How do we think about the snowflake generation?

The snowflake generation isn’t an actual generation

Question: How do we think about the snowflake generation?
Position‹3 of 4›: The Snowflake Generation is not real.
Argument: The snowflake generation isn’t an actual generation

The technical generations that contain snowflakes are millennials, born from 1986 to 1996 and Generation Z, born from 1997 to 2012. It would be foolish to condemn all individuals born in an almost forty-year period as snowflakes.

The argument

The term “Snowflake Generation” encapsulates a convenient insult targeted at a particular group in any given moment, not a technical generation. The technical generations that contain snowflakes are millennials, born from 1986 to 1996 and Generation Z, born from 1997 to 2012. It would be foolish to condemn all individuals born in an almost forty-year period as snowflakes. That contains the connotation that all of these people born in this span are overly sensitive liberals, when that simply isn’t the case. Furthermore, the insult contains the connotation that all of their political affiliations are the same as well. While the newer generations are inarguably more liberal and progressive than older ones, according to data, it isn’t a blanketed existence. 37% of the millennial electorate worked to elect Donald Trump in 2016. This is in direct opposition with the idea that millennials and Generation Z are one body and one voice. An apt comparison would be fears regarding women’s suffrage in the United States back in 1919 and 1920. There were concerns that women would vote as one political body, overwhelming the men of the country. However, that is incredibly insensible, as is the interpretation that the snowflakes are one political body as well. Millennials and Generation Z are a diverse group that possess an array of views and lived experiences. To cast away their true names in favor of the derogatory snowflake is nothing but a doltish error.

Premises

[P1]'Snowflake Generation' is a convenient insult, not a technical generation, and applying it to everyone born across the roughly forty-year millennial and Gen Z span falsely casts all of them as overly sensitive liberals. [P2] These cohorts are politically diverse, as shown by the 37% of the millennial electorate who voted for Trump in 2016, much as fears that women would vote as one bloc in 1919–20 proved baseless. [C] Therefore, because it lumps a diverse group under a derogatory label, the snowflake generation is not real.

Counter-arguments

There is a power in names and in memory. Though the Snowflake Generation may not be the technical name for today's younger generations, it captures an ideology and image that will last far beyond them. Napoleon wasn't incredibly short, and Lincoln did not necessarily fight the Civil War on the premise of abolishing slavery, but these narratives are remembered and thus have power. Trivializing the common vernacular should not be underestimated.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise shows the term is inaccurate and pejorative, which is not the same as showing that what it points at does not exist — and the position is that the generation is not real, which an argument about a label cannot establish. The demographic point also answers a claim nobody makes, since the term is used of a tendency rather than of everyone born within a span. [Rejecting P2] Political diversity within a cohort is real and is what one would expect even if the described tendency existed, so the 2016 figure does not discriminate between the positions. The suffrage comparison cuts the other way as well: it shows a prediction about a voting bloc failing, not that the group in question was unreal.

Proponents cited

Isadora Rangel
“Snowflake is often used to describe an overly sensitive person who's easily offended.I recognize some in my generation might be the product of helicopter parents and participation trophies, or take political correctness to an extreme.But the millennial still living in their parents' basement doesn't define me or most millennials I know.”
Sean McDowell, Ph.D.
“There is a tendency to be either overly romantic or critical about new generations. The reality is that members of Generation Z face the same life challenges as previous generations, but in a super-connected and rapid-moving technological age. And let us not forget that they have the same deep needs for love, significance, meaning, and belonging as every previous generation.”
Shelly Haslam-Ormerod
“Ultimately, the snowflake label is unfair because it encourages stigma and evokes hatred. The word “snowflake” has lost its wistfulness as the harbinger of winter, replaced by insults to an individual’s capacity to cope in a challenging world. As a society, perhaps we need to ask ourselves – when has stigma and contempt ever helped?”