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Chart explaining why Gen Z should be divided into '1.0' and '2.0' sparks generational debate

There's one thing that makes them very different.

via Canva/Photos

Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0

Eleven years ago, there was a generational split where people born between 1977 and 1983, the cusp between Gen X and Millennials, abandoned their generations and rebranded themselves as Xennials. In 2014, writers Sarah Stankorb and Jed Oelbaum referred to them as "a micro-generation that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of Gen X and the blithe optimism of Millennials,” they wrote in GOOD.

Now, writer Rachel Janfaza has proposed another split. She believes that Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) should be divided into halves: Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0. Janfaza is an associate writer for CNN Politics in Washington, D.C., covering youth political culture and everything related to young voters in the U.S. Her theory is simple: the generation should be divided between those who graduated high school pre-COVID (Gen Z 1.0) and those who graduated after (Gen Z 2.0).

Janfaza shared her thoughts on X, highlighting the different attributes of each half-generation in terms of technology, social media, and politics.


What’s the difference between Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0?

According to Janfaza, Gen Z 1.0 had flip phones before iPhones and grew up with Instagram but without TikTok. Politically, they were influenced by liberal political activism, which included the March for Our Lives, Climate Strikes, and Black Lives Matter Protests. The younger half of the generation, Gen Z 2.0, lived a different life heavily influenced by smartphones, TikTok, and the aftermath of the pandemic, in which a right-wing counter-culture developed.

The older members of Gen Z explained the split to their younger cohorts citing various factors:


How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect Gen Z?

There was universal agreement that the dividing line was between those who graduated high school pre- and post-COVID. Gen Zers who were still in elementary, middle, or high school during the pandemic suffered from a sharp increase in depression and anxiety. In the aftermath of the pandemic, 84% of schools agreed or strongly agreed that students’ behavioral development had been negatively impacted. This puts the dividing line between Gen Z 1.0 and 2.0 right around those born in 2003.


Some see the generational split as a time when online behavior jumped into hyper speed with young people gaining access to smartphones and TikTok.


It’s safe to say that the saddest members of Gen Z are those who graduated high school in 2020 and saw the senior year that they worked so hard to get to blow up in smoke. Many missed out on graduation ceremonies and proms and getting to give their school a proper send-off. They also entered their careers or college on very uneasy footing.


Janfaza’s Gen Z 1.0 versus 2.0 breakdown takes into effect a lot of significant technological, cultural, and political developments that helped shape a generation of people. However, Big Ellie's Single Braid on X may have found another, more critical division line between Gen Zers.

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Democracy

Biden task force reunites 400 children with their families separated by cruel border policy

The 'zero tolerance' policy was cruel and unthinkable.

Photo by Chris Boese on Unsplash

Thousands of children and parents were forcibly separated while seeking asylum in 2017 and 2018.

The United States espouses noble ideals and has worked for more than two centuries to make its way toward them. It's always been an uneven process, however, and sometimes we stumble—or get violently shoved—backward.

The "zero tolerance" policy for handling migrant families was one of those times. The policy, unofficially piloted by the Trump administration in 2017 and officially enacted in May of 2018, forced children and parents to be separated instead of being detained together while awaiting asylum decisions.

During those two years, thousands of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border were taken from their families with no notice, sometimes torn straight from the parents' arms, and sent away to unknown locations around the country. Thousands of parents and caregivers were deported with no idea where their children were or if they'd ever see them again. Some were toddlers and preschoolers. We read horror stories of children screaming while being taken away, their parents frantic but helpless to do anything about it.

These were not all people trying to enter the U.S. illegally. Many were going through the legal asylum-seeking process. According to NBC, lawyers estimated that more than two-thirds of the parents and caregivers were deported, leaving thousands of children behind.

After intense pressure from human rights advocates around the world, President Trump signed an executive order ending the policy in June 2018. But the monstrous mess was already made. Thousands of families had been separated with no recourse and thousands of children thrown into foster homes in an unfamiliar country with no warning. There's no other way to describe it but cruel and unthinkable.

And if that weren't inhumane enough, after a federal judge ordered that the children be reunited with their families within 30 days, it came to light that the administration had enacted the policy with no clear method of keeping track of which kids were separated and no plans to find and reunite them with their families. There was simply no way to make it happen that quickly.

One of the first things President Biden did after his inauguration was to address this crisis directly through an executive order. On February 2, 2021, he formed the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families and tasked it with "identifying all children who were separated from their families at the United States-Mexico border between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021, in connection with the operation of the Zero-Tolerance Policy" and "to the greatest extent possible, facilitating and enabling the reunification of each of the identified children with their families."

Michelle Brané, executive director of the task force, told NBC News that the Biden administration has now successfully reunited 400 migrant children impacted by the zero tolerance policy with their families. It has been a daunting challenge, considering the lack of record-keeping, and there are still more families who remain separated. But it's at least a step forward from that enormous leap back.

The children's parents and caregivers are being brought back to the U.S. and given temporary legal status to be able to live and work in the U.S. for three years. They are also allowed to bring dependent family members with them. Lawyers are pushing for the families to be given permanent status, but the Biden administration has not agreed on that yet.

While this is good news, we also must remember that these children's lives are changed forever and the trauma they have endured at the hands of the U.S. government will not easily be overcome. These kids were taken from the only security many of them had ever known—their family—and sent to live with strangers in a strange land. It's an unfathomable thing to imagine as a parent.

Immigration and asylum are complicated issues, but there are some lines we simply do not cross when dealing with challenging issues. Tearing kids from their parents' arms and sending them away to an undisclosed place for an indefinite amount of time in an unfamiliar country is a line we should never have crossed. It was cruel to both the parents and the children, and purposefully so.

While we can't undo the damage already done, let's celebrate the fact that some of those wrongs are beginning to be righted, and let's ensure that nothing like that is ever done in our name again.

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Culture

A wildly fascinating map captured our top Google searches for each day of 2021

u/V1Analytics/Reddit

See what Americans in each state searched for each day of 2021 in a one-minute video.

Google has become such a ubiquitous part of our lives that the data it reveals is a pretty decent indicator of our collective reality. It's a weird phenomenon, considering the fact that Google has only been a thing for 25 years—basically a single generation—but here we are.

Now that we're wrapping up 2021, we can look back and see what people were searching for the most throughout the year. Reddit user u/V1Analytics pulled together the top trending search terms from Google's 2021 Year in Search summary (for the period before mid-November 2021) and from Google's Daily Search Trends page (from mid-November to now) and illustrated the daily trends for each state in a one-minute video.

It's fascinating to see what Americans were looking up—as well as what they weren't looking up—the most this year.

Watch:

We start with January 6, 2021, which shows most people Googling "Capitol" and "Biden," which isn't surprising considering the attack on the U.S. Capitol as insurrectionists tried to overturn Biden's presidential election win. What is surprising are the six states that were more interested in the Mega Millions jackpot that day. Like, OK people. Really?

Biden dominated searches through January. Soon we collectively turned to the Gamestop (GME) stock phenomenon before a widespread interest in Valheim (video game launch), The Weeknd (Super Bowl performance) and some random power outages. Valheim was apparently super popular before a universal interest in the government's stimulus checks took over the entire second half of March.

In April, Lil Nas X made a splash, followed by rapper DMX. Then Prince Phillip died and Jake Paul had a first-round TKO.

May through early July brought Dogecoin, Dogecoin and more Dogecoin, followed by AMC stock—a very financial period, with some more power outages thrown in for funsies. (Also, Mississippi really likes Dogecoin. Holy moly.)

Then Jeff Bezos went to space and Simone Biles got the twisties, and hey, more power outages! August brought Afghanistan, Hurricane Ida and Jake Paul once again.

In September, Gabby Petito's disappearance had everyone riveted for a solid two weeks before Squid Game, Urban Meyer and Alec Baldwin took over.

October into November saw Travis Scott, Kyle Rittenhouse and Adele dominating people's searches.

Don't blink at the end of November, or you'll miss the school shooting at Oxford High School that piqued people's interest for a day or two before Spotify Wrapped yanked everyone's attention back to what's really important.

Yikes! Tornado in December and then Elon Musk as Time Person of the Year, and that's as far as we've gotten into this month.

It truly is fascinating to see what people were most interested in looking up this year. It's a bit disconcerting in some ways, as well, considering the fact that not one of the top searches had anything to do with the viral pandemic that is still raging and has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans this year alone. Is that a sign that people are tired of the pandemic or just more interested in new things as they come along? Trends can be both organic and driven by what's being covered in the media—and both things can play off of each other—but it's interesting to think about what is missing from this search term synopsis. When we look back at 2021 and its place in U.S. history, is Jake Paul really going to play a bigger role than the coronavirus? Doubtful. Do these search trends offer some indication of why a significant portion of the population is woefully uninformed or misinformed about the pandemic? Possibly.

At any rate, it's an interesting glimpse into what Americans are paying the most attention to.

(A note from V1Analytics about the way the data was collected and presented: "Google Trends provides weekly relative search interest for every search term, along with the interest by state. Using these two datasets for each search term, we're able to calculate the relative search interest for each state for a particular week. Linear interpolation was used to calculate the daily search interest.")

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Culture

President Biden tells transgender Americans: "We have your back."

President Biden's first address to Congress on Wednesday night covered a number of topics: COVID-19, the war in Afghanistan, climate change, healthcare, taxes and more. But it was a personal comment to America's transgender community that might have been the most powerful moment of the night.

Transgender Americans continue to be one of the most openly discriminated against communities in America. Since Biden's election, a number of states have proposed bills that would restrict the rights of transgender citizens, including children.

Some leaders have bravely stood up for the rights of our most vulnerable citizens. For example, North Dakota's Republican Gov. Doug Burgum recently vetoed a bill that would have banned trans girls from competing in sports.

"To all the transgender Americans watching at home, especially the young people who are so brave, I want you to know that your president has your back," Biden told Congress in his call for passage of the Equality Act.


Biden's calm and caring words to the trans community were immediately celebrated online.




Biden has promised to make passage of the Equality Act a priority during his first 100 days in office, something he failed to achieved and which has generated criticism from trans activists. However, tonight's address may restore some hope that action is imminent. Along with Biden's call for action, First Lady Jill Biden used her VIP guest list to include Stella Keating, a 16-year-old that President Biden had speak before Congress in support of the Equality Act's passage.


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