“We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning.” —Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”
Remember when millennials were too broke to buy houses because they simply couldn’t stay away from avocado toast? At least, that’s the story the internet kept pushing in 2017.
I don’t know about you, but this millennial hates avocado toast. Bland, overpriced, yet somehow a personality trait. You’ve probably got your own bone to pick with the stereotypes your generation’s been saddled with.
Stereotyping is easy. What’s hard is stepping back to look at the big picture. When researchers looked more closely, they found that people in the same generation were just as different from one another as they were from people in other generations. The “Gen Z vs. boomer” stereotypes show up more in headlines than in the data.
Here’s where the idea of generations came from, why the labels fall apart under research, and what they cost people at work.
A generation isn’t a scientific category. It’s a social construct, and a fairly recent one. French lexicographer Émile Littré defined the modern sense of “generation” in 1863 as “all men living more or less in the same time.”
The academic version of this idea is called generational cohort theory. It holds that people born within the same 15-to-20-year window have a shared history—social norms, historical events, economic shocks, big tech leaps— that produces similar:
Everything from how you talk to how you show up at work supposedly traces back to which generational bucket you were born into.
Generational shorthand is everywhere now, and it’s rarely flattering. Each generation gets boiled down to a one-line caricature, usually about work ethic, money, or character. You’ve heard the greatest hits:
Catchy. Quotable. Mostly wrong.
So what explains the differences people do notice? A 2020 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found they’re more likely driven by age, career stage, and broad changes in society than by birth year.
Researchers point to three big problems with generational labels:
There’s no universally agreed start/end year for generations. Ask three researchers where Gen Z begins and you’ll get three different answers.
When one age group behaves differently from another, researchers have to sort out at least three possible causes:
Does the oldest member of Gen Z really have more in common with its youngest member than with the youngest millennial, born just one year earlier? A cohort spanning 15-plus years covers people who hit puberty, college, and their first job in completely different economic and cultural moments.
Stereotypes aren’t just insensitive. They cost people opportunities.
At work, assumptions about younger generations can shape who gets trusted with projects, promotions, and respect. Researchers call this pattern reverse ageism: age bias aimed at younger workers instead of older ones.
A 2017 peer-reviewed study of 282 nonprofit employees found that baby boomers and Gen Xers viewed “the typical young professional” more stereotypically than younger employees did. Those assumptions predicted a specific, damaging belief: that young professionals lack basic work skills.
Nearly 30% of young employees in the study reported experiencing reverse ageism. They were treated unfairly—disrespected, ignored, passed up for promotion and projects—for no reason other than their generational difference.
Ageism isn’t a one-way street. A 2022 systemic review from the Journal of Gerontological Social Work looked at 15 studies spanning 25 years, and the findings weren’t exactly shocking: younger workers tend to hold the most severe ageist attitudes toward other age groups.
Bottom line: Ageist attitudes are a function of character.
If the data doesn’t back these stereotypes, why do they stick around, especially in the media? (Looking at you, Time magazine’s “Me Me Me Generation” cover.)
Let’s be real: The “kids these days” complaint is thousands of years old, and persistent. In a 2019 study, American adults were most likely to see young people as lacking in the traits they personally excel at: well-read adults thought kids read less, and intelligent adults thought kids were less intelligent.
Also, the harsh truth is that negative information sticks. It spreads faster, gets shared more, and lodges harder in your memory. A punchy insult about a younger generation travels a lot further than a nuanced caveat about within-group variation.
It’s tempting to lean into generational stereotypes, especially when it feels like your generation has gone through the wringer. But the most accurate way to talk about generations is to trade the label for specifics.
Next time you see a headline that reads “boomer this” or “Gen Z that,” take a step back and ask:
Ask questions like that consistently and the picture gets a lot clearer.
None of this means generations are meaningless. Shared events do leave a mark. Boomers lived through the civil rights movement. Gen Xers grew up under the Cold War and watched the Berlin Wall fall. Millennials came of age watching the Sept. 11 attacks unfold. Gen Z has already weathered COVID-19 and its economic aftershocks.
Events like these shape a generation’s collective outlook in real ways. But the differences are subtle—not clean, universal traits you can slap on 70 million people at once. That’s why generation stereotypes, even the well-meaning ones, are so reductive. They flatten complicated individuals into oversimplified groups—and, as the workplace research shows, that can cost people real opportunities.
No one likes being put in a box. Whatever generation you belong to, whatever history shaped you, you’re just trying to get through the week like everyone else.
Fascinated by what actually drives human behavior beyond the internet’s favorite stereotypes?
The University of Texas Permian Basin’s online Bachelor of Arts in Sociology digs into exactly this: how society, history, and group identity shape the way people think and act. It builds a foundation for careers where understanding people isn’t optional, like human resources, public administration, and consulting.
Curious? Visit our Program page to learn more about the online sociology program. Or, if you’re channeling one of those famously impulsive generational traits, go ahead and apply.
Sources:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2025.2522011
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