Zillennials, a generational in-betweener, are neither Gen Z nor Millennials

Meet the Zillennials—those who feel they don’t match either generation’s stereotypes since they are neither too old nor too young to connect to Gen Z or Millennials. Many young individuals who were born in the 1990s identify with this label on social media. But are they truly a microgeneration in their own right, or is this simply another idea that social media came up with?

Zillennials are people who were born during the 1990s and the early 2000s. They may be compared to younger Millennials or more experienced Gen Zers, but they don’t feel that way—or they do and both at once. The Covid-19 epidemic is one thing they share in common. “[The youngest of them] attended college during the pandemic, and missed out on important social markers,” argues Deborah Carr, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Innovation in Social Science at Boston University, in an interview. Zillennials are united by their shared life experience and historical period. For instance, this age group has never attended a typical prom or graduation ceremony in the United States.

However, a generation isn’t formed only by common experiences. Technology usage may play a significant role in defining a generation. And from this angle, the Zillennial generation grew up in a crucial era. For starters, they are older than Millennials and have grown up with the internet. However, unlike Gen Z, they are not digital natives since they grew up in a period before social media, cellphones, Netflix, and other forms of digital media (they also saw the demise of video cassettes and DVDs). And with the introduction of TikTok and its many dance-obsessed Gen Zers, they have felt their age. In actuality, Zillennials saw the frantic technological change of the 2000s and 2010s firsthand.

This microgeneration is now all the rage on TikTok. 1.6 billion people have seen content with the hashtag #zillennial (including misspellings). Internet users publish movies demonstrating how to identify Zillennials based on their appearance or culture. Their distinguishing traits often fall in between the Millennial and Generation Z cultural stereotypes. For instance, the user @zozoakz claims that wearing straight jeans, which are neither too loose nor too tight, is indicative of a Zillennial since they fall in the middle of the two jean styles most often worn by Millennials and Generation Z: baggy jeans and thin jeans. Zillennials, according to another post by TikToker Azeez Gafari, are similar to Generation Y (Millennials) in that they grew up watching their favorite movies on VHS cassettes, using flip phones, and playing games on consoles like the Game Boy Advance.

Do Zillennials really exist?

Why then would individuals feel the need to differentiate themselves from Millennials or Generation Z? Why not just choose one of the two options? According to Jason Dorsey, head of the Center for Generational Kinetics and a generations researcher, “some generations reject the labels given to them by others and some generations embrace the name if they feel it fits them and their values or differences.” The expert claims that Zillennials are anxious to dissociate themselves from the stereotypical features associated with Gen Y and that they do not want to emulate them. However, Zillennials also disagree with Gen Z’s fashion choices, which they see as being overly adolescent and immature. On the other hand, they are more like Gen Zers than most Millennials when it comes to environmental problems.

Therefore, this group of individuals, who were born between the years of the 1990s and the 2000s, may identify more strongly with this microgeneration than with either of the two major generations they overlap. However, experts disagree on what exactly constitutes a generation. Genre classifications are essentially worthless to Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. For clicks and followers, “marketers and fadfluencers will want to be the first to identify a “generation” or “microgeneration,” he told CNN. But doing so before we know what we’re learning and why is pointless.