You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without MTV.
In August 2011, Leah Carroll talked with MTV News anchor Kurt Loder on the network's 30th birthday.
You were born in September of 1982. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 4 times as old as you.
The year you were born, George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson wrote about the theory behind "broken windows" policing, and how the practice could make communities safer.
Around the time you were born, the first compact discs were manufactured in Germany.
In October 2012, Megan Garber celebrated the 30th birthday of the CD player and the compact disc.
Paramount
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
Clueless was released in 1995.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after the euro.
In December 2011, Jim Tankersley wrote about how the euro's failure could cause another American recession.
Around your 18th birthday, the Irish Republican Army attacked the MI6 Secret Intelligence building with a Russian antitank missile.
In April 2006, Matthew Teague recounted the previously untold story of how British intelligence infiltrated and undermined the IRA.
Jason Redmond / AP
At 19 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.
Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
When you turned 28, 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.
Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP
In 2015, Eddie Redmayne, who was born the same year as you, won Golden Globe and Academy Awards for his role in the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything.
In November 2015, Katie Kilenny wrote about The Theory of Everything and Felicity Jones's less-talked-about performance as Jane Wilde.
By the time you turn 52, NASA says it will send humans to explore Mars.
In August 2015, Alakananda Mookerjee wrote about what new Mars colonists would be able to eat—and how they'd grow it.
History is happening all around you, every day.
The Atlantic is here to help you process it, in stories like these:
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