What's after Gen Alpha?
That is why the generations today each span 15 years with Generation Y (Millennials) born from 1980 to 1994; Generation Z from 1995 to 2009 and Generation Alpha from 2010 to 2024. And so it follows that Generation Beta will be born from 2025 to 2039.
Gen Alpha is the generation following Gen Z and currently includes all children born in or after 2010—the same year the iPad was born. The majority of this demographic is under 12 years of age, but the oldest of them will become teens in 2022.
Is it never too early to start to look ahead? Generational definitions are most useful when they span a set age range and thus allow meaningful comparisons across generations. So it follows that it will be Generation Beta. If the nomenclature sticks, then we will afterward have Generation Gamma and Generation Delta.
Naming the next generation
In the USA during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the alphabetical list of names was exhausted, so scientists looked to the Greek alphabet for names. This nomenclature of moving to the Greek alphabet after exhausting the Latin one has a long history with meteorologists.
They will be comfortable with technology even though they don't know it's there. As they age they will want more stability and work flexibility to cope with increasing family and financial commitments. Sounds pretty like what it was in the 2000s but with faster internet speeds, more cat videos and less typing.
If the nomenclature sticks, then we will afterwards have Generation Gamma (the children of Generation Alpha) and Generation Delta, but we won't be getting there until the second half of the 21st century!
They began in the same year the first-generation iPad was released and Instagram launched. With the typical generation length spanning 15 years, the last of the Generation Alpha's will finish being born in 2024.
It can also be described as, "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." In kinship terminology, it is a structural term designating the parent-child relationship.
For a while I've theorized that there's a generation in between millennials and “Gen Z”, spanning roughly 1997 to 2001, which I like to call Generation Delta. The idea emerged because I see disparities between the childhood of people my age and a few years older and people only a few years younger than me.
Alpha generation children are born at a time when technological devices are getting smarter, everything is connected, and the physical and the digital are coming together. As they grow up, new technologies will become part of their lives, their experiences, their attitudes and their expectations of the world.
Is there a Generation Y?
Gen Y: Gen Y, or Millennials, were born between 1981 and 1994/6. They are currently between 25 and 40 years old (72.1 million in the U.S.) Gen Y. 1 = 25-29 years old (around 31 million people in the U.S.)
Generation Alpha (or Gen Alpha for short) is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early to mid 2010s as starting birth years and the mid 2020s as ending birth years.
Generally-speaking, the Alphas are the children of the Millennials (born 1980-1994), the siblings of Gen Z (born 1995-2009) and they'll be the parents of Generation Gamma (born 2040-2054). Generation Beta will follow the Alphas (filling in the years 2025-2039).
Other proposed names for the generation include iGeneration, Homeland Generation, Net Gen, Digital Natives, Neo-Digital Natives, Pluralist Generation, Internet Generation, Centennials, and Post-Millennials.
Generation Z—your personal bugbear, Minds—is so called because it was the generation immediately after Generation Y (the people who are now called millennials). Gen Y was named, in its turn, because it followed Generation X. Generation X (shout-out to my homiez!) was named after a 1991 novel by Douglas Coupland.
- The Greatest Generation (born 1901–1927)
- The Silent Generation (born 1928–1945)
- Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964)
- Generation X (born 1965–1980)
- Millennials (born 1981–1995)
- Generation Z (born 1996–2010)
- Generation Alpha (born 2011–2025)
Gen X had Chad and Tonya; Millennials are Kyle and Britney. For Gen Z, the popular names for the generation started to shift to more unique names like Aiden and Addison. Popular names for late Gen-Z and Gen Alpha have become super traditional: Emma, Ava, Liam, Harper.
That is why the generations today each span 15 years with Generation Y (Millennials) born from 1980 to 1994; Generation Z from 1995 to 2009 and Generation Alpha from 2010 to 2024. And so it follows that Generation Beta will be born from 2025 to 2039.
Dates and age ranges
The Pew Research Center uses 1928 to 1945 as birth years for this cohort. According to this definition, people of the Silent Generation are 77 to 94 years old in 2022.
In 2024, by McCrindle's definition, the last of Generation Alpha will be born, making way for Generation Beta, whose birth years will span from 2025 to 2039. “If the nomenclature sticks, then we will afterwards have Generation Gamma and Generation Delta,” McCrindle said.
Is there a Generation Y?
Gen Y: Gen Y, or Millennials, were born between 1981 and 1994/6. They are currently between 25 and 40 years old (72.1 million in the U.S.) Gen Y. 1 = 25-29 years old (around 31 million people in the U.S.)
The youth become nostalgic when the economy is struggling, seeking comfort and connection. It's why Gen Z is reviving indie sleaze, old-money prep, and Y2K trends of the '90s and early 2000s. Instead of turning to their own childhood memories, they're seeking simpler pre-social-media times.
1. no cap. You've likely seen cap and no cap used on social media, but these terms actually pre-date social media and Gen Z by several decades. In Black slang, to cap about something means “to brag, exaggerate, or lie” about it. This meaning dates all the way back to at least the early 1900s.
- The Greatest Generation (born 1901–1927)
- The Silent Generation (born 1928–1945)
- Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964)
- Generation X (born 1965–1980)
- Millennials (born 1981–1995)
- Generation Z (born 1996–2010)
- Generation Alpha (born 2011–2025)
