Babies born between 1977 and 1983 no longer have to be confused if they're Generation X or a Millennial - they're now to be called 'Xennials,' an Australian professor has declared.
Xennials are a mix of the pessimistic Gen X and optimistic Millennials, according to Dan Woodman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at The University of Melbourne, Australia.
"The idea is there's this micro or in-between generation between the Gen X group who - came after the Baby Boomers and the Millennials," said Professor Woodman.
Woodman, born in 1980, is a Xennial himself. But he warns that an entire group of people don't live life the same way, despite having a unique experience growing up.
"Around technology they do have a particular experience, we hit this social media and IT digital technology boom in our 20s."
"It was a particularly unique experience. You have a childhood, youth and adolescence free of having to worry about social media posts and mobile phones."
"Then we hit this technology revolution before we were maybe in that frazzled period of our life with kids and no time to learn anything new. We hit it where we could still adopt in a selective way the new technologies," he added.
Mr Woodman said the defining part of this micro group is how they experienced technology and gathered news.
"We learned to consume media and came of age before there was Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and all these things where you still watch the evening news or read the newspaper."
Mr Woodman said people can't be categorised so easily despite growing up in the same time period.
"Internal to whatever these groups are, whether it's Millennials or Xennials, there's going to be people who have very, very different experiences based on whether they're a man or a woman, whether they had a lot of money or not much money as a kid."
Mr Woodman warns that these generation labels can be a used by market researchers who want sell to us.
"It gets too simple sometimes and it treats everybody who lives under a certain set of conditions as if they're exactly the same."
Not at all were impressed with the newly coined generation label with many on Twitter venting their frustrations.
One user said "Xennial is not a generation, just because someone didn't hear about Gen Y doesn't mean MY generation of 30-somethings needs renaming."
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