In the first year of the pandemic, millennials lost their crown as the cool generation, and Gen Zers took the throne. Claw clips are (back) in; skinny jeans are out.
As with any big transition, there are some growing pains — and there's a subset of Gen Zers who don't quite have a home: the eldest.
Part of a generation born between about 1996 and 2012, these Gen Zers are in their mid-20s, with the oldest turning 26 this year.
In light of the popularity of the term "geriatric millennial" to refer to the eldest millennials — those straddling the digital divide between older and younger generations in the workplace — we're calling them "geriatric Gen Zers."
Sometimes called elder Gen Z, this group is sandwiched between the Gen Zers who just turned 21 and the millennials who've already spent more than a decade adulting. Like geriatric millennials, they're defined by their experience in the workforce: They're the only members of their generation to have gone into the office regularly before the era of remote work.
While Gen Z is on track to becoming the most educated generation, the eldest Gen Zers were the last group to have a traditional four-year college experience untouched by the pandemic. Their first years of post-graduation work largely started in person, then become remote, then settled into … whatever it is they're doing now.
Here's what it means to be a geriatric Gen Zer.