I'm a 1997-98 group baby who was considered a Millennial even a few years into adulthood. Then, in 2019, I was suddenly regrouped into Gen Z.

I never could come to terms with this logic and how everyone seems to piggyback Pew Research.

Now, even though I've recently "found my homies" as a Zillennial, I'm starting to really see this generations concept thing as a silly pseudo-science all with arbitrary cutoffs and needless social divides/stigma just meant for predatory marketing.

I feel as if like my identity was taken away from me, and my experiences are now invalidated.

I just don't relate to Gen Z. Hear me out, there is nothing wrong with y'all who are, I more so feel "out-of-place" being with ya. I just think there are substantial differences with how we grew up.

To think someone a year older than me is still considered a Millennial, as if there was some major difference between myself and my peers I grew up with on the playground, school, and made friends with?

And no, I really don't buy the United States culture-centric milestones everyone uses.... i.e. "Do you remember 9/11?" I was sleeping that morning for crying out loud! I do remember a few things from around the year 2001, however. I also started some early preschool then, too.

I'm a solid 2000s kid, just like the people I best relate to who are just a few years older than me, of which I also co-existed with in high school when I entered in the early 2010s and also participated with in what was our first presidential election...

While I am now apart of this Zillennial microgeneration and I can finally sleep, I still have yet to hear it take off in the media or publications, which now makes me worried no one will take it seriously when compared to the buzz words that Gen Y and Gen Z carry with them.

I grew up entering the Internet with the tail end of Web 1.0 and dial-up (think basic webpages and forums) and remember the dependence of Adobe Flash/Macromedia Shockwave and Apple QuickTime just to play sounds and games online, when it was available.

I remember the very tail end of Vault Disney (the programming block that was part of Disney), when new episodes of classic season 3 SpongeBob were still premiering.

I remember when cereal boxes would sometimes have special prices like a CD-ROM game included.

I got my source of entertainment from analog TV, video tapes/video rentals, and was old enough when cars still came with audio cassette players in the dashboards.

Heck, I called friends and family with just the home phone growing up.

I feel like I should still be entitled to call myself a millennial, at least retroactively because that's what I was until like a few weeks after I became legal to drink!

Does anyone else here around my age feel this "struggle"?