The youngest Gen Z’ers, born in 2012, were 7 or 8 years old when the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact day-to-day life in the U.S. in March 2020, making them the last birth cohort who will remember a world without COVID. Given the impact of the pandemic, that suggests 2012 is probably the right end point for the generation. In iGen, my 2017 book on Gen Z, I suggested the generation began with those born in 1995. A few years later, the Pew Research Center said they considered Gen Z to begin with those born in 1997. I’ve stuck with 1995 based on the sudden shifts that began to appear among teens
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