I'm a millennial but must be a couple years older. Cell phones were in high school and a small handful in middle school. '08 and '14 impacted my early career years.

Larger picture than that, I am in the same field as my father. I have a "higher" level job with more responsibilities than he did at my age. I have more education. He and spouse owned a home and supported 7 kids on his salary alone. They had medical insurance that mostly covered the needs of the one kid with serious medical issues for the few years of life. I wouldn't even consider having one kid let alone seven without a partner working and bringing in around the same amount of money as me. Any major medical issue would destroy our plans. A house as large as my parents' would require moving to some small town where there are no jobs in my field.

This take is US centric, because that's where I'm from.

I'm a millennial. I feel like I got on the last boat boat out of 'Nam. I graduated college and got my first job just before that mini recession in 2014.

I do feel like if you were mid 20s around 9/11 you got to ride the crest of the last surge of "greatness" in the US; old enough to get your bag while the world changed everything for the people coming after.

In reality, there's almost always been a 2-4 year period every 10-15 years where it's actually pretty great to enter into adulthood compared to surrounding age demographics. I feel like I was in the last one, and the next one hasn't hit yet.

Seemingly great times to be a 24 year old college graduate (comparative to other years):

2011-13 - you narrowly avoided 08 and 14 recessions

1997-99 - you got job experience before the dot com bubble popped

1988 - you're starting your career with a straight decade of prosperity

1967-73 - you went to college and avoided the draft; you got career experience before inflation and the gas crisis hit in the next few years

1948-50 - too young to go to war, early enough to participate in the largest economic boom in human history

Nostalgia is a great “whitewasher”. I don’t know what generation I am in, I am think I am Gen X and I think that being in highschool 2000-2010 would have been amazing.

Ignore all the fools who pine away about leaving home in the morning and not coming back until the street lights came on. The late 70s and early 80s were a time to be endured.

No. When I was growing up the crime rate was high, schools were much worse, downtown here was abandoned on weekends, gay people were targeted with more violence, there was more racial violence, more domestic violence, it was really rough.

My kids grew up in a better time, but now it is sliding again, the last one did not get education as good as the older ones.

I am not even a little bit nostalgic, you could not pay me to go back to the time I grew up.

It seems to be a trend for every generation, excepting some big traumatic events.
For example I grew up in the Balkans in 1990s and I couldn't say it was the best time.

But long as you grew up in a safe environment, without struggle, it seems you will see the period of your youth as something ideal.

Certainly not, at least for younger ages. I was in the TV generation. Not enough freedom to go out like the previous generations, not enough technology to have interactive content or communicate with friends like the next generations. We spent all day in front of the TV and talking through a shared landline (if lucky).

No, i know mine wasn't. I think future generations will have it better.

No.

That assumes that everyone in every generation thinks the same way.

Early millennial and for me the 90s were peak. To borrow from Hobsbawm, I think of that decade as the long 90s, starting on 9 November 1989 and ending on 11 September 2001.

I always felt like I should've been born just a decade earlier. I got '89, so I'd like to have been at least born in '79. I felt like I was growing up as the last generation to enjoy 'freedom' before the reign of smartphones and the development of the internet before it became like a 24/7 thing.

I think over the last 80 years, sure. Start going further back and you're answer likely changes.

No.

People growing up in the Depression knew that there'd been plenty of money a few years back.

People who grew in the 1980s knew that folks in the 1960s and 1970s weren't in fear of dying from AIDS.

Kids today hear legends of a time when the President was cool and articulate.

Young adult in the 80-90s was peak. I think things would be different if we could take a glimpse into the future and realize how good we had it. There were problems, but most weren't predicaments yet. And it's definitely the era that we point back to and say "we didn't listen".

nope.. at least i don't like mine. for context i'm probably younger than most people here.

lol Gen X, fuck my life from day one.