He has barely left his mother when a baby already has a (virtual) label stuck on his head. Indeed, since the “baby boom”, we have given little names to successive generations, such as “Gen X”, “Gen Z”, “Alpha”… Some even have several names, generation “Y” is also called “Millennials”. As a result, it’s quite easy to get confused, to not know what it all means and, above all, what it means. Don’t move, we’ll explain.
The story begins just after the Second World War, in 1946, when the countries involved gradually came out of the horror and their inhabitants began to have children again. This explosion of births did not have a name right away; it was not until the 1960s that the expression “baby boom” emerged in sociological studies, although we did not know who used it first. As a result, people born between 1946 and 1964 belong to the “baby boom” generation and are called “boomers”.
X, Y, Z and we start again
Since then, names, or rather letters, have been assigned to each new generation. The one following the “baby boom” is generation “X”. The name “Gen at the end of the war. Between 1965 and 1980, this “Gen X” is notably described as adventurous, cynical and in search of new values by the American sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe.
These same William Strauss and Neil Howe who are at the origin of the name describing the next generation: the Millennials, or “Generation Y”. According to their generational theory, published in the work Generations in 1991, the Millennials cover the period between 1981 and 1996. Generally speaking, the “Y” are marked by the beginnings of the digital age, in particular the arrival of the internet and the first steps of social networks. They are also those who will reach adulthood by the year 2000.
Logically, the “Y” is followed by the “Z”, to describe the generation between 1997 and 2012. The children of this generation are also the first to be immersed since birth in digital technology, high-speed internet and smartphones. A “hypercognitive generation very comfortable with collecting and cross-referencing numerous sources of information and with the integration of virtual and offline experiences,” wrote Tracy Francis and Fernanda Hoefel of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
January 2025, start of a new generation
As we reached the end of the alphabet, Australian demographer Mark McCrindle had the idea of considering this as a new beginning and naming the next generation “Alpha”, starting a cycle again but with the Greek alphabet this time. For him, Alpha extends from 2010 to 2024 and the children of this penultimate generation “have an influence on brands and a purchasing power that goes beyond their age”.
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Children born after January 1 are from a whole new generation. If we followed McCrindle’s logic, they should therefore belong to the “Beta” generation. These are the first babies to be born in the age of artificial intelligence and, according to Dr. Lance B. Eliot in the columns of Forbes“AI will play a considerable role in the lives of the beta generation”.
