Oregon Trail Generation

English

Alternative forms

• Oregon Trail generation

Etymology

Coined with reference to the educational computer game The Oregon Trail (1985) that members of the generation frequently played as children.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Proper noun

the Oregon Trail Generation

1. (US) A transitional microgeneration born from the mid-to-late 1970s to the early-to-mid 1980s, characterized by its pre-Internet childhood and online adolescence and early adulthood.
   • 2009, Rhonda Christensen, “Forward”, in Digital Simulations for Improving Education: Learning Through Artificial Teaching Environments‎^[1], page xix:

     Now our teacher candidates are almost 100% members of the Oregon Trail Generation. They answer email on their iPhones and play computer games on their cell phones when they are bored.

   • 2018, Kathleen Brooks, Saving Shadows, unnumbered page:

     "I'm thirty-four. I claim Oregon Trail generation."
     "What?" Ellery laughed outright. "There is no Oregon Trail generation."

   • 2021, Melanie C. Ross, Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic‎^[2], page 18:

     Unlike the millennial generation that followed us— the “digital natives” who can never remember a time before computers—the Oregon Trail Generation grew up on the cusp of changes that transformed modern life.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Oregon Trail Generation.

See also

• sandwich generation
• xennial