- Witches’ cauldron - 21st March 2025
- Generation game repeat - 20th March 2025
- China clay - 19th March 2025
During a 41 year career as a journalist, for our Editor Phil Parry it has always been paramount to describe groups correctly, and this is emphasised by new research coining a fresh term for a generation.
It can be difficult, but it is important to get these things right.
As a journalist I always try to be accurate, yet it can be tricky when you’re describing the generations, because there seems to be such disagreement about when they begin and end!
Now there is a new one to learn which MAY include those born between 2010 and 2024, and an Australian demographer, Mark McCrindle, has called them ‘Generation Alpha’.
This rounds off the series describing groups of people born after World War Two.
They are (I THINK!):
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Generation Beta: b. 2025-2039.
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Generation Alpha: b. 2010-2024.
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Generation Z: b. 1997-2009.
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Millennials or Generation Y: b. 1981-1996.
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Generation X: b. 1965-1980.
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Baby boomers: b. 1946-1964.
Let’s start with the latest one to be coined – and don’t hold me to any of this!
‘Generation Alpha’ may it seems, be an angst-driven group, and the term has caught on in the English-speaking West.
Many suggested the name ‘Gen A’. But rather than go back to the start of the Latin alphabet, Mr McCrindle pivoted to the Greek one instead.
These generations matter to headline-writers. Only yesterday one newspaper put as its headline how ‘Generation Z’ was struggling because it was having “…benefits cut for anxiety and depression”.
There are disagreements about who exactly counts as Alpha because there is no official taxonomy – one person’s Z is another’s Alpha.
But as well as seeing trauma everywhere, Alphas are also in their formative years.
Attitudes and values change as people grow up and settle as they come of age, so it will be at least five years before Alphas are old enough for real differences to be seen between them and others.
Until then the generation will keep pundits, and parents, on their toes.
It won’t be long before the Alphas tell me: DESCRIBE US PROPERLY!
The memories of Phil’s, astonishing award-winning career in journalism (as MANY generations grew up!) while he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Tomorrow – how even in the current row about alleged bullying which has torn apart Reform UK the cliché ‘witch hunt’ cropped up, but during his career Phil always tried to avoid using the term…
