What annoys me about this is how inconsistent people are about it. By the way my stance is most people are children in more than one decade, except 6-7 ending years (though they can still claim childhood in another decade if they want). I don’t think that for example somebody born in 2004 can’t claim the late 2000s as part of their childhood. It WAS part of their childhood! Even if you spent 20% of your childhood in one decade and 80% in another, you still were a child in BOTH decades.
Some people are even more extreme and act like 2000 borns can only remember 2010+ which is flat out gatekeeping. I’ve even seen people a only a few years older than them do it who had a lot of overlap in childhood. However, they were the same age in the mid 2000s as a 2003 born was in the late 2000s. If 2000 borns are mid-2000s kids, 2003 is a late 2000s kid. The double standards always annoy the hell out of me.
I’m probably particularly annoyed and feel bad for the late 90s babies gatekept from early 2000s nostalgia that they can easily remember, and the 2000s babies (particularly 2003+ but also 2000-2002) being gatekept from the 2000s entirely when they probably had many great memories of those years… since due to when I was born some people act like I can’t remember a thing from the 90s since I was a few days short of being the magic age of 7 by the end of December 1999 but somebody a few days older can remember the late or even mid 90s so people act like I was too young for stuff like 5th gen consoles, Furbies or Pokemon. And I don’t even consider myself a 90s kid since I mostly remember 1998-1999 (97/96 very vague and sparsely) but I do have fond clear memories from the late 90s that I don’t like having invalidated. So I get the other groups who deal with that gatekeeping’s frustration.