03 Feb 2026

Fedora People

Stephen Smoogen: Generations (take N+1)

Putting some rigour to generations

Recently a coworker posted that children born this year would be in Generation Beta, and I was like "What? That sounds like too soon…" but then thought "Oh its just that thing when you get older and time flies by." I saw a couple of articles saying it again, so decided to look at what was on the wikipedia article for generations and saw that yes 'beta' was starting.. then I started looking at the lengths of the various generations and went "Hold On".

Let us break this down in a table:

Generation	Wikipedia	How Long
T (lost)	1883-1900	17
U (greatest)	1901-1927	26
V (silent)	1928-1945	17
W (boomer)	1946-1964	18
X	1965-1980	15
Y (millenial)	1981-1996	15
Z	1997-2012	15
alpha	2013-2025	12
beta	2026-2039	13
gamma	2040-???	??

So it is bad enough that Generation X,Millenials, and Z got shortened from 18 years to 15.. but alpha and beta are now down to 12 and 13? I realize that this is because all of this is a made up construct to make some people born in one age group angry/sad/afraid in another by editors who are needing to sell advertising for things which will solve the feelings of anger, sadness, or fear.. but could you at least be consistent.

I personally like some order to my starting and ending dates for generations so I am going to update some lists I have put out in the past with newer titles and times. We will use the definiton as outlined at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation

A generation is all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively.[1] It also is "the average period, generally considered to be about 20-30 years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children."

For the purpose of trying to set eras, I think that the original 18 years for baby boomers makes sense, but the continual shrinkflation of generations after that is pathetic. So here is my proposal for generation ending dates outside. Choose which one you like the best when asked what generation you belong to.

Generation	Wikipedia	18 Years
T (lost)	1883-1900	1889-1907
U (greatest)	1901-1927	1908-1926
V (silent)	1928-1945	1927-1945
W (boomer)	1946-1964	1946-1964
X	1965-1980	1965-1983
Y (millenial)	1981-1996	1984-2002
Z	1997-2012	2002-2020
alpha	2013-2025	2021-2039
beta	2026-2039	2040-2058
gamma	2040-???	2059-2077

(*) I say wikipedia here, but they are basically taking dates from various other sources and putting them together.. which should be seen as more on the statement of social commentators who aren't good at math.

03 Feb 2026 9:49pm GMT

fidzu : Fedora

03 Feb 2026

Fedora People

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Putting some rigour to generations

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