Blank Generation

The Who got lucky.

The generation of the 1960s was fairly well defined. “My Generation” didn’t have to be all that specific for its point to be made. But if the band had been born in 1990, would they have had anything to say about my generation? Is there really anything my peers and I share that unites and separates us from our neighboring generational brethren? Well, maybe, but the anthem probably would’ve turned out more like Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation” than their own 1965 classic.

I am, depending on who you ask, a member of a blank generation. I’m part of a group that’s caught in the middle of a constant tug-of-war between Generation Y and the Millennials. We share just enough with the generations both preceding and following our own to fail to identify fully with either. In a way, it’s almost as if we steal popular culture, historic events and technological advances more commonly associated with both Y and Millenny in an attempt to define our place on the generational timeline.

Maybe this lack of definition IS what defines us. But who are we, exactly? According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there was a (very minor) up in the birth rate from 1989 through 1992, so for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that these are the rough boundaries of the Blank Generation. Conventionally, four short years shouldn’t really constitute as an entire generation, but that’s just it! We’re anything but conventional. In the grand scheme of things, we’re a transition. This might be a self-deprecating way to look at it, but it isn’t necessarily a negative.

Arguably the most important technological (or otherwise) innovation of recent memory is the Internet. Nothing has shaped our society more than the advent of the World Wide Web. But which generation gets to claim it as its own? Is it the Baby Boomers, who invented it? Generation X and Y, who were old enough to consciously recognize the change and newfound possibilities it brought to the world they resided in? Or should it be attributed to the Millennials, who grew up without knowing there was a time before its existence?
In all fairness, it belongs to us. After all, we were the ones who grew up with it! We might have been young, but our cultural consciousness coincided with its rise. As a result, we were learning how to utilize its power just as the advances we were exploiting were coming into fruition.

Unfortunately, even if someone will throw us a bone and let us claim to be the Internet Generation, this still leaves us with a bit of an identity crisis. In fact, the Internet might be the one to blame for our hazy definition. It’s been a key to infinite ways for us to define ourselves as individuals and connect with others we feel a communal tie to, but this in turn has made our collective so hard to pin down. Our one true definition is the same thing that makes us so hard to elucidate.

It might be a blank generation, but its ours.