William Straus and Neil Howe'
s clustering of millennials based on birth years, the generational classification was referred to as Generation Y, and muddled the fair representation of those who experienced their adolescence and cognitive-development years in step with the nascent phase of home-
based Internet access technology.
While often lumped together with millennials (as defined by Straus and Howe), the developmental phase of social interaction, which involved information technology's burgeoning impact on
society, was overlooked. Generation Y represented the crossroads between millennials who were well immersed in computer technology even as far as experiencing an institutionalization of
computer education in academic curricula and Generation X members who were heavily immersed in broadcast media's influence and yet largely uninitiated in computer technology. Generation Y represents the
link between the non-digital age
society shaped by Generation X, as adolescents (MTV Generation), and the dawn of the
Internet age that saw the transitioning of society to easily accessible online communities (Bulletin board system, MIRC, Yahoo! Groups, Internet forum) especially during the introduction of dial-up
Internet access to households.
Gen Y entangled pop culture and digital community-building through bulletin board systems, online forums, website mailing groups, mIRC, ICQ, and other electronic modes of communication (predecessors to social media) into today's digital age.
Generation Y and
Generation Z cannot be lumped together and be called Millennials; as those who
said so were clueless about how the
two generations were raised and how they developed their ways of thinking.
