It does seem a bit weird to lump people like me who remember the Challenger disaster and their first world map without the USSR together with people who have ne

It does seem a bit weird to lump people like me who remember the Challenger disaster and their first world map without the USSR together with people who have never experienced pre-Columbine school environments. That's not really the article's point, though. The point is that which cultural touchstones one remembers doesn't even predict the sort of thing that's typically attributed to "generations," at least not until you control for other socioeconomic factors.