I put the phrase in QUOTES, as I have heard them spoken that way referring to those that GREW UP in the ‘60s. The “Boomers” and “Silent Generation” didn’t mean the same thing. The Boomers were those BORN in the “boom” after WWII. Add 20 years to the end of WWII and we are into the middle of the 1960’s and the escalation of Vietnam. Frankly I’ve never thought of it, but those BOOMERS, living long enough to be in their late teens and earlier twenties were, in reality, the kids of the 1960’s.
In 1960 the Silent generation ranged in age from 15 through 35.
In 1965 the Boomers aged from 1 year old through age 19.
Almost all of the youthful icons of the 1960s were the Silent generation, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Chicago Seven, etc., but the reality of what caused the downfall of America and the 1960s wasn’t the children, it was the adults, the JFK/LBJ, Warren Court, Walter Cronkite, and generals and leaders that ran America and ran NOW and the ACLU and the teacher’s unions and the media and the Senate, Universities, Hollywood, the Congress, the Governors, the adult Americans, not the kids.