This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Generation Alpha article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Geography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of geography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GeographyWikipedia:WikiProject GeographyTemplate:WikiProject Geographygeography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.StatisticsWikipedia:WikiProject StatisticsTemplate:WikiProject StatisticsStatistics
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Demographics, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.DemographicsWikipedia:WikiProject DemographicsTemplate:WikiProject DemographicsDemographics
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of education and education-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EducationWikipedia:WikiProject EducationTemplate:WikiProject Educationeducation
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Parenting, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.ParentingWikipedia:WikiProject ParentingTemplate:WikiProject ParentingParenting
This article is within the scope of WikiProject COVID-19, a project to coordinate efforts to improve all COVID-19-related articles. If you would like to help, you are invited to join and to participate in project discussions.COVID-19Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19Template:WikiProject COVID-19COVID-19
The starting and ending points of Gen Alpha are still a heavily debated topic, don't you think we should be more neutral and ambiguous about it and specifically specify that it is a debated topic so the reader should take the alleged starting and ending points of Gen Alpha with some grains of salt? The page also seems to imply that people seem to unaminously agree that Gen Alpha starts in the early 2010s however I've seen various people all over the internet insist that it starts in the late 2010s or even the early 2020s, so I think it's still too early and we should be more ambiguous about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.60.192.7 (talk) 03:12, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"various people all over the internet" are not a reliable source. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be an emergent set of information from the sources they cite, which should be WP:VERIFIABLE and WP:RELIABLE. If you see the various Internet people insist something in an academic journal, or one of them is an esteemed sociologist, or something like that, feel free to provide links. If there is an issue with how one of the article's current sources presents the issue, then feel free to write to the editor of that publication with your grievances. Komonzia (talk) 04:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The definitions for the most recent Generations shifted quite a bit in the last 10-15 years.
Go back a decade and Gen Z was considered 2005-2020, with Gen Alpha being the upcoming generation supposed to start in 2020. (The end point of Gen X was also slightly earlier). Meanwhile nowadays we generally consider Gen Z to be 1996-2010, a pretty significant shift. Gen Alpha had already started by the current definition back in the early 2010s when people still thought it was upcoming.
There's been a couple of reasons cited (internet and tech progressing faster making kids just a few years a part widely different in the 2010 space, and Gen Beta might start earlier than expected due to the dramatic changes caused by the pandemic), but even today a ton of Gen Z people really don't like the current definition. Not that the old one was perfect either, but the new old Gen Z (1996-2004, previously considered Millenials) has pretty drastic differences from the new late Gen Z(2004-2010, now late Gen Z, previously considered the first half before Alpha got bumped up). Some people want the old definition back, some people feel it should be partitioned between Millenials and Alpha completely, some feel Gen Z should be a short generation (2002-2012) covering that middle area with the earlier years lumped backwards.
It's just inherently messy as a lot of people were working with year rules initially that generally lined up fine in the 20th century that now seem too broad due to faster changes, and some things are being changed post-haste in a half assed way.
Sort of like how there's a Generation of Video Game consoles that just wasn't counted when the system was invented in the 7th generation (Lost Generation/2.5 Generation, consoles within are split between 2nd and 3rd Gen on Wikipedia. Includes the Colecovision, Atari 5200, Vectrex, and Sega SG-1000) and now that it's pretty clear it existed no one wants to change it because changing the number order would fuck up a ton of modern articles and vernacular. 2604:3D09:1F80:1EC5:B1FB:61C8:4D7F:4713 (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of reflection in reliable sources as relating to Gen Alpha. In my opinion it has been popular for only a very short amount of time, and while it might appear in your social media feed very often, that still means only a small number of Gen Alpha actually think about that or use the word in their slang. Also, I'd argue including it would make the already US-bias in this article worse.