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Picture by Matthew G. via Flirck under Creative Commons |
Revised in October 2026.
Rethinking Generations
Generations have traditionally been understood in largely
regional or national terms.
The Spanish Generation of ’27, for example, described
a particular literary and cultural movement. The American Baby Boom
generation emerged from a specific demographic and historical experience
following World War II. Such categories made sense because many of the events
that shaped a generation were primarily local or national.
But globalization and digital technology raise an
interesting question:
Does it still make sense to think about generations primarily in regional
terms?
People growing up in different countries increasingly
encounter the same technologies, platforms, entertainment, products, cultural
references, and forms of communication. A teenager in Madrid, Buenos Aires,
Seoul, or Chicago may inhabit very different political and economic realities
while simultaneously participating in parts of the same digital culture.
That does not erase geography. Language, income, education,
politics, religion, and local institutions still shape people profoundly. But
geography may no longer monopolize the formation of generational experience.
At any rate, the notion of a “generation” has always been
somewhat slippery. People born within the same twenty-year span do not
necessarily share the same experiences, values, or historical consciousness,
and the boundaries between one generation and the next are largely constructed
after the fact. Globalization makes the category even less tidy. If people of
the same age can now be shaped simultaneously by local events and by
technologies, platforms, and cultural references shared across borders, then a
generation may be less a clearly defined group than an overlapping set of experiences
distributed unevenly across the world.
The Generations of the Global Era
The emergence of the Millennial label offered an early
example.
Millennials were frequently described through their
relationship with digital technology: widespread use of smartphones, social
networks, online recommendations, and a growing reliance on peer opinion rather
than traditional advertising.
The usefulness of those generalizations can certainly be
debated. No generation is homogeneous, and someone born in 1990 in a wealthy
American suburb did not experience technology in the same way as someone of the
same age in a rural community with limited internet access.
Still, the fact that the category could plausibly be
discussed across national borders was itself significant.
For perhaps the first time, technological change was
creating experiences sufficiently widespread that researchers, marketers, and
the media could describe aspects of a generation without beginning exclusively
with nationality.
The common denominator was no longer necessarily a war, a
political movement, or a demographic event.
It could be a technology.
Democratization and Connection
Mobile technology accelerated that change.
A phone gradually became much more than a device for calling
someone. It became a camera, map, newspaper, encyclopedia, bank, workplace,
storefront, library, and connection to social networks.
Cloud computing made personal and professional files
accessible from almost anywhere. Digital payments began reducing the importance
of cash. Social media gave individuals and small businesses access to audiences
that once required significant advertising budgets.
None of this eliminated inequality. Access to technology,
digital skills, capital, and reliable infrastructure remains uneven. But
technology dramatically lowered the cost of participating in activities that
once required far greater resources.
That change affects more than markets. It also affects how
generations experience the world.
A generation can now be shaped simultaneously by local
history and by global technological systems. Its members may vote in different
elections, speak different languages, and live under radically different
institutions while using the same platforms, reacting to the same memes,
consuming the same entertainment, and adapting to the same technological
disruptions.
Perhaps generations have not become truly global, but they are no longer entirely local either.
And that may require us to rethink what we mean when we call
a group of people a generation.
