Is It OK to Say "OK Boomer"?

Yesterday's climate change protest during the Harvard Yale football game highlighted the growing use of the phrase "OK boomer" to suggest that older people are out of touch with the world. It was followed today by a very interesting commentary posted to The Conversation by Elizabeth Tippett at the University of Oregon. She wonders if this is, in fact, a real issue about age discrimination.

The phrase “OK boomer” has become a catch-all put-down that Generation Zers and young millennials have been using to dismiss retrograde arguments made by baby boomers, the generation of Americans who are currently 55 to 73 years old.

Though it originated online and primarily is fueling memes, Twitter feuds and a flurry of commentary, it has begun migrating to real life. Earlier this month, a New Zealand lawmaker lobbed the insult at an older legislator who had dismissed her argument about climate change.

As the term enters our everyday vocabulary, HR professionals and employment law specialists like me now face the age-old question: What happens if people start saying “OK boomer” at work?

The reality is that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which she references, was written because of real-life discrimination of older people by employers who were doing things like firing workers just before they qualified for a company pension plan, or firing older workers only because they were making more money than younger workers. Those were (are) real issues that needed to be legislated against.

To me, the "OK boomer" phrase mainly highlights the generation gaps and clashes that exist in every society, but which have become increasingly noticeable as the age structure changes in ways that didn't used to happen. Here's a graph of the generations in the U.S. that I prepared for the 13th edition of Population, which will be available in January:

Younger people have not always respected their elders, and older people have routinely chided and made fun of younger people. Two things, though, have changed over time: (1) the absolute and relative numbers of people by age; and (2) the names that we have attached to generations, so that we can identify (and stereotype) people by age. That is why the "snowflakes" are yelling "OK boomer."