Generation X in America
Generation X (also known as Gen X) is the part of the population born between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. Although it is accepted that the Generation X demographic was born between 1965 and 1980, academics and marketing researchers typically use dates from the early to mid 1960s up to the early 1980s. Below is a summary of the key traits of Generation X;
- Born between 1965 and 1980*
- The “latch-key kids” grew up street-smart but isolated, often with divorced or career-driven parents. Latch-Key came from the house key kids wore around their neck, because they would go home from school to an empty house.
- Entrepreneurial.
- Very individualistic.
- Government and big business mean little to them.
- Want to save the neighborhood, not the world
- Feel misunderstood by other generations
- Cynical of many major institutions, which failed their parents, or them, during their formative years and are therefore eager to make marriage work and “be there” for their children
- Don’t “feel” like a generation, but they are
- Raised in the transition phase of written based knowledge to digital knowledge archives; most remember being in school without computers and then after the introduction of computers in middle school or high school
- Desire a chance to learn, explore and make a contribution
- Tend to commit to self rather than an organization or specific career. This generation averages 7 career changes in their lifetime, it was not normal to work for a company for life, unlike previous generations.
- Society and thus individuals are envisioned as disposable.
- AIDS begins to spread and is first lethal infectious disease in the history of any culture on earth which was not subjected to any quarantine.
- Beginning obsession of individual rights prevailing over the common good, especially if it is applicable to any type of minority group.
- Raised by the career and money conscious Boomers amidst the societal disappointment over governmental authority and the Vietnam war.
- School problems were about drugs.
- Late to marry (after cohabitation) and quick to divorce…many single parents.
- Into labels and brand names.
- Want what they want and want it now but struggling to buy, and most are deeply in credit card debt.
- It is has been researched that they may be conversationally shallow because relating consists of shared time watching video movies, instead of previous generations.
- Short on loyalty & wary of commitment; all values are relative…must tolerate all peoples.
- Self-absorbed and suspicious of all organization.
- Survivors as individuals.
- Cautious, skeptical, unimpressed with authority, self-reliant.