born into this: the generation box
The generational debate is exhausting, isn’t it? It has become so tiresome. What once may have been an innocent framework for understanding broad social trends now feels like a scripted routine: Boomers are to blame, Millennials are burned out, Gen Z is too sensitive, and Gen X floats somewhere off-camera, unimpressed. It is repetitive, it is reductive - and yet, it persists. It has hardened into a set of stereotypes - easy to repeat, easier to exploit.
We talk about generations as if they’re fixed identities. As if the year we were born automatically determines our outlook, values, and behaviour. These labels have moved far beyond demographic shorthand. They have become a form of cultural marketing: easy categories that advertisers, media, and institutions use to sell products, shape narratives, and frame blame.
But this is not just a social shorthand, obviously, it is a system. One built for segmentation, for targeting & marketing, and for control. It breaks people down into simplified groups tells each one a different story, and keeps them in their place. Generational labels flatten complexity into cliché. they create distance where there could be dialogue - and tension where there could be continuity.
Generational division, however naturalised, is not an organic social fact. It is a designed mechanism - deployed for efficiency, monetization, and control. So, we should pause to ask the question: who benefits from this segmentation and keeping us this easy to divide?
Social psychologist Henri Tajfel demonstrated how easily people create divisions (©AI-picture: Edie Lou)
The Invention of Difference
Social psychologist Henri Tajfel, one of the most influential voices in postwar psychology, demonstrated how easily people create divisions. He spent his career studying how and why people draw lines between one another. Social identity theory, his main work, showed that humans don´t need deep ideological divides or long-standing rivalries to form group bias. All it takes is a label. In a now-famous experiment, Tajfel randomly assigned boys to meaningless groups - based on things like their preference for a painter or even a coin toss - and found that they still favored their own group when distributing rewards. They consistently favoured members of their own group, even when doing so meant receiving fewer points overall. They were willing to sacrifice collective gain just to maximise the gap between “us” and “them”. The groups were arbitrary, but the bias was real.
His point was simple, and unsettling: once a distinction is named, people will treat it as meaningful. They will build identities around it. And more importantly, they will behave in ways that reinforce that divide.
Generational categories function in exactly this way. They are not rooted in science or clear cultural breaks necessarily. They are soft boundaries drawn by marketing departments, media narratives, and convenience. Yet once we are placed in these groups, the groups begin to shape how we see ourselves - and how others see us. Labels become roles. Roles become identity. And suddenly, a loosely defined birth cohort turns into a worldview. One that dictates how we are expected to think, behave, consume, and communicate. And just like that, our freedom to simply be - is gone. We are no longer people with stories and contradictions. We are market segments with predicted outcomes.
Sociologist Erving Goffman would describe this as “front-stage behavior”: the curated version of the self we present for recognition, approval, and cultural legitimacy. Gen Z performs disruption and hyper-awareness. Millennials perform exhaustion and adaptability. Boomers perform stability and institutional memory. Gen X…Wait. What is that? Who is it? Well, Gen X is edited out. They disrupt the narrative because they don´t neatly perform generational identity. They complicate the algorithm. They are too quiet for headlines, too independent for branding.
In the age of digital identity, these performances are amplified. Platforms thrive on legibility and repetition. Generational roles become hashtags, aesthetics, and brand strategies. They are not just cultural scripts anymore- they are content templates. Flattened for scale, recycled for reach. They don’t need to be accurate. They just need to work. The algorithm doesn´t care if they’re accurate. The result? Generational identity becomes a kind of branding exercise. One that reinforces itself in public. And behind it all are individuals - layered, contradictory, evolving. But systems of segmentation don´t want nuance. They want efficiency. And efficiency sells.
And there is a deeper risk. When we are divided into generational identities, we stop seeing one another as individuals and start treating each other as types. It is quiet form of dehumanization - the reduction of identity to stereotype, the replacement of personality with pattern. These divisions aren´t just superficial - they are socially corrosive. They reduce empathy. They replace dialogue with dismissal. Because once people are convinced they are fundamentally different from one another, they stop working together. And that isn´t accidental - it is structural. Divided societies are easier to manage, easier to market to, and easier to distract.
The Marketplace of Identity (©picture: Edie Lou)
The Marketplace of Identity
Generational division is especially useful to industry. In marketing, tech, and media, age isn´t just a demographic - it is a behavioral blueprint. A formula for shaping demand. Gen Z sold sensitivity, disruption, anxiety. Millennials are sold burnout solutions, lifestyle “balance”, and curated nostalgia. Boomers are sold security, tradition, and the illusion of permanence. Gen X - if they are addressed at all - gets rebellion rebranded as vintage aesthetic. These aren´t cultural truths obviously, they are market strategies.
The power of generational segmentation is that it creates contained identities - identities that can be studied, predicted, and sold to. The more tightly defined the generational narrative, the more precisely you can target it. Every cohort becomes its own curated economy, complete with tailored fears, values, and aesthetics. Fashion cycles, streaming content, wellness trends, and even political messaging are optimised to speak to what each generation is supposed to care about. And, of course, these narratives don´t emerge organically. They are constructed - by media, by branding, by repetition.
As cultural theorist Stuart Hall argued, identity is not a fixed essence, but a positioning. We don´t just express who we are through culture; we come to understand ourselves through the cultural narratives available to us. Identity is produced in relation to meaning, language, and representation. And those are systems controlled by institutions. According to Hall, identity is always shaped by systems of language, representation, and power. We become who we are through the narratives offered to us by media, education, politics, family, and advertising. These are not neutral channels. They are institutions, and like all institutions, they have stakes in what kinds of identities are seen, legitimised, or made profitable.
In that sense, identity is never purely personal. It is socially constructed and historically situated, created in relation to what is visible and stable in a given moment. And this matters deeply when we consider how generational identities are built. Once institutions label Gen Z as anxious or Millenials as entitled, those characterisations enter circulation. They become part of the cultural script. A feedback loop: media defines it, we perform it, data tracks it, and industry capitalises on it. It is not just that a generation “has a vibe” - it is that we are trained to live inside it. The more predictable we become, the easier to monetize. And the less likely we are to question why we were sorted this way in the first place.
So, this is probably why generational division is so persistent: it is economically efficient. It flattens human complexity into legible, sellable categories. It translates identity into behavior, behavior into data, and data into sales. It turns people into consumers profiles - without ever asking if that profile reflects anything real. And, yes, most of us go along with it because we are told this is just how culture works.
What Division Really Costs (©picture: Edie Lou)
What Division Really Costs
Division isn´t just a social inconvenience. It is a strategy. One that fragments collective power, erodes empathy, and undermines the foundations of any society that hopes to be democratic. Whether we are talking about generational labels, political tribes, cultural binaries, or class distinctions, the mechanics are the same: define people narrowly, convince them they are fundamentally different, and watch solidarity collapse. Division doesn´t only distort how we see others - it changes how we treat them. It creates distance and replaces shared stakes with suspicion.
We empathise most easily with those we feel close to - those we understand or relate to. But when society is structured to frame others as oppositional, unfamiliar, or threatening, our capacity to care shrinks. We don’t reach across the aisle, or the timeline, or the socioeconomic line - we retreat behind it. Empathy needs proximity - mental, emotional, and social. But when culture and media constantly suggest that people who aren’t like us are a threat, we start pulling back. Dialogue becomes avoidance. Tolerance erodes fast when difference is treated like danger so division manufactures distance.
Division is not a byproduct of contemporary life - it is a mechanism that undermines social cohesion, weakens civic trust. It replaces tolerance with defensiveness and frames coexistence as compromise. When public discourse centres around competing identities rather than shared conditions, even basic consensus become elusive. The simplification of people into categories is not accidental - it is operational. Stereotypes are efficient. They simplify. They reduce people into digestible categories. Simplified people are easier to blame, easier to dismiss, easier to ignore. Structural critique is displaced by personal resentment. Group identity becomes a substitute for political analysis.
This fragmentation is not just socially corrosive - it is politically useful. It prevents coalitions, weakens resistance, and distracts from systemic failure. The more time and energy we spend policing the behavior of other groups, the less we invest in questioning the systems that shaped our divisions in the first place. And in the background, we’re performing. Online and offline, we’re all expected to act out our roles - our politics, our generation, our “brand”. But showing up as a label isn´t the same as showing up with real presence. And when people are performing identities instead of participating in society, connection breaks down.
That´s where democracy starts to crack. In our daily life. When we stop recognizing others as people we can share space and power with. When disagreement becomes contempt. When complexity gets replaced by suspicion. This is the deeper cost of division: it makes us forget how to live together. Not just politely - but constructively. We lose the ability to argue without dehumanising, to differ without disconnecting, to coexist without collapsing into hostility.
The cost of division is not simply social discomfort. It is the loss of functional plurality. It is the erosion of our capacity to work through disagreement without resorting to contempt. The longer we stay divided, the more governable we become. And the further we drift from any serious claim to collective freedom.
Perhaps this is where freedom begins again (©picture: Edie Lou)
The End is a Start
We have been taught to think in categories. Henri Tajfel warned us how easily we create groups out of thin air - how fast “us” and “them” becomes policy, culture, instinct. Ervin Goffman showed us how we step into those roles and perform them - habitually, automatically. And Stuart Hall reminded us that identity isn´t something we discover - it is something we construct, constantly, in relation to the narratives around us.
The generational divide is just one more version of that performance. A script. A shortcut. A way to avoid the messiness of actually listening to each other. But what if we stopped playing to type? What if we dropped the performance altogether? Because what is lost in this cycle of categorization, or in any categorization, is not just nuance - it is freedom. Freedom to be more than one thing. Freedom to evolve. Freedom to connect without a prewritten narrative. Division narrows us. It teaches us to see difference as incompatibility instead of an opportunity lo learn, expand, recalibrate.
Recognizing the structure of division is the first step. It is a start - but what we choose to do with that awareness is what really matters. And, well, the question is: do we really need these generational boxes? Do we need the kind of labels that shrink who we are into market segments and punchlines?Do we benefit from these limitations?
Reclaiming identity isn´t about denying difference. It is about refusing to be reduced by it. It means choosing dialogue over performance, and complexity over convenience. It is a cultural shift, built in the everyday. It also means returning to something deeper: civic integrity. The ability to participate in a shared society with both responsibility and respect. To make space for disagreement without resorting to dehumanization. To be clear without being cruel. And to defend the kind of democratic culture that depends not on constant consensus, but on sustained engagement.
Generational labels may seem harmless, but they reflect a larger pattern: how easily we’re divided, and how quickly we’re distracted from what actually matters. Obviously, identity will always be shaped in part by the world around us. But it shouldn´t be defined by the systems that profit from keeping us divided. And no, we don´t need to collapse into sameness. But we do need to stop treating difference as a threat. The more space we make for diversity, the more capacity we create for real dialogue and shared progress.
Perhaps this is where freedom begins again. Not through reinvention, like some utopian reset, but through recovery: a deliberate refusal to be reduced, a recovery of perspective, of depth, of shared responsibility. A more open, more diverse society holds extraordinary potential - if we are willing to stop performing, stay curious, and actually learn from one another.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html
https://history.easp.eu/people/tajfel-henri
https://books.google.ch/books/about/Interaction_Ritual.html?id=qDhd138pPBAC&redir_esc=y
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/931984.The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life
https://www.academia.edu/15768177/DIVISION_OF_LABOUR_EMILE_DURKHEIM
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/stuart-hall/
https://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/201/articles/27MannheimGenerations.pdf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/09/29/why-generational-theory-makes-no-sense/