Tell Us What to Call the Generation After Millennials {Please)

    Millennials are getting older. Not that much older, of course. We're a roughly defined generational cohort, but arguably the oldest members of our demographic set are just beginning to reach the age of 40.

    Meanwhile, the American generation behind millennials has started to move intothe workplace. And while some have proposed names for this group born in 1995 and after — Generation Z, PostMillennials, The Homeland Generation, iGeneration — all of these names are bad. The first two don't even strive for originality! Come on. Then again, it's hard to know what makes a generational name stick.

    "Millennial" was coined in the late 1980s by the consultants Neil Howe and William Strauss, both baby boomers, before the term Generation X was even popularized. (They wanted to call them "13th Gen," but that didn't stick, and neither did "slackers."

    But their term "millennial" did not become the dominant name for the huge generation after those two until much later. "In retrospect, it's easy to see that names that people gravitate to say something," Mr. Howe said in a recent interview. "Either the name itself or the way in which it was adapted."

    But Malcolm Harris, the millennial author of "Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials," argues that those most interested in naming generations are those trying to sell things to that cohort.

    "Generations are really only understood in retrospect," Mr. Harris said. "Some people have a financial interest in naming them as soon as possible, people trying to sell stuff. That's the first perspective we get on any cohort, and I don't think it's necessarily a very good one."

    One stumbling block is a lack of agreement about the birth years for each generation. People on the fringes can feel as if they've got almost nothing in common with the rest of the group. A few years' difference can determine if you could have been drafted for Vietnam, watched the first MTV videos, or were born into a world of instant messaging.

    In 2015, the Census Bureau said that there were 83.1 million American millennials (born between 1982 and 2000), exceeding the 75.4 million baby boomers (between 1946 and 1964), and the 65 million that Pew Research said belong in Generation X (between 1965 and 1980). But the generation after millennials is still so ill-defined (probably because of the whole name issue) that an accurate count has not yet been established.

    And a good name? Nope.

Fonte: New York Times. Publicado em 23/01/2018. Disponível em: https://www.nytimes. com/2018/01/23/style/generation-names.html

        At Hwaban, Mihyun Han with her husband, Key Kim, will present their take on Korean fare, traditional and personalized with modern touches. The serene, neutral-toned dining room with pale brick walls, accented by dark furniture, is the setting for their varied menu. Some of the small plates to start are shrimp or scallop, an organic egg with king crab in a pine nut sauce, and pan-seared zucchini with shrimp in a soy sauce. More substantial dishes include poached lemon sole with vegetables, chicken with root vegetables, and grilled New York strip steak with Korean mountain greens and mustard dressing. Classics like bibimbap, kimchi stew with pork belly, and galbi (short ribs) are also served, and there is a set array of dishes called Hwaban Table. The name of the restaurant means “as beautiful as a flower,” and there are floral elements in the dining room and on some plates.

(Florence Fabricant. www.nytimes.com, 14.08.2018. Adaptado.)

        Fake news can distort people’s beliefs even after being debunked. A study recently published in the journal Intelligence suggests that some people may have an especially difficult time rejecting misinformation. Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told the information was false. The study is significant because it identifies what may be a major risk factor for vulnerability to fake news.

       One possible explanation for this finding is based on the theory that a person’s cognitive ability reflects how well they can regulate the contents of working memory – their “mental workspace” for processing information. First proposed by the cognitive psychologists Lynn Hasher and Rose Zacks, this theory holds that some people are more prone to “mental clutter” than other people. In other words, some people are less able to discard (or “inhibit”) information from their working memory that is no longer relevant to the task at hand, or information that has been discredited. Research on cognitive aging indicates that, in adulthood, this ability declines considerably with advancing age, suggesting that older adults may also be especially vulnerable to fake news. Another reason why cognitive ability may predict vulnerability to fake news is that it correlates highly with education. Through education, people may develop meta-cognitive skills – strategies for monitoring and regulating one’s own thinking – that can be used to combat the effects of misinformation.

(www.scientificamerican.com, 06.02.2018. Adaptado.)

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Am I too old to learn a new language?

Adapted from:<https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/13/am-i-too-old-to-learn-a-language>. Accessed on March 19, 2018.