Say hello to the next generation! Babies born in 2025 are part of Generation Beta. It’s the newest of the eight generations of people alive today.
What is a generation? In a family, new generations arise with new babies: Children are one generation younger than their parents. Sociologically speaking, a generation is a group of people who were born around the same time and have shared life experiences, explains Mark McCrindle. He’s a demographer who studies populations and their characteristics.
Demographers didn’t start naming generations until the 1960s. Baby boomer was the first. After World War II ended, many servicemen returned home and had kids, which led to a baby boom. The two earlier generations were named next. Generation X was named after a novel. Demographers continued alphabetically with Generation Y (aka millennials) and Gen Z.
These days, demographers name a new generation every 15 years. McCrindle himself named Generation Alpha. Demographers had run out of letters with Gen Z, so McCrindle went back to the beginning—of the Greek alphabet! He chose a new alphabet for a new generation. “We don’t want to go back to A; this is not back to the start,” McCrindle says. Generation Beta is both timewise and alphabetically the next generation!