The millennials—perhaps you may have read about them somewhere along the line—are the largest generation in American history. Roughly speaking, they were born between 1980 and the early 2000s and this wide span, plus the sheer magnitude of their numbers, has created a taxonomy problem: There are so many of them, with such variegated lives, that it’s difficult to make useful generalizations about them.
All of which has lead people to try to segment out the generation. New York magazine’s Jesse Singal helpfully suggests thinking of the generation as two distinct groups: “Old Millennials” and “Young Millennials.” Singal pegs the main differences between the two to the rise of smartphones and the onset of the global financial crisis. BuzzFeed noticed the same divide and came up with what may be the most BuzzFeedish piece ever: “45 Signs You’re An Old Millennial.” The listicle consists mainly of technological advances—dial-up Internet, flip phones, and CD players—interspersed with pop culture and a bit of politics.
But both pieces miss what I contend is the true dividing line: September 11.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were far more profound and transformative for us “older” millennials than Carson Daly’s TRL or the splintering of NSYNC or the switch from dialup to broadband.
As a junior in high school living 50 miles outside of New York City, I remember waiting with classmates who were trying to find out if their parents were alive. Some worked as firefighters and police officers in the city. Others worked close to the Twin Towers. Seeing that terror, in person, marks you for life.
But to our younger millennial counterparts, who were in grade school or just learning to walk, 9/11 is a subject from the history books: Those entering high school this year weren’t even born on 9/11; those entering college today were just turning 1.
Taylor, who turned 7 shortly after 9/11, tells me, “I genuinely feel like we’ve always been at war.” She says that the Ariana Grande concert attack last May in Manchester was “somewhere that I could so easily see myself and my friends being, so it was relatable. When I was younger, as awful as 9/11 was, I couldn’t fully understand that people could just want to cause pain like that.” But “when you see people getting hurt, you’re like, ‘This is why we’re at war, this is why people are fighting.’” Then “you kind of understand why there is a war on terror.”
Older millennials, on the other hand, remember life before 9/11. We remember being thrust into the global War on Terror overnight. We remember why we went to war; the fear of when, not if, the next big attack would hit; and exactly why some of our classmates enlisted in the armed forces right after high school.
Jay, who was born in 1980, worked in the financial sector a few blocks from the World Trade Center and experienced the attacks up close. “It really changed me as a human being completely. . . . I felt like my whole life, my whole heart, was completely shattered.”
While not all of us older millennials were affected as directly as Jay, we did share the sense that our world had been changed irrevocably. Most of us remember every detail and every horror of that day, and the days that followed. They are etched in our brains and on our hearts, especially for those of us who lived in the Northeast at the time and either lost loved ones or knew someone who did.
There was a collective understanding that life, as we knew it, had been forever altered. In addition to everything else it represents, September 11 created a fault line which cleaved the millennial generation in two.
