Millennials Millennials Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the generational demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years. Millennials are sometimes referred to as "echo boomers" due to a major surge in birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s, and because millennials are often the children of the baby boomers. Although millennial characteristics vary by region, depending on social and economic conditions,
Me generation term "Me generation" has persisted over the decades so is connected to the baby boomers generation. Some writers, however, have also named the Millennials the Me Generation or Generation Me, while Elspeth Reeve in The Atlantic noted that narcissism is a symptom of youth in most generations. The 1970s were also an era of rising unemployment among the young, continuing erosion of faith in conventional social institutions, and political and ideological aimlessness for many. This was the environment that precipitated gravitation toward Punk rock among America's disaffected young people. By 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected President, a growing number