- Babies born this year and the 14 years that follow are part of Generation Beta.
It’s a new year, and all babies born from Jan. 1 on are part of the youngest generation, dubbed Generation Beta. According to research firm McCrindle, Generation Beta is defined as people born from 2025 to 2039, and by the end of that time they’ll make up 16% of the world population.
They’ll be the children of younger millennials and older Gen Zers, meaning many Gen Betas will live to see the 22nd century.
Gen Beta’s predecessor, Generation Alpha, was labeled and determined by McCrindle’s founder, Mark McCrindle, a demographer. So why Generation Beta? Simply because in the Greek alphabet Beta follows Alpha. Those in Generation Alpha were born from 2010 to 2024.
Still, the two youngest generations are grouped together because of the very different world they’ll experience from that of baby boomers and Gen X especially, one filled with technological advancements people couldn’t even imagine decades ago.
“For Generation Beta, the digital and physical worlds will be seamless,” according to a blog post by McCrindle. “While Generation Alpha has experienced the rise of smart technology and artificial intelligence, Generation Beta will live in an era where AI and automation are fully embedded in everyday life—from education and workplaces to health care and entertainment.”
So before the transition to the Greek alphabet, there was Generation X, Y (also known as millennials), and Z—and before them, it was baby boomers. Generations tend to be grouped in roughly 15- to 20-year periods. Breakdowns of the generations can vary slightly, but per McCrindle, boomers were born from 1946 to 1964; those in Generation X were born from 1965 to 1979; millennials were born from 1980 to 1994; and Gen Zers were born from 1995 to 2009.
The expectation is that the following generations will continue to be labeled with letters from the Greek alphabet, so we’ll potentially see Generation Gamma, and then Delta. But letters weren’t always the go-to. As the research firm points out, societal events have been part of the naming process, too. Baby boomers were named for the baby boom that occurred post–World War II; the X label for the subsequent generation came from an antiestablishment mindset; and millennials became adults at the turn of the millennium.
Surprisingly, there is no actual group or commission that decides when a generation starts and ends or its name. Supposedly, per an earlier article published by Pew Research Center in 2018, “different names and birth year cutoffs are proposed, and through a somewhat haphazard process a consensus slowly develops in the media and popular parlance.” Interestingly enough, as of recently, Pew Research Center has moved away from generational analysis.
Think millennials. No one really refers to them as Generation Y because that initial label didn’t stick. Time will tell whether Gen Z will earn a more descriptive nickname than “zoomers.” People sometimes call Gen Alpha “iPad kids” already.
Either way, “the truth is that generational labels and birth year cutoffs are merely convenient shorthand; although some generations clearly begin with a pronounced cleft from the earlier group, generations often bleed into one another,” according to Pew.
