Culture

The Term ‘Geriatric Millennial’ Exists Now And Millennials Have A Lot Of Feelings

If you were born between 1980-1985, you're now a geriatric millennial. Congrats!

by Merryana Salem  17 May 2021
geriatric-millennial

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The term ‘geriatric millennial’’ is trending, thanks to a viral Medium article by Erica Dhawan and older millennials aren’t all taking the title in their stride. 

In their article, Dhawan actually makes a pretty positive case for so-called geriatric millennials.  They argue that those born between 1980 and 1985 are uniquely positioned to bridge the divide between older digital adaptives in the workplace and younger digital natives. 

Dhawan also points out that the sub-generation makes up some of the world’s leading CEOs. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (born in 1984), Canva’s Melanie Perkins (1987), Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian (1983), Rent the Runway’s Jennifer Fleiss (1985), and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky (1981) are all by definition, geriatric millennials too.

Many older millennials refuse and reject the new title, however. It’s not hard to see why. Calling a generation who, at most, are only just now teetering on the edge of being middle-aged ‘geriatric’ was never going to go down well. Especially on Twitter. 

There a quite a few, though, who have taken it in their stride. One ‘geriatric millennial’ tweeted, ““Geriatric millennial” actually resonates with me very much. Like that’s *exactly* how I feel.” Another tweeted, “I just sneezed so hard my shoulders hurt and I’m okay with being called “geriatric millennial”. 

Now feels like a good time to point out that generational labels, and even more so, generational warfare isn’t an exact science and is also maddeningly unhelpful in the scheme of things. Generational labelling has been criticised for years for being reductive. Among other things, it often fails to account for how intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality means that groups within generations have drastically different experiences of time. 

Generational warfare i.e. boomers vs millennials, millennials vs gen z, geriatric millennials vs the world, etc, is often stirred up as a relatively harmless distraction from issues that affect us all in the long run. Issues like the need for aged-care reform, the rise in elderly homelessness, and how the mass loss of our Indigenous elders during COVID-19 has led to a mass loss of languages. 

Whether you’re a geriatric millennial, or baby boomer/gen z pointing and laughing at the discourse- at the end of every day, aging is coming for us. May as well make a meme about it, and get back to doing the work of building a world we can all grow old safely in.