ABSTRACT

When the first baby boomers were born in 1946, one year after the end of World War II, it is doubtful that anyone could have predicted this generation’s impact with any degree of accuracy. Baby boomers, the first generation to grow up with television, surpassed previous generations in size, education, wealth, and power. As they came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, baby boomers took the Civil Rights and Women’s movements to new levels. As James Brown’s “Say It Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud” (Wikipedia, 2006a) and the “feminist anthem” Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” (Wikipedia, 2006b) played on different AM radio stations, baby boomer African Americans and women, although navigating different paths, broke through barriers in education, law, medicine, business, politics, media, and sports. During the next decade and a half, baby boomers also experimented with and invested in new computers, communications, and information technologies, transforming every aspect of society, from education and the economy, to science and medicine, to media and leisure time. The first wave of boomers who started turning 60 during the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century gave birth to Generation X, the generation first associated with MTV; the second wave of boomers gave birth to the generation that started using computers during elementary school and the Internet during middle school. Called Millennial, Generation Y, the Digital Generation, and even the Instant Message Generation, this generation has surpassed baby boomers in size and diversity; only time will tell if this generation will surpass boomers in impact.