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.

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