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[LibraryAdventurer]

Thought this article was interesting (about people born late 70s and early 80s)
http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/

That's my generation, but I never played Oregon trail. I never used AOL either. We had Prodigy at my house. As a kid, I read The Secret Garden online on Prodigy, logged onto BBSes to play games like The Pit, and borrowed by friend's 5 1/4 floppy disk to play the original Rogue.

[jsh357]

I don't understand the thesis of this article, but yeah, that describes me pretty much.  And I was born in 86, hardly the early 80s.  I got put in advanced math in 3rd grade, which meant I couldn't go to computer lab anymore since it was at the same time.  I remember being very frustrated.  The internet was a magical experience for me back when it was first accessible; I couldn't believe how much easier it was to find information than what I was used to.  The first thing I looked up was how to make games, as I recall. 

[theory]

Yeah I think this timeline is a little off.  Most of this applies to late 80's children as well.  In general I think articles about "generations" are exercises in masturbatory nostalgia, but I think this one is slightly better than most because it actually touches on sea-changes in society.  I suspect there'll be another one in a little while about the last generation of Americans to remember 9/11.

[Kuildeous]

The article was a little discombobulating for me. As someone born in 1972, I do not fit in this definition of the Oregon Trail generation, but I've done just about everything the author listed.

I don't feel that the two of us are that different. Yeah, it's true that I couldn't come home from middle school to log onto AOL, but I'm familiar with the concept from my college days.

I suppose I feel I can still identify with this author because while I did not have the same creature comforts online as she did I still was online as a teenager. "Normal" kids were off playing sports or hanging at the mall, but I was part of a minority of kids who called up BBSes and talked with people across the city! Not the country, as that would have required long-distance charges to call those BBSes. I probably embraced technology at about the same age that this author did. It was just more mainstream for her at that age than it was at mine. And the technology was different. She had CDs, while I had floppies and tape drives. She probably never experienced the ghetto that was 300 baud.

Fun read, even though it felt weird being excluded from a club that was very familiar to me.

[enfynet]

I'm early 80's and only fit half of this. I was the first kid in my school to use a computer for a school paper. I was an early adopter of message boards, but I was late to the social media crazy. I played Oregon Trail but never used AOL. I'm still not done with college. I never used Napster. I played Atari/NES/Genesis/SNES/N64 but spend more time outside than anything. Never did the hang-out thing at the mall or anything. Went to the beach a lot (NEOhio) and rode my bike all over.

[WalrusMcFishSr]

I was born in the late 1820s, and I only fit the part about the Oregon trail.