Millennials

Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with the generation typically being defined as people born from 1981 to 1996. Most millennials are the children of baby boomers and older members of Generation X, and are often the parents of members of Generation Z and Generation Alpha. As children in the late 1980s to 2000s, millennials saw the rise of the Information Age and Internet, being described by some as the first globalized generation. As adolescents and young adults in the late 1990s to 2010s, the generation was marked by a more upbeat youth culture, elevated familiarity with the Internet and technology in general, and usage of early social media platforms such as AOL Instant Messenger, LiveJournal, and Myspace. Between the 1990s and 2010s, people from developing countries became increasingly well-educated, a factor that boosted economic growth in these countries. Millennials across the world have suffered significant economic disruption since starting their working lives, with many facing high levels of youth unemployment, student debt, and childcare costs in the wake of the Great Recession and the COVID-19 recession. They have been called the "Unluckiest Generation" in the US and other Western countries, as the average millennial has experienced slower economic growth and more recessions since entering the workforce than any other generation in history. Across the globe, millennials and subsequent generations have postponed marriage or living together as a couple. Millennials were born at a time of declining fertility rates around the world, and continue to have fewer children than their predecessors. Those in developing countries will continue to constitute the bulk of global population growth. In developed countries, young people of the 2010s were less inclined to have sex compared to their predecessors when they were the same age. Millennials in the West are less likely to be religious than their predecessors, but may identify as spiritual.