Talk:Generation Jones

Tweener is not a term which has any significant usage as a synonym for Generation Jones

I’ve heard this cohort between the Boomers and X’ers referred to as Generation Jones many times, but never as Tweeners. Out of curiosity, I just spent some time researching this today, and found that my experience with this is matched by the research. The term Generation Jones has been used many hundreds (maybe thousands?) of times across a large number of major media outlets, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Associated Press, NBC, CNN, etc. Many notable individuals have used this term Generation Jones as well, including numerous major business, political, and entertainment figures. Moreover, many online dictionaries include the term Generation Jones to describe this cohort between Boom and X.

By contrast, the term “Tweeners” has hardly ever been used for this cohort. There are a few usages in very minor media publications, like small blogs, but no serious usage anywhere that I could find: in the media, among prominent individuals, or anywhere else. Many online dictionaries include the word “Tweener” but not with this meaning. Instead, they define Tweener to mean other things, like young people between childhood and adolescence, players who are in between two different positions in a sport, people who feel in between two different cultures, etc. None of these Tweener definitions in dictionaries, with one minor exception, make any reference to Boomers/X’ers. Even the website tweeners.org doesn’t define it that way. And looking back over the many years of contributions to this Generation Jones Wikipedia articles, I couldn’t find anybody, except Scarpy now, who has ever suggested that the term “Tweener” should be used as a synonym for Generation Jones.

Scarpy, I assume you come from a place of good faith, and care about accuracy in Wikipedia articles. From what I’ve seen of your contributions to Wikipedia, you seem like a serious contributor who has made numerous helpful and accurate edits. If you believe I’m wrong vis-a-vis my above research, please cite references in this Talk section that would back up the idea that “Tweener” has been used as a synonym for Generation Jones enough in the public to warrant that positioning in this Wiki article. Otherwise, I respectfully submit to you that it should not be included in this article. It’s not accurate to use it here, and it creates confusion in relation to the ways that the term Tweener is actually used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CultureMaven2000 (talk • contribs) 22:59, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Other names for Generation Jones

After seeing this edit, I searched for "Trailing-Edge Boomers" on Google, and a few other search engines. It has very little usage; much less than "Generation Jones". So I removed it for accuracy sake. -- 23:48, 11 June 2021 69.3.119.202

Too Pontell Centric, other voices needed

This thing includes very specific opinions for this cohort generation, all attributed to Pontell. E.g. Trump's statements about Biden's age, that is not a generational opinion. His views are not dispositive even if he coined the term. It's a dumb one, I was born in 1964 and have only heard the term "Jones" rarely and that was on tv, and never used it. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by Sychonic (talk o contribs) 15:58, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes. In general, the media coverage of this idea has been far too deferential to Pontell, his gimmicky terminology, and his specific window of 1954-65. If this were accurate, the Baby Boom would be, at most, 8 years long, 1946-53 -- which is absurd on its face. The website BabyBusters.org presents a more compelling case for 1958-68. Johnlumea (talk) 16:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Pontell, but my rough-and-ready definition is "people none of whose high school years occurred during the 1960s" (see below on this page). AnonMoos (talk) 13:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The term Baby Busters has some limited usage, but almost always as a synonym for Gen X. It is not used to describe the generation between Boomers & Xers. One person, many years ago, wanted to use Baby Busters for the gen between Boom & X, using the birth years 1958-1968, and put up a website to promote that idea. He was unable to garner any support. For example, no media outlet, even very small ones, ever wrote about his idea. If you google it, you’ll see, after over 25 years since he put up his Baby Busters site, that the term Baby Busters has no usage at all to describe the gen between Boom & X. Moreover, no experts, media or anyone else have agreed with the birth years 1958-1968. If his Baby Busters site made a “compelling” case for 1958-1968, why is it that nobody except this one guy supports the 1958-1968 birth years, after over 25 years of him trying to convince people that he is right? The term Baby Busters and 1958-1968 birth years aren’t remotely notable, they’ve gained no support at all, and certainly don’t belong in this Wikipedia article. It was vandalism to put Baby Busters in this article, especially in the lead paragraph! Ridiculous.

By contrast, the term Generation Jones and its 1954-1965 birth years have gained huge support globally, and are used by millions of people around the world. This website gives a sense of its widespread usage (and features over 100 prominent thought leaders discussing, and identifying with, Gen Jones)... https://GenJones.net It’s not a question of whether Pontell’s opinions should be prioritized, it’s the fact that so many experts, every-day people, prominent thought leaders, and hundreds of media outlets, etc, etc agree with, and use, the Gen Jones/1954-1965 model. [BTW, many experts believe the Baby Boom Generation began earlier than 1946; many, including Pontell, Strauss and Howe and many others, begin the Boomers in 1942/1943.] GlassLadyBug (talk) 15:50, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Generation Jones is still baby boomer.

Cusp years of Generation X and Baby Boomers - Generation Jones - Get off my lawn, it's better than yours! 2603:7000:B901:8500:F117:BC30:9BDE:FBC7 (talk) 15:29, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Tail-end baby boomers had different experiences from middle-of-the-bulge baby boomers -- they were in elementary school or junior high during the 1960s etc. etc. AnonMoos (talk) 07:28, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Your bulge is exaggerated, only 10 million of these baby boomers were born bettween 1940 and 1950. Most of the earnings of people having babies were in the years of 1979 to 1990. The birth numbers were slightly lower but there wasn't a ten year gap of babies being born like in the boomers case - exaggerated numbers. https://www.infoplease.com/us/population/live-births-and-birth-rates-year 2603:7000:B901:8500:845C:77C2:E3C0:C58F (talk) 01:08, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Generation Jones was sort-of seen as a compromise to moving early '60s births to Generation X. A sub-Generation was created to connect them to those born in the late '50s which they likely have things in common with. Either way Generation Jones is a sub-Generation and not a Generation of it's own.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1002:B00A:CD93:71AA:8F9D:1307:F3C3 (talk) 05:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Self-contradiction

The second sentence of the article says, "Generation Jones was first coined by the American cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S., who were children during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation rather than during the 1950s." This sentence is self-contradictory, in that someone born in 1954 was not a "child" in 1974, when Watergate occurred--they turned 20 that year, and they were a child in the 1950s.

Also, the second paragraph says, "there was no compulsory military service and no defining political cause". This is false. Conscription in the US ended in 1973, but males aged between 18 and 25 were required to register with the Selective Service System, so someone born in 1954 would have turned 18 in 1972, and was certainly still subject to the draft. This is followed by the statement: "opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War was for the older boomers", but this is manifestly false. Anyone born in 1954 would have turned 21 in 1975. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 were broken almost immediately, and fighting continued until the spring offensive and the subsequent fall of Saigon in 1975. There were certainly members of this cohort, if one accepts the arbitrary start date for it of 1954, who were protesting the Vietnam War in 1970. I was one of them.

As I say, the lede of this article is confused, and contradicts itself. Carlstak (talk) 02:10, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

If you adopt the traditional definition of adulthood as 21, then the math technically works, but you're certainly correct that it's not what is ordinarily spoken of as "childhood". Also, "Men born from March 29, 1957 through December 31, 1959, were not required to register with the Selective Service System"[1], so that people born during that window were completely free of the draft.

The basic insight of the "Generation Jones" thing is that people whose high-school years were all in the 1970s had a very different cultural experience from people whose high-school years were all in the 1960s, but some of the wording and examples could definitely be improved. AnonMoos (talk) 15:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)