Growing Up in the Digital Age as a Zillennial

Every generation has a name associated with it. 

The Greatest Generation was born from 1901 to 1924; this group was impacted by the Great Depression and made up the majority of soldiers during World War II. The Silent Generation was born from 1925 to 1945 and earned its name due to its smaller population and its hesitancy to speak out during the McCarthy era of government. 

The Baby Boomer Generation was born from 1946 to 1964, after World War II and during the growth of suburbia. Generation X was born from 1965 to 1979 and served as a gap between the older and younger generations while being present for the inception of things such as the internet and artificial intelligence.

Millennials were born between 1980 and 1994. They are named for being in their youth during the turn of the century, though it’s common for people to use this term to refer to people in their 20s, even though millennials range from 28 to 42. 

The last two named generations are Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Gen Z was born between 1995 and 2012 and is the first generation to deal with the rise of social media and cyberbullying, as well as increased school violence and climate change issues. Gen Alpha is the newest generation starting in 2013, the oldest of this generation being nine years old. 

Most would assume this would be the general structure of the generations; however, there is a small window between Millenial and Gen Z aptly tilted the Zillennial. 

 A Zillennial is defined as someone born between 1992 and 2000, on the cusp between Millenials and Gen Z. They are cultural hybrids of the latest Millenials and the earliest traits of Gen Z. 

This is where I and many of the peers I grew up with fall into as well, at this strange crossroads of progress. 

Several traits define Zillennials, such as being alive during 9/11 but not remembering it, being taught cursive and then never using it again because computers were easily accessible, and suddenly having a tiny computer in the palm of your hand. Most important, though, is going from spending most of the time outside with little access to the internet to suddenly having a tiny computer in the palm of your hand. 

As a small child, I mostly played outside. The only real computer time I had was the occasional CD-ROM computer game like KidPix or Blues Clues. However, as I got older, the Internet slowly began to slip into my life more and more despite dial-up Internet trying to slow me down. 

During the late 2000s, a craze swept the playgrounds, and it was called Webkinz. It was a stuffed animal with a code that you could insert into a website to play with your toy in real and digital life. 

This was an excellent middle ground. While I enjoyed playing games and dressing up my online pets, I also remember spending hours outside having elaborate weddings between my Webkinz and my best friend’s Webkinz.

As I grew up into a pre-teen, the Internet also grew. This is when I discovered that others liked the same short-lived shows I did and even wrote stories expanding on the lore the show built up. 

Now, did I read things that were labeled as Mature even though I was 13? Admittedly yes. Do I regret it? A little.

 Finding these small communities helped me grow in expressing my interests and writing my own stories to share with others. The internet, in this respect, was and still is a double-edged sword. 

The internet was the Wild West in the early 2010s. Zillennials were given essential safety tips and plunged headfirst into the pool without more guidance. 

While the internet connected people more than anything at the time, it still felt like a niche thing that you had to crowd around on a sleek new laptop or try your best to get to the internet on your iPod or Nintendo 3DS. 

This would change as technology suddenly just dropped smartphones into our hands.

As my peers and I transitioned into high school, we traded in our standard little flip phones for smartphones that gave us access to the internet when we had cellular data because, let’s face it, the school’s internet was garbage. 

My generation was the testing ground for how Gen Z would go on to approach social media. Websites like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat were starting to take off, but I wasn’t interested in them. 

I made a Facebook account when I was 13 and promptly lost interest. I was content with my little anonymous Tumblr blog, where I could look at cute art, expand my writing, and look at funny memes. That’s where most of my friend group was anyway, and I would also make new friends. 

My life became spent almost equally in real life and the digital world. I would never be without my phone, which was vital to my day-to-day life. 

That balance, however, came to a screeching halt halfway through my junior year of college. All thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic wasn’t all that hard of a transition for me. I was naturally just an introvert and already turned most assignments in online for classes due to my journalism major. 

While isolating was difficult for some, I thrived from this experience, learning to adapt to these situations. The whole experience made me realize how reliant we are on the Internet. 

Not having great internet providers or no internet is a determinant of being a functioning member of society. 

So now that I’ve shared my history with the Internet, what is this takeaway? 

I grew up in a very weird in-between. Like most millennials, I didn’t grow up having a smartphone until later in my life; however, unlike millennials, I was given my phone while I was still a teen and developing into who I would be. 

Like Gen Z, I have a better understanding of the internet than most people older than me. Unlike Gen Z, who are now just thrown into social media, I had several kid-friendly websites to teach me about the internet. 

There is a small generation born between 1992 and 2000 called Zillennials. It is not quite Millennials, but it is not Gen Z, either. 

This group was essentially the test group of how the Internet would affect today’s youth. For better or worse, I was part of this group, which shaped me into the person I am today.