The Gap in the Generation Gap

I’ve always been told that a generation is about 30 years. But a while ago I was talking to my brother and a slip of the tongue got me thinking that that may be wrong. My brother is 12 years older than me. Not a huge difference, one would think within the same generation based on what I’ve always been told. But what I said to him was “my generation.” Not “our generation,” but “my generation.” Why did I do that?

I did a little research and people note that there’s a difference between familial generations and cultural generations. For a long time they overlapped, so a generation was just a generation of about 25-30 years regardless of familial or cultural. That’s how I learned the word. But it seems to me that the distinction is becoming important. Familial generations are still about 30 years, but culturally, I’d say we’re at about 15 years and it’s shrinking fast.

Our culture is increasingly based on pop culture (TV, movies, music, books,) technology and social dynamics. Mainly as a result of the internet, those fields are changing faster than before. I remember when the iPod first came out, my high school yearbook called it a fad. Now it’s completely revolutionized music. Facebook was launched at my college and we all signed up for it, but then stopped paying attention to it for a year. Now it’s constantly in the news. Things that start out one way can completely change the landscape of culture within a couple years.

Then when that culture changes enough, it’s essentially a new generation being raised with different technology, different ideas, and different ways of interacting. My nephew is about 15 years younger than me and I would consider him a different generation. My niece is about 10 years younger than him. And I’d be willing to be that when she was a bit older (she’s only 18 months right now) that she’s potentially a different generation from my nephew.

There’s some overlap between the cultural generations, but there are definitely differences being built quicker than before. Maybe there aren’t the big cultural gaps we saw previously, but I think we’re going to start seeing cultural generations form quicker. So to my brother I apologize for imply he might be old, but it’s really not my fault. That’s just the generation I’m in.