It’s time for a quiz.
1.Were you born between 1996 and 2010?
2. Is using technology as natural to you as drinking water?
3. Do you gravitate towards practical choices and career paths?

If you said yes, then congratulations. You don’t have to deal with any more millennial jokes. You’re a part of generation Z.

I’ve never felt like a millennial. Whenever people made jokes about how millennials expect to not work hard, about how they don’t have any useful skills, and about how they can’t handle emotional adversity, I started to get the sense that these jokes didn’t fit me. Mostly because I can’t take a joke about myself, but also because millennials are ‘90s kids, which doesn’t apply to me.

That must mean there’s a group that better fits me.

According to a Forbes article called “Get Ready For Generation Z,” the age range of 1996 to 2010 puts me (1997) at the older end of the Generation Z group. Generation Z is more than an age description, though. It’s a lifestyle.

The article describes one of the key aspects of millennials as enjoying the peace of the ‘90s, only to have their innocence shattered by the tragedy of 9/11. I don’t remember where I was on 9/11, but I’m pretty sure that at four years old I just kept playing with my siblings. I’m actually skeptical that 9/11 played that big of a role on the psyches of millennials, but the experts say that it did.
Generation Z’ers are also more likely to make pragmatic career decisions, rather than “following their dreams,” as millennials are apt to do.

A lot of people think that it’s unclear what defines millennial versus Generation Z. This is fair, considering that age descriptions of generations are subject to change. Michael Fitzgerald of the Boston Globe wrote an article lamenting the fact that he wasn’t originally considered a baby boomer, but the definition changed to include him after all.

One 21 year old student, Trenton Benet, said that he isn’t quite sure which Generation he fits into.

“I like to kinda make fun of the whole millennial thing, but I don’t know where the cut off is. So I don’t know exactly where I fall,” Benet said.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Benet is a Generation Z’er.

You might be wondering why it matters. Companies use demographics and profiles of generations to determine how to market to them, which is one major reason that it matters which group a person falls into. Considering that these generational descriptions also try to predict beliefs and voting patterns of groups, knowing your group could also help determine how you fit in with your peers.

Whether Generation Z’ers are more conservative or liberal as a generation is less clear than some articles would have you believe.

Pew Research Center released a study in 2019 suggesting that Generation Z’ers are more or equally politically liberal as millennials, based on issues such as climate change and gender pronouns.
A 2017 article in Forbes contrasts with this study by asserting that Generation Z’ers are more conservative than previous generations on issues such as national security and job creation.

The question can come down to your determination of which issues are more important and suggestive of political leaning. However, it seems that generation Z won’t be very conservative, considering that Pew’s study reported that 70 percent of respondents in that group believed that the government should get more involved to solve problems. This is a broad question and highly related to political leaning, with conservatives believing as a major tenet of the ideology that the government should get involved as little as possible. Generation Z might just skew to the left.
Just because a person fits into Generation Z, though, doesn’t mean that she has to rely on technology or that she can’t pursue a relatively unrealistic career. It does mean that when someone makes fun of millennials, she can join in.