kuppens, T. (2009). Exploring Variation in Active Network Size: Constraints and Consequences. Social Networks, 31(2), 138-146.
• Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books.
• Valenzuela, S., Park, N., & Kee, K. F. (2009). Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(4), 875-901.
• Wellman, B. (2001). Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Networked Individualism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(2), 227-252.

Video Version

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Sociology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 621 words

4 pages / 1876 words

4 pages / 1639 words

3 pages / 1174 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Generation

Mornings at my grandparent’s house are a perfect example of how the different generations can go about accomplishing the same task in very diverse ways. My grandmother places the mail on the table and begins making a grocery [...]

Generational differences have always been a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists, and researchers. Each generation is shaped by its unique experiences, cultural influences, and technological advancements. In this [...]

Generation Z is what they are calling those who have been using technology and social media since a young age. Technology has changed the game of high school romance. Snapchat, Instagram, and all other means of media have [...]

In today's generation, technology has become a day to day necessity. Most people use some form of technology in their day to day lives. Many people see this technology as a way to expand knowledge, but others, such as social [...]

The millennial generation or Gen-Y is the generation which includes the people born in the period from 1981 to 1996, as per Pew Research Centre, although this range is highly variable. They have been labeled as the “Me Me Me [...]

Every individual is unique in his own way. This makes him different from anyone else. Even brothers and sisters differ a lot. But with every person’s distinct characteristics, he should still be able achieve good relationship [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Advertisement

Supported by

As Civil Rights Era Fades From Memory, Generation Gap Divides Black Voters

Many older Black voters see moral and political reasons to vote. Younger Black voters feel far less motivated to cast a ballot for Democrats or even at all.

• Share full article

By Maya King

Reporting from Atlanta

For years, Loretta Green has voted at her Southwest Atlanta precinct wearing the same custom T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of her first voter registration card, dated to 1960. The front of it reads: “This is why I vote.”

Since gaining the legal right, Ms. Green, 88, has participated in every possible election. This November will be no different, she said, when she casts a ballot for President Biden and Democrats down the ticket.

But conversations with her younger relatives, who have told her they’re unsure of voting or considering staying home, illustrate some of the challenges Mr. Biden’s campaign faces in reassembling his winning 2020 coalition, particularly in key battleground states like Georgia. While Ms. Green and many older Black voters are set on voting and already have plans in place to do so, younger Black voters, polling and focus group data show, feel far less motivated to cast a ballot for Democrats or even at all.

“To me, voting is almost sacred. Look at what people went through. The struggles. The people that allowed themselves to be beaten,” Ms. Green said of the civil rights movement that ignited her determination to vote in every election. “I think there are some young Blacks who probably feel like it didn’t even happen.”

Black voters have long been Democrats’ most loyal constituency, and high turnout from this bloc is crucial to Mr. Biden’s re-election. Any drop-off in support could imperil his chances of winning in November. And surveys have shown a striking generational divide within this bloc, driven by what many young people see as broken campaign promises and what party leaders have suggested is a difficulty in communicating Mr. Biden’s accomplishments to voters.

There is still time for Democrats to close this gap. But growing discontent from young voters, especially concerning the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza — illustrated in an April New York Times/Siena College poll that shows just 4 percent of voters under 45 strongly approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign policy — underlines the scale of the response that may be required of the president’s re-election campaign to bring young voters back into the fold.

The stark difference between how older and younger Black voters respond to Mr. Biden and Democrats further highlights how different the messages to these voters will have to be.

“It is a generational divide. They don’t know the people who fought and died for their rights,” said Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic pollster, whose polling has found a nearly 30-point gap in support for Democrats among Black voters 18 to 49 years old relative to Black voters over 50. The latter group, he said, “does know those people. They saw that fight. Some of them were in that fight.”

Young Black voters point to higher costs of living, crises abroad and the old ages of both major candidates — Mr. Biden, 81, is the oldest U.S. president, and former President Donald J. Trump is 77 — as reasons for their discontent. They also say that they feel their lives have not improved under Mr. Biden’s presidency and that they have seen little of his campaign promises to lower housing costs, relieve student loan debt and promote racial equity.

These gripes are not unique to young Black voters. In polls, focus groups and interviews, record numbers of Black Americans across ages and genders have expressed disenchantment with Democratic leaders. And the generation gap in support for Democrats is not unique to one race. While most young voters support Democrats and turned out en masse during the 2020 presidential and 2022 midterm elections, many have also said they are deeply dissatisfied with the party and see less reason to turn back out for them.

“I can understand,” said India Juarez, 46, a Southwest Atlanta resident and Democratic voter. “You’ve got two people who really should be retired, enjoying their golden lives.”

Still, for older Black voters, many of whom see Mr. Trump as a threat to their fundamental rights, stopping him and other Republicans from reclaiming power in November outshines their frustrations with Democrats. By an overwhelming majority, Black voters continue to support Democratic candidates and some encourage the younger people in their lives to do the same.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, an influential Biden ally who led civil rights protests in college, said he had spent much of his time outside Washington on college campuses to encourage students to vote. But, he said, “it needs to be an informed vote.”

“I don’t want people going out there talking about, ‘There’s no difference between Trump and Biden.’ I’m going to show them what the differences are. I want them to see why you need to go out and vote,” he said. He lauded the older Black voters who encourage their younger relatives to register and cast a ballot.

Tari Turner, 52, a Black Democratic voter from Detroit, is one of them. She said she often encourages her son, Brice Ballard, 34, to vote in elections even when he is reluctant to.

“I make him vote. He votes,” she said. “I don’t play about him voting. I’ll go pick him up to vote.”

This November, she said she planned to vote and support Mr. Biden’s re-election — a fact she acknowledged tepidly. Mr. Ballard, however, said he would not vote this year, despite his mother’s urging.

“I just don’t feel a connection with either candidate,” he said, adding that he voted in the last presidential election. If he did vote in November, he said he would more likely support Mr. Trump because he felt he was economically better off under his presidency.

Mr. Ballard’s feelings align with another concern for the Biden campaign: a rightward shift among nonwhite voters that is particularly pronounced among young men of color. Mr. Trump and his campaign have recognized this and made some efforts to court Black voters in recent months. Still, many are rooted in stereotype and often offensive.

Mr. Biden’s campaign has aimed to encourage young Black voters to turn out through increased direct contact with them. Senior campaign officials for Mr. Biden underlined his campaign’s presence on college campuses, online and at music festivals and sporting events. They added that the campaign was hiring a director of campus engagement who will focus on mobilizing students at historically Black colleges and universities.

On the airwaves, the campaign is running several ads targeted to Black voters that emphasize the Biden administration’s work to lower health care costs and its large investments in historically Black colleges and universities. Democrats have also enlisted celebrities and local Black elected officials to serve as surrogates.

That hasn’t kept concerns from some Black community leaders at bay. The New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan voter mobilization group, has held more focus groups with voters and adjusted its talking points during canvassing operations to address disaffected younger voters and the policy issues that matter to them. That way, said Kendra Cotton, the group’s chief executive, organizers can explain to young voters how government can work — rather than admonish them for declining to participate in the political process.

“This narrative that people have that ‘oh, you should vote because so many people died for you to have that right,’ that is not resonating with this new generation at all,” Ms. Cotton said. “And I think us continuing to propagate that narrative, no matter how true and rooted in fact that may be, is off-putting.”

Davan’te Jennings, the Georgia Young Democrats’ Black caucus chair, said he had held a range of conversations with younger Black voters who are not enthusiastic about voting. Some, he said, have expressed interest in supporting Republicans this November.

“They’re like, ‘We’ve been on this Democratic side for so long, they tell us all these things and nothing happens,’” he said. “Let’s see what’s over here on the Republican side.’”

Ms. Green, who said she, too, had concerns about young voters’ involvement, said she planned to volunteer with Mr. Biden’s campaign operation in Georgia to encourage young Black voters to turn out and to talk to them about the importance of their vote — something she sees as both morally and politically significant.

“That’s why we have to tell them our story. They don’t understand it,” she said. “They haven’t seen it. And if we do not continue to talk to them, tell them the history, then they won’t know.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misspelled the surname of Tari Turner’s son. He is Brice, not Bryce.

How we handle corrections

Maya King is a politics reporter covering the Southeast, based in Atlanta. She covers campaigns, elections and movements in the American South, as well as national trends relating to Black voters and young people. More about Maya King

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

Polls show voters are angry about costs, like mortgages, and worried they will stay high if President Biden wins re-election. Some Democratic strategists say it is time for him to emulate Trump , who routinely browbeat the Fed chair to lower rates.

Can Trump still run for president if he is convicted? The Constitution and American law have clear answers for only some of the questions that would arise if a presidential candidate were convicted of crimes . Others would bring the country into truly uncharted territory.

Aiming to bring the national fight over abortion access to a key battleground state, a political arm of Planned Parenthood will spend $10 million on organizing efforts  in North Carolina, its largest-ever investment in a single state, hoping to galvanize voters for Biden.

Other Key Races

With the 2024 primary season entering the homestretch — and the presidential matchup already set — hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians  cast their ballots  in Senate and House contests  as well as for president and local races. Here are the takeaways .

David McCormick  won an unopposed Republican primary for Senate  in Pennsylvania, securing the party’s nomination two years after former Trump torpedoed his first Senate run by backing his primary rival, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Representative Summer Lee, a first-term progressive Democrat, won her primary contest  in western Pennsylvania, fending off a moderate challenger in a race that centered on her stance on the war in Gaza .