A generation is a group of people born and living around the same time, usually spanning about 20-30 years. Your parents belong to one generation, you and your classmates belong to another, and your grandparents belong to a generation before that.

Think of it like layers in a family tree: grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren. Each layer is a generation. When historians talk about “the generation that grew up during the Great Depression” or “the generation that saw the first moon landing,” they mean everyone who was young during those times and shares similar experiences and memories.

The word also describes the act of creating or producing something. When a solar panel generates electricity, it produces power. When you generate ideas for a story, you're creating and developing them. A generator is a machine that generates electricity, often used during power outages.

Sometimes people say there's a generation gap when older and younger people have trouble understanding each other's viewpoints, often because they grew up in such different times. Your great-grandparents grew up without computers or smartphones, while you may have never known a world without them. Those different experiences shape how each generation sees the world.