Do you think 2012 was culturally more like 2007 or 2017?

Ok, I will slightly grant you this. But here is the thing though, particularly with the bold, technically Vine didn't really get big until the end of the 2012-2013 school year (right around Spring/Summer of 2013). The entirety of 2013-2014, yes it was pretty popular, but even so that's only about roughly one third of my overall high school experience. The vast majority of it, including most of what was my 'peak' teenaged years (age 16.5 to my 17th birthday) was technically spent just prior. But it was still apart of my core teenaged years, just not the majority of them. That is an important distinction to make.

The point I was trying to illustrate was not that 1996 borns were core 2000s teens, I was just eluding to the fact that we still were teens when the 2000s decade was over. Now take that for what you will, but that is just an inconvenient truth for your prevailing argument. 2001ers are still teens now (and depending on when they were born, may still be teens close to another 2 years). Once again, I am not saying that 2001ers are core 2020s teens. What I am just trying to explain is that the mere fact that 1996ers were teens in the 2000s, even for a relatively short period of time, and were never teens in the 2020s, is evidenced in itself that they lean both mathematically and culturally towards most Late 2000s teens rather than to most Late 2010s teens.

I understand that 96ers spent the vast majority of their actual teenaged years in the 2010s. But they spent most of their 'core' teenaged years in the early 2010s, 2012 being around when they peaked, and we already established how 2012 was culturally closer to the 2007/2008-2009 electropop era, which continued in earnest until 2012/2013 or so. The core 2010s picked up after, around mid 2013 or so, which would ultimately end in about 2018 or so. Culturally, while subjective in some way, most agree that 2007-2012 is one era. Mathematically speaking, it is no denying that we are mathematically closer in age to someone like your average early 90s born teen versus your average early 00s born teen.

2012 was 3 years after 2009, 4 years after 2008, and 5 years after 2007.

2012 was 7 years before 2019, 6 years before 2018, and 5 years before 2017.

Mathematically, culturally, and yes even technologically, most 96ers are a lot closer in relation to 91ers rather than 01ers. I guess to be more specific, as perhaps this is why this conversation has been so controversial to you, but particularly the High School Class of 2014, aka those born from Late 1995 to Mid 1996 thereabouts, are closer to early 90s born teens in general. Those born in the second half of 1996, or members of the High School Class of 2015, may actually be technically closer to early 00s born teens rather than early 90s born teens. So if that puts you at some ease, you can just say that those in the C/O 15' (which includes some 96' babies) are closer to Late 2010s teens, while the C/O 14' (which includes most 96' babies) are closer to Late 2000s teens.

Smartphones were not widespread in 2011, in 2012 sure (somewhat), but even so that was really more Late 2012. The second half of my high school experience was with smartphones, I am not discarding that, but the mere fact that the first half of my high school experience was spent without smartphones being common, allows people my age to be able to relate to early 90s baby teens a little bit more. Not to mention the fact, which I keep having to explain to you, but I digress, is that most 96ers 'first phones' were either flip phones, 'brick' phones, or (if from a wealthy background) those embellished 'feature'/'dumb phones'. And many 96ers used these type of phones (LG Chocolates, T-Mobile sidekicks, Blackberries, etc. etc.) as our main phones of choice (and quite frankly, necessity) until about 2012 or so, as smartphones were becoming more viable around that point.

Some kids I remember did get iPhones in 2011, particularly the kids from wealthier families. While others, like myself, from more working-class backgrounds, did not get 'proper' smartphones until 2013 or so (I had an off-market Android in 2012 that was slow as hell and could only run certain applications. It was really more of an over-glorified 'feature phone' if anything). Most did get 'proper' smartphones by 2012, particularly the later half, but that doesn't annul the experience of different cell phones that 96ers had gone through prior. At the end of the day, everybody and their grandmother currently uses a smartphone. Early 90s babies of course eventually got smartphones as well. And yes, perhaps you have a point about 91ers never having the access to smartphones in their core teenaged years like 96ers and 01ers did, I'll slightly grant you that. However though, the mere fact that 96ers also experienced the 'growing pains' of cell phone technology in much of the 2000s and early 2010s, along with most other early 90s babies, makes them able to relate slightly more with early 90s babies, as such, in that category. Once again, most people born in the 2000s didn't really have those same types of experiences, getting an iPhone as your 'first phone' was already an expectation. That is also not to mention that you guys really don't have much experiences or memories (if any) of a world prior to smartphones/social media becoming an integral part of daily life to begin with. That is just a different relationship to technology, something that most 90s babies just simply cannot relate to.

I don't know where you live but smartphones took off in late 2011 and early 2012 at least in my area. I went to a school full of people who are in the upper middle class, I have never seen people with that many iPhones and Samsung in my life throughout that school year. This is the graph of iPhone sales, if you take a look at Q1 2012, Apple always represents Q1 as October-December. The iPhone sales grew massively in late 2011, so the true smartphone age started at that time imo.

That only shows growth of sales though, not necessarily the percentage of people that owned them. And I already briefly said that I acknowledged (based on empirical data and personal experience) that around Late 2011/Early 2012 were when the earliest traces of smartphones started to become more viable. It was when I noticed some of the kids my age from more upper-middle class/wealthier households began getting iPhones and other 'proper' smartphones. Most kids my age though, didn't really jump on the bandwagon until about Late 2012/Early 2013.



As this graph shows, most Americans didn't start to own smartphones en masse, as in when the threshold hit 50%, until sometime between 2012 and 2014. It looks like one could deduce that it was sometime in or around the Late 2012/Early 2013 time period, which correlates well to my anecdotal experience of when I started to see more smartphones in my personal life amongst my peers. And keep in mind, the area I grew up in was a relatively upper-middle class/wealthy suburb of NYC, about an hour outside of it, so it may as well had been a little bit slower of a transition in even some more relatively working class towns across the USA, not to mention in regions of the country that are not geographically close to the permeating influence of what is considered the 'economic capital of the world'.

It’s also worth pointing out that young adults, especially the 25-34 demographic, were the earliest smartphone adopters, not teenagers. Teenager smartphone ownership rates were more or less identical to the general population in the early 2010s, maybe even a bit lower. Compare that to now where the rate is higher than the general population for 13-18 year olds.

Childhood is very important. Smartphones didn't become more mainstream at the end of my middle school years and then exploded in popularity during the beginning of my high school years.

Yeah, it all depends on where you live, the smartphone age would've started in late 2013 and early 2014 at schools in rural areas while the smartphone age started in late 2011 and early 2012 at schools in California, particularly Orange County and the Bay Area.

I agree. Perhaps you're right about the SoCal area, I just find it rather strange that SoCal would've apparently jumped on that bandwagon earlier than NY . The Tri-State Area and the SoCal area are rather comparable socioeconomically, L.A. and NYC as the two biggest cities in the country and also being 'global cities'. My area was more 'new money', so maybe people were just a tad bit modest where I lived. I'd imagine in truly wealthy towns (like 'old money' wealth) in deep Northern New Jersey or the Hudson Valley region, smartphones probably being pretty common amongst adults and their families of all ages by that point.

But yeah, in rest of the country, the transition would've been more by 2013, not even 2012. I can imagine in some 'small towns' taking until potentially 2014. Hence why, in the graph, it showed the threshold hit 50% between 2012 and 2014.

"Smartphones were already pretty popular even by 2011 tbh, at least here in New Jersey. I remember my older sister had one by 2011."

Once again, I find that hard to believe. Not the part about your sister, but with the bolded. I am also from New Jersey, Northern/Central Jersey to be exact (within the NYC Metro area), and smartphones were noticeably becoming more accessible to people in 2011, but they weren't the norm yet. That was more Late 2012, at the earliest. And like Shadowcookie said, even if many adults had smartphones in the early 2010s (particularly 'tech heads' or business people), that didn't reflect much on the actual percentage of most other American adults, not to mention teenagers (especially from normal/middle class backgrounds). Heck, the town I lived in was an upper-middle class suburb of NYC, and while some kids had iPhones in 2011, even then they were few and far between. If anything, I remember more kids my age using Blackberries back then and promoting their BBM pins on Facebook, then iPhones being that popular.

In my school, in 2008-09 school year, there were 2 kids in my grade of ~400 with an iPhone. So at the time they were still next to nonexistent. When the iPhone 3GS came out in late 2009 it did generate a lot of buzz. I think by the time I graduated in spring 2010, around 10-15% had a smartphone. Or in other words, in a class of 20 kids, 2 or 3 would have a smartphone.

I didn't know about smartphones until I was in the 7th grade (2011-12 school year). Even then, I didn't really know what they were. I just saw a couple kids (like 5 out of over 300 kids) using them and I was curious as to what they were.

It wasn't until 2013-14 (when I started high school), that I really became aware of what smartphones were and that's also the time when smartphones started to become ubiquitous.

I always have to keep in mind my situation was quite different and peculiar compared to most people around my age and that's why I sometimes feel like I'm a little older than I actually am. The people I was around with were often always older than me firstly. And the crazy thing is, I did not even have a cell phone in high school in 2010 when I was 15 ! Not only did I not have a smartphone, I didn't even have a cell phone in general. I will never forget that day when the principle was talking during the first day orientation about the rules and saying "For the 99% of you who have cell phones". I felt so embarrassed lol. I guess it's a mixture of not feeling like I needed one, and my parents not feeling like it was necessary too. I've just always been the kid to entertain myself in other ways. But in 2011 for my 16th birthday, I finally got a cell phone but it was a cheap Samsung Intensity slider phone. And then nearly 2 years later I switched to a smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S3 in November of 2012 when I was 17. I think 2011 is when smartphones really started to take off though so I was a bit late to that as well especially given my age.

Basically if someone would ask me in the future what was it like being a teen in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I would tell them to ask someone else because I was not a good representation of the average teen during that era. I have always felt older my whole life and more mature than my peers. Don't take it the wrong way I'm not calling myself special or something, it's just the reality of how things were.

It was normal in the UK too, but I would say smartphones didn’t become the norm for teens until 2013 here. For people my sister’s age (born in 1986), they were somewhat common before then (she got a smartphone in 2011 when she was 24, almost 25). Late 70s/80s babies really pioneered smartphone adoption. For people my age, our parents were overwhelmingly born in the 60s and they were much slower on the uptake.

I'll just say one thing. Even if smartphones took off later, say 2013, you can't really deny that social media was already big in the early 2010's and it was a lot of the same stuff that is used by teens today. Twitter was big for teenagers in the early 2010's and still is today. Instagram started getting big during 2012 and basically was the norm by 2013/2014. Facebook was used by teenagers back then and still is today (although a lot less teens use it today, it's mostly an old people website at this point)

It's like asking if 2012 had more in common with 2007 or 2017. The vast majority of people would pick 2017, because smartphones and social media like Twitter and Instagram were popular during both of those years, while in 2007, it was still mostly Myspace and the iPhone was basically a luxury. 16 year olds in 2012 were more like 16 year olds in 2017 than 16 year olds in 2007. I'm not saying they are exactly the same, but just that the things they had as teenagers were a little more similar.

And don't get me wrong, I still believe the 2010's were very transitional. 2010 is like another world compared to today. But I can also accept that while knowing that the transitions of the 2000's were a lot bigger. 2012 and 2017 were very different from each other, and I do believe their differences are underestimated, but 2007 and 2012 were like worlds apart, especially when it comes to technology and social media.

I don't understand why 90's babies and especially late 90's babies always try to distance themselves from Gen Z. Nobody is grouping y'all in with late 2000's babies. Nobody is saying you're exactly like a 2001 baby. I'm seeing some of y'all go great lengths to prove that you're culturally more like early 90's babies so much that you'll literally try and do it mathematically. Relax.

Even 2011 has more in common with 2015 than 2007 just because of people owning more smartphones than before and MySpace no longer popular. Not just technology but the music, movies, fashion trends(There were people who still dressed like in the late 2000s so they don't count). I don't mind being called an EARLY Gen Z'er, I'm actually cool with early 2000s babies, just not with late 2000s borns lol.

Social media has been big since 2006 so that’s not really a convincing argument, and if you were just a little kid in 2007 you probably won’t realise or understand that. 16 year olds in 2007 were still obsessing over people’s top 8 friends on their MySpace page. By 2011 that had just changed to Facebook (and Twitter to a lesser extent), and by 2017 Facebook had already fallen out of favour for Instagram and Snapchat. I would say people born in the late 80s but more so 1988/89 were the first social media teens.

And the reason we distance ourselves from Gen Z is because we just don’t see 2000s babies as being the same generation as us. You don’t have to take it personally, it’s nothing against 2000s babies, but I don’t look at 16 or 17 year olds and think they’re part of my generation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Late '90s borns are not necessarily trying to distance ourselves from Gen Z. We're just saying that we don't fit equally into either Gen Y or Gen Z.

For example, if you're a research group or whatever and you're going to define Gen Z as 1997-2012, then put a citation or something that says 1997-2000 borns "did not grow up with smartphones and some have Late Gen Y traits"...something along those lines. Same thing, if that research group defines Gen Z as 1995-2010 or any definition.

I'm talking about the specific type of social media that was present in 2007 vs. 2012. If you were a 2000's teen, you most likely used Myspace at some point while it was at its peak. For most late 90's babies, that was probably Facebook and Twitter.
Why is that? I'm starting to get the impression that you don't want to be labeled as Gen Z because of stereotypes (tide pod eating, addicted to smartphones, Fortnite, TikTok) but not all of Gen Z is like this. There's nothing wrong with being an early Gen Zer. Hell, we might even just end up doing better than the millennials, and people will want to be us. ;D

Well the important thing to remember is that "growing up" means both childhood and teenaged years. So when sources say that "Gen Z grew up with smartphones" it's not always limited to childhood. They're also talking about our core teen years (AKA high school years, but you could probably add in middle school too). I think not having smartphones at childhood but having them as teens would make you early Z, but that's just my opinion.

MySpace was arguably beyond its peak in 2007 - still bigger than Facebook but Facebook was rising in popularity pretty fast by that point. MySpace was mostly a core Y thing, while Facebook was more popular with late Y. I don’t think many people would associate Facebook with Gen Z at all because it was pretty much becoming irrelevant to teenagers by the time most of Gen Z started entering high school. Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok would be Gen Z.

There are plenty of negative Millennial stereotypes too. If anything I’d say Gen Y is the most negatively stereotyped generation of all. I just feel closer to early 90s babies. I was never in school with any 2000s babies either. Don’t get me wrong, there are still similarities, I just think the differences are greater.

Like I said, I think the early 2010s were the last teen years of Gen Y.

Social media was also big in the Late 2000s. Guess what sites were already moderately popular back then? Facebook and (to a lesser extent) Twitter. This was especially the case by 2009. Once again, Instagram became popular in Late 2012, most of 2012 I don't even remember anybody even using it and I was unaware of the existence of it. And you even just admitted that with Facebook "it's mostly an old people website at this point", back in the early 2010s it was something that both teens/young adults used unironically. Once again, culturally and technologically speaking, 2012 is more connected to 2007 than to 2017. The social media sites that were actually popular in 2012 would be evidenced of that. Not to mention that 2012 was also apart of the Golden Age of YouTube, which defined an entire generation of teenagers and college aged kids, whom are now in their 20s and early 30s, in the same way that the Golden Age for MTV was for many Gen Xers and was the 'wild wild west' for music video content. This was the case with the Golden Age YouTube for many Millennials.

Well I would like to actually meet these people you are referring to ;D. You keep bringing up smartphones and Twitter/Instagram, I already told you that those trends, while not necessarily insignificant, were nowhere near as prominent as they would become in even just a couple of years after. And what do I have to keep reiterating to you, culturally speaking 2012 is closer to 2007 than to 2017, merely of the fact that both 2007 & 2012 are solidly within the Millennial era of pop culture, while 2017, while in the transition of Millennial/Z culture, leans heavily on the Z side of things.

I'll make this easier for you; if we were comparing between years 1997 & 2002 vs. 1997 & 1992, I would say that the former grouping is culturally linked closer together merely because 97' culturally began to lean towards Millennial pop culture and 2002 was full blown Millennial culture, while 1992 was full blown Gen X pop culture. If we're comparing between the years 1978 and 1983 vs. 1978 and 1973, I would say that the latter grouping is culturally more linked together because they constitute the peak of '2nd wave' Baby Boomer/Generation Jones pop culture (the cultural 1970s), while 1983 is when culture began to heavily lean towards Gen X's favor (the cultural 1980s).

If you're still going to make the argument that 2012 is closer in time to 2017, rather than to 2007, culturally speaking, then you are objectively wrong. It's not my opinion and I am not being subjective about it. It's just when you look at the popular trends that were around back then, 2012 just doesn't have that same connection to the latter 2010s years. Just the mere fact that 2012 (along with 2010 and 2011) are pop culturally in the shadow of 2009, and 2009 in turn in many ways (culturally, technologically, and especially economically, politically speaking) is linked to 2007, 2012 is not that far removed. While starting in Late 2013, there began a pop cultural transition away from Millennial pop culture transitioning into Gen Z pop culture, but of course it did not happen overnight. However, this began in around Mid-Late 2013, with the transition being complete by mid 2018. Heck, are we seriously going to ignore one of the most pivotal years, that also happened in between this cultural transition, which just so happened had to have be an election year? 2016? (you know, the year of Brexit and Trump?) That was the 2010s version of 2008. 2017 was only a year after 2016, when people's memories of that changeful year were still fresh in our minds. In 2012, the only reference to a changeful year of a magnitude that big was 2008, and like I said before, 2012 was still in the shadow of the 2008/2009 era, so much so that Obama was technically still in his First Term as President and was blessed to go up against an out of touch prune of a billionaire in the 2012 election, that being Mitt Romney (remember his infamous '47% of the country just depend on handouts' comment?, 2012's election and 2016's election are simply night and day).


2012


2016



So that alone puts it solidly closer to the Late 2000s category. If you simply do not understand that, then at this point there is nothing else I could really do to inform you otherwise. You'd kind of had to have been there, old enough to understand these changes, for you to have any idea of what we are talking about.

Every decade is transitional, even decades with more consistent changes, I don't think anybody is discarding that. I will say this though, when comparing the differences between 2002 and 2007 vs. 2012 and 2017, the latter is less changeful from mainly a technological, political, and economical perspective. While the former is less changeful from a cultural perspective. So the 2000s were objectively much more of a transformative decade compared to the 2010s, in most aspects, except for pop culture (particularly youth pop culture, although it was still say that the 2000s alone were quite changeful objectively); as an example is that Rap/Hip Hop, Rock, and Pop were the definitive music genres of that decade (even with varying artists becoming big and declining throughout). 2012 is a lot closer to the music world of 2007/2008 than it is to the music world of 2016/2017. Once again, you may be a little too young to understand, so it's not worth my time trying to explain otherwise.

2007


2012



2017



Now let's set the record straight, any 5 year difference is going to be pretty noticeable. So when I say that 2012 is culturally closer to 2007 than 2017, I mean that in the grand scheme of things that the differences are not as noticeable as the differences between 2012 & 2017. I am not on the record saying that my teenaged experience was exactly the same as a 91er, but I am also saying, especially given the fact that I was old enough to be apart of some of the trends 91ers engaged and also objectively also being a teenager in the 2000s, that my teenaged experience was closer culturally (and even technologically in many senses as well) to a 91er than a 01er. And even so, many trends that began in 2007/2008, continued strong through 2012/2013. There were some core 2010s trends that debuted in 2012, but the vast majority of them were in the pop cultural shadow of the Late 2000s (2007 & 2008) and especially the 'Electropop era' (which started in 2009).

Speaking as a person who had 3 major milestones in 2007, 2012 and 2017, I felt like 2012 was more like 2007 than 2017.

In 2007, I turned 8 and was at the peak of my childhood.
In 2012, I finally became a teenager (age 13).
In 2017, I finally graduated from high school and became a legal adult (age 18).

Now, of course, each year was vastly different from each other but the politics and geopolitical factors of 2012 was closer to 2007. The music of 2012 was closer to 2007 music. The sports world and TV world of 2012 was closer to 2007. The online humor and memes of 2012 are closer to 2007 online humor and memes than 2017. Smartphones started to become mainstream in 2012 but in 2017, smartphones were ubiquitous and smartphone culture was in full effect. In 2012, the 8th gen video game consoles (Xbox One & PS4) hadn't even come out yet. The Wii U did come out in 2012 but it was a failure and didn't catch on. Video games in 2012 were definitely closer to 2007 than 2017. In 2012, VR tech was not widely available to the public unlike in 2017.

For these and many other reasons, 2012 was closer to 2007 than 2017.