Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future

by Jean M. Twenge

Millennials were unhappy because their reality couldn’t possibly meet their expectations (which he illustrated with a lavender-maned unicorn regurgitating a rainbow). In 2020, Anne Helen Petersen (b. 1981) declared that Millennials were the “Burnout Generation.” Millennials want jobs that are both solid enough to satisfy their parents and cool enough to impress their friends, she noted. “So what happens when millennials… start ‘adulting’—but it doesn’t feel at all like the dream that had been promised?” she asked. Jill Filipovic (b. 1983) agrees. “There is a profound gap between the expectations we were raised to hold and the reality we now experience,” she writes. “Growing up, we believed that if we followed the rules and did the right things… we would be rewarded and life would be, if not amazing, at least good, stable, and predictable. And well, it wasn’t.”