You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without Microsoft Windows.
In December 2006, James Fallows wrote about Microsoft's efforts to improve the influential operating system.
Around the time you were born, the Chernobyl reactor disaster spread radiation across Europe.
In December 1990, Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote about the ghastly situation in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.
You were born in April of 1986. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 5 times as old as you.
The year you were born, George Guilder argued that gender disparity in the workplace might have less to do with discrimination than with women making the choice to stay at home.
Chris Haston / NBC /NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
Freaks and Geeks premiered in 1999.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after Wikipedia.
In August 2015, Joe Pinsker wrote about the site's paid editors.
Jason Redmond / AP
At 15 years old, you were part of the generation most shaped by 9/11.
The conflicts and displacements touched off around the world by the attacks have been reverberating for the majority of your life. “This ‘war’ [on terrorism] will never be over,” wrote James Fallows, a few years after the towers fell.
Around your 18th birthday, Google launched Gmail.
In November 2011, James Fallows wrote about email hacks and how Google fought them.
Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
In 2010, Lady Gaga, who was born the same year as you, won her first Grammy Award for her album The Fame.
In June 2010, James Parker wrote about how Lady Gaga is remaking the genre of pop.
Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
When you turned 24, you witnessed the revolutionary fervor that transformed the Arab world in 2010, a movement led by your generation.
When 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, he ignited a tinderbox of protests that continue to roil the Middle East, and kindled the beginnings of democracy in Tunisia.
By the time you turn 45, the collective GDP of the four leading developing countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) is likely to match that of today's leading Western nations.
In February 2012, Charles A. Kupchan wrote about the world's emerging economies, and how the world will look by 2050.
History is happening all around you, every day.
The Atlantic is here to help you process it, in stories like these:
Tell your story.
