Generation Y
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Generation Y is the cohort of Americans born immediately after "Generation X", though the term is itself controversial and is synonymous with several alternative terms including The Net Generation, Millennials and Echo Boomers. Generation Y is generally considered to be the last generation of Americans wholly born in the 20th century, whose birth years have now concluded. Using the broadest definition commonly cited, Generation Y currently includes Americans in their mid and early 20s, teenagers and children over the age of 5 (as of 2006). At times, the term is extrapolated beyond the United States to refer to similarly aged youth in the Western World or Anglophone World.

As generations are defined not by formal process, but rather by demographers, the press and media, popular culture, market researchers, and by members of the generation themselves, there is no precise consensus as to which birth years constitute Generation Y. Although different groups or individuals consider a different range of years to constitute Generation Y, that range of years is almost always within the outer bounds of 1976 as the earliest possible year and 2001 as the latest, however some say the final year of Gen Y is between 1993 and 2000 because they would be the youngest people to appreciate the changes of the Digital Revolution. The ongoing debate is in part due to the lack of a single marquis event, analogous to the end of World War II for the "Baby Boomer" generation, that can demarcate the start or end of this generation. If the years 1978-2000 are used, then the size of Generation Y in the United States is approximately 76 million.

Controversy and Attempts to Name Generation Y
The term Generation Y (often shortened to Gen Y) is itself controversial because it is seen by some as borrowing too strongly from the term Generation X (Gen X), which when originally coined carried a negative connotation. Many feel the use of Gen Y as a term fails to capture the cohort's unique social, political, and cultural experience. As a result, numerous terms have arisen that are generally synonymous with Generation Y. While Generation Y alludes to that cohort's successional relationship to Generation X, the term Echo Boomers is used to allude to the generation's close tie to the primary childbearing years of Baby Boomers. The terms Millennials and Net Generation are attempts to give the Gen Y cohort more independent names that are tied with key events and cultural trends that are strongly associated with the generation. No single term is the "correct" term to describe members of this generation.

Following the publication of their book, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, much credit has been given to the names used for various American cohorts by authors William Strauss & Neil Howe. Howe and Strauss use the term "Millenials" as opposed to "Generation Y", arguing that members of Gen Y actually coined the term Millenials themselves and have statistically expressed a wish not to be associated closely with Gen X. They followed up their large study of the history of American demographics with a new book specifically on Gen Y, titled Millenials Rising.

In Generations, Howe and Strauss use the years 1982-2000 as the birth years of Generation Y, using the 18 childhood years of the high school graduating class of 2000 as their marking points. They reasoned that the high school class of 2000 received notable public attention and political initiatives during their youth that provided a contrast between Americans born before this class and those born after.

In 1993 a new term came into being - Gen Y. The term first appeared in an August 1993 Ad Age editorial to describe those teenagers born between 1974 -1980.

In his book Growing Up Digital, business strategist and psychologist Don Tapscott coined the term "Net Generation" for the group, pointing at the significance of being the first to grow up immersed in a digital--and Internet--driven world.

Subsets of Generation Y

Early or "Cold" Generation Y
Because most definitions of Generation Y span upwards of 20 years, arguments have been made that different subsets of this generation have had distinct experiences that make it inappropriate to consider the often widest defined range (1976-2001) to really be considered a single generation.

Several scholars within the realm of sociological academia have postulated on the existence of a small but none-the-less distinct generational subset falling in the early years of Generation Y. It has been noted that those born in the years 1982, 1983 and possibly 1984, exhibit certain societal and cultural traits, habits and preferences that-- while combining certain aspects of GEN X, and especially GEN Y-- render them unique in their own right. This generational partition has been occasionally referred to as the Early Y or Cold Y generation. Notably, this theory conjects that Generation X ends in 1981, rather than one of the earlier years going back to 1976 used by some scholars.

Reasons for this partition include attitudes about technology, societal norms and, in an indirectly, areas like the global political order, etc. This "Cold Y" generation was the very last to obtain cognizance or self-awareness before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Therefore they were the last generational segment with any memory of life during the Cold War. They were also the last to have some ideas of what life was like when the modern information based society was in its transitional/formative years, rather than the current all-pervasive and totally integrated form it had taken by the early 90's. In other words, they were the final generation to be able to compare and contrast the late Cold War/Space Age society with the Post-Cold War/Information Age society using their own personal experiences and memories.

Consequently, one can see these characteristics manifest themselves in areas like the approach to contemporary technology. For the regular generation Y, modern information technology has always been "there", whereas Early Y grew up during the critical period of technological evolution in which the current bedrock technologies on which our info-based society relies were moved out of the technical/specialist realm and into the consumer applied realm, often when traits of each area were mixed and indistinct, giving Early Y a rather odd viewpoint that combines the outlook of the specialist/technical segment of the previous generation, though much more widely disseminated, with the integrationist outlook of the later Y generation.

In terms of political and societal outlook, some scholars argue there are also noticeable differences. Gen X has now largely had time to fall into the standard orthodoxies of political participation, and mainstream Gen Y has either done so also or (for a wide segment of it) remained apathetic or non-participatory, they argue. Early Y, on the other hand, has manifested tendencies towards a less common form of what has been termed "policy-centric pragmatism", which places a lower value, relatively speaking, on constructs like ideology or formalism. When what could be termed ideology does manifest itself, the Early Y's seem to have taken-on an unusual tendency to look to often imported belief or value systems that lie outside the scope of those normally brought into the U.S. from abroad.

Speaking in terms of societal mores and values, some academics theorize that Early Y is in limbo between the post-Sexual Revolution norms of Gen X and the emergent ones of Gen Y (which have been described by some commentators as simply the normalization or commoditization of those of Gen X). This includes an apparent embracing of the basic outlooks of Gen X, but a reluctance to carry to their logical extremes, as we see occurring now with Gen Y. In many areas, Early Y seems to embrace the more cynical worldview exhibited by X while rejecting some of what they view as crassness or immoderation. It has been remarked that in doing so, as Early Y matures they have begun to look several generations behind X in forming certain societal/sexual constructs.


MTV Generation
In popular culture, a larger early Generation Y (and late Generation X) subset consisting of those born from 1976 to 1984, has been postulated, dubbed the MTV Generation. Notably, this subset of Generation Y would have memories of the cold-war era, including the existence of the Former Soviet Union, and the Berlin wall, as well as other memories from the early 1980s that are not part of the shared experience of most members of Generation Y. Moreover, members of this subset of Generation Y would have experience the advent of the Internet and the "Information Age" during their late childhood or teen years, whereas later members of Generation Y were younger children during this period and may have limited memories of the period before the Internet.

However, core Gen Yers, even those born as late as 1993 would be somewhat able to appreciate the Digital Revolution, as they could readily recall certain analog-age items such as VHS tapes.


9/11 Paradigm Shift
Some scholars and popular periodicals are now also making arguments that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks represent a paradigm shift that ought to demarcate the end of Gen Y. Therefore, some claim that those born in the years spanning 1996-2001, are truly part of a distinct generation, perhaps part of the loosely defined "Generation Z," because those born in this time span have limited or no memories of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Also, these youths would not remember a period before the widespread use of personal computers or the Internet.


The moments that defined Generation Y
In attempting to define and characterize generations, demographers often rely on the experience of formative national events as one tool to demarcate various generations. Generations are shaped by their childhood experiences, and then defined by their early-adulthood actions, when each generation can consciously adopt or reject the attitudes or actions of prior generations. Notably, the experience of the Great Depression and World War II are a major way of defining the formative years of the so-called "G.I. Generation", also known at times as the "Greatest Generation". In turn, the experiences of the Moon Landing, assassination of JFK, and the 1960s social revolution are key events that demarcate the formative years of the "Baby Boomer" generation.

Several such events have been used as ways of defining Generation Y.

The Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986, is one major event that separates Generation X and Generation Y, as most members of Generation Y were either too young or not yet born to remember this major national event.
The fall of the Soviet Union, and the first Gulf War, are both midway events for members of Generation Y, occurring in 1991, as many members were old enough to remember these events as children, but many had not yet been born.
The widespread use of Personal Computers and the Internet is an event shared by the majority of Gen Y. Taking off during the period 1996-2001, most members of this generation spent at least part of their youth with a home computer and internet access, and members of this Generation use the Internet as a tool for socialization more so than previous generations.
The date of the September 11th attacks is an often proposed end-point for the generation. Those that were not yet born in 2001 and those that were otherwise too young to remember and/or understand what occurred on that infamous day (about 1997 up) would thus be grouped into Generation Z or what Cryderman defines as the iGeneration as they would have no memory whatsoever of the 20th Century and any predigital technologies still around in the Nineties. Meanwhile, people who were still in school (or had recently graduated) would be called Generation Y. Such propositions, of course, remain disputed.
Afghanistan and the Iraq War, as well as the War on Terror may become the war that defines Gen Y akin to World War II for the GI Generation and the Vietnam War for the Baby Boomers.

more here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

interesting read...thoughts? opinions?