The pace of change quickens due to technology enabling our interconnected world today.

It's a gradual shift that's no so gradual when looking at the block of population. Gen X are those that didn't have any digital connectivity while growing up. Millennials grew up connected through text/chat/email/very early social media, but without being constantly connected to the internet. Gen Z has grown up being connected and with information and entertainment available the time.

Generations share a "core" of experiences that happen during some of the most impactful years of their lives. First geopolitical event I remember was 9/11. For some it was the Great Recession or COVID. Those big events end up exerting a lot of influence on age groups.

I think Generations can be overused in the sense that it's used like a monolith when it's not. The clickbaity "Generation Z doesn't want to work" is actually the less clickbaity "Many in Generation Z find working a less attractive option because of these specific shared experience/values..."

> Gen X are those that didn't have any digital connectivity while growing up.

My (parents’) CompuServe and (due to living in the Central Valley but most of the BBS’s I had info on being in the Bay) phone bills fron the 1980s tell a very different story.

I think the OP was referring to majority or plurality of Gen X, not necessarily dragonwriter's, or Central Valley's experience.

Cool story.

My family didn't have internet until around 1998