Internet generation

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American Generations This box: view • talk • edit
Term	Period
Awakening Generation	1701–1723
First Great Awakening	1727–1746
Liberty Generation Republican Generation Compromise Generation	1724–1741 1742–1766 1767–1791
Second Great Awakening	1790–1844
Transcendentalist Generation Transcendental Generation Abolitionist Generation Gilded Generation Progressive Generation	1789–1819 1792–1821 1819–1842 1822–1842 1843–1859
Third Great Awakening	1886–1908
Missionary Generation Lost Generation Interbellum Generation G.I. Generation Greatest Generation	1860–1882 1883–1900 1900–1910 1900–1924 1911–1924
Jazz Age	1929–1956
Silent Generation Baby Boomers Beat Generation Generation Jones	1925–1945 1946–1964 1948–1962 1954–1962
Consciousness Revolution	1964–1984
Baby Busters Generation X MTV Generation	1958–1968 1963–1978 1975–1984
Culture Wars	1980s–present
Boomerang Generation Generation Y Internet Generation New Silent Generation	1977–1986 1979–1999 1988–1999 2000–2020

The internet generation is an emerging term in theoretical and popular discourse to denote the American sub-generation branching off Generation Y, immediately following the MTV Generation.^[1] Born since the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, the defining cultural-historical event to distinguish this cohort is that they spent their formative years in an age of the birth and rise of the Internet. Thus, the Internet Generation has no recourse to a memory of (or nostalgia for) a pre-Internet history, a factor which greatly differentiates them from older generations, even Generation Y, who had to learn to adapt to 'new' technologies. The iGeneration simply takes the Internet for granted as 'natural,' with new sites that are launched past 1998 such as MySpace, YouTube, iFilm, and the ever-growing use of Internet Forums, Wikipedia, Google and Imageboards as part of its global cultural ecosystem.

One can compare this situation to those who grew up with TV vs. those for whom TV was a 'new thing.' The iGeneration therefore emerged within a paradigm shift that changed how humans relate to each other and how (virtual and real) communities form within globalization and therefore cannot be lumped together with previous generations. Other neologisms to denote this demographic cohort include iGeneration,^[2] and the MySpace Generation.^[3]

Other terms that have been used in conjunction with this generation include:

MyPod Generation (from a portmanteau of "Myspace" and "iPod")^[4]
Generation D (for "Digital")^[5]
Loli-boomers^[6]
Generation M^[7]
Millennials^[8]
Multi-Tasking Generation^[9]

The name "iGeneration" is based on the popular iPod music device, as the majority of iPod owners are members of this generation^[10]. The term was popularized by MC Lars in his song "iGeneration", which was made into a music video. The term foregrounds the paradoxical ways in which this generation's idiosyncratic subjectivity and individualism ("I") develop within global capitalism and its technological mediation in a way that both constrains and expands the possibilities for identity-formation, akin to how Michel Foucault points to the relationship between sexuality and discourse in the nineteenth century's generative effects of power.