I often hear people around me talking about the doom young people face today. How can their formative years be meaningful with screens and devices replacing human interaction? Busy after extracurricular schedules? Missing two years of classroom experience due to Covid? Massive college debt? Unsuitable or no jobs available after graduation?

Every generation experiences coming of age differently.

And each of the prior generations believes young people will miss out by “growing up differently” than they did.

Yet, each emerging generation has turned out fine with their own special qualities, and that cycle will continue. They turn out fine, and not “different” as news reporters or HR managers would lead you to believe.

We Boomers were often labeled “dirty hippies who wear ugly torn clothes, are disrespectful speaking with filthy mouths. “Can you believe what they look like with those awful unwashed beards? And their music is loud & noisy with no melody!”

The Boomers made it. Generation X is making it.

The Millennials and Gen Y are doing well, too—as will subsequent generations.

Don’t you wonder who put a “stamp” on “the generations?” They’re good for news reports. Product marketing professionals discuss it. Its emphasis has lifted the careers of HR managers. And professional speakers tour the country with instructions on ways to relate to generations other than your own.

I’m unsure exactly where and when this “differentiation of generations” began, but it was popularized by in the late 90s a major marketing research firm proclaiming vast differences between the “generations in the marketplace.” Somehow, in just 25 years, our population has bloomed into 5 generations. Who’s the authority for identifying new generations, naming them, and noting their differences in behaviors from other generations?

I’m proud that a student of mine once referred to me in class as “an elderly Millennial.” I felt honored—students 2 generations subsequent to my own perceived me as one of “them.” I treat my students as peers, the Professor isn’t better than the Students. He’s older and sees them and their futures more realistically. But patting myself on the back aside, we’re all the same, but a little bit different.

We needn’t feel sorry for generations subsequent to ours.

The world around them is different, evolving. But they’ll turn out just fine, like you and I,
marking themselves as individuals, as cohorts, and as citizens of the world.

They’re growing up, or have grown up, in a world slightly different from ours. In many
ways, it’s a better world.