Generation X had the luxury of being rebel slackers, but Millennials have to be total squares
29 going on 70
You know Generation X. The ones who skateboarded through high school with flannel shirts and angry music during a period of economic stability. The ones who criticized the establishment while profiting from the dot-com boom. The ones who gave us reality television.
And the signature figure of Gen X is the slacker, of course, the apathetic, checked-out, video-gamed kid who “came for the party.”
He’s conceited artist Troy in Reality Bites; she’s one of the vacant-eyed twentysomethings on the 1990 cover of Time magazine. They’re the last vestige of the 1960s counterculture they witnessed in their parents, able to mutter, “Fuck off, I’ll just work in a bookstore the rest of my life” with a straight face.
Gen Xers were born between 1965 and the late ’70s, Courtney Love to Alicia Silverstone. Maybe they graduated from college, because that’s what you did, had a couple kids if they felt like it, and spent the rest of their trip to middle-age maintaining the “cool” identities they worked so hard to protect that, honestly, just came naturally. They grew up to be dads who wore $300 selvedge jeans and played the Hives to develop their toddler’s music taste.
They’re a generation with the privilege of “radically rethinking what it means to be a grown-up and whether being a grown-up still requires, you know, actually growing up,” as Adam Sternbergh put it so well in a 2006 New York magazine piece. They had the luxury and the prerogative to determine what was convenient and cool, then deviate if they chose.
Gen X got sandwiched between two giant generations with enormous influence, both of whom gaze wistfully at their grungy privilege. It’s generational penis envy, bolstered by real-life numbers that shaped arguably the last generation of rock ’n’ roll, and later, the cautious goody-goodies who suffered second-hand burns by predatory American banking institutions.
But if the stereotype of Gen X is a rocker out on the town, then Millennials are more like the responsible babysitters.
The median millennial graduated college smack dab in the middle of the economic meltdown of 2008. If they didn’t find jobs, they moved back home and worked part-time, maybe while applying to grad school. If they were “lucky,” they worked at unpaid internships where the only currency was résumé padding and a good reference.
The average student loan debt has more than tripled over the past 20 years. More than Gen X or Baby Boomers, Millennials have higher levels of poverty and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income. While the unemployment rate for workers aged 18–34 peaked in 2010 at over 13%, for at least 15 years after starting a career, workers who start their careers in a recession earn 2.5 to 9% less annually than those who do not. Millennials who didn’t go to college face a higher pay gap than any other generation in history, earning on average $17,500 less annually than their college-educated counterparts. And the median age of home ownership was 33 in 2015, up three years from the previous generation.
According to a 2014 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Millennials will contend for years with the effects of starting their careers during a historic downturn.
As a result, Millennials now spend their free time in a state of premature convalescence. Netflix and chill. Adult coloring books. Double-tapping. For us, resting is a luxury, a treat we still feel guilty taking. Plus, it’s cheap, and we’re good at finding cheap. In a 2016 Guardian article, Sirena, 25 said that “while previous generations embraced hedonism and were willing to lose three days to a big night out,” her peers feel pressure to meet self-imposed goals.
Besides couch lounging, more grown-ass young adults are saying no to sex. (Or more like “meh” to sex.) “I’d rather be watching YouTube videos and making money,” Noah Patterson, 18, told The Washington Post. “[Sex] is not going to be something people ask you for on your résumé.” Reports show that 15% of 20- to 24-year-olds have not had sex since turning 18, up from 6% in the early 1990s.
Instead, Millennials invented something called “enlightentertainment,” booze-free happy hours that serve tea instead of whiskey, where people consciously connect instead of hook up. “There’s nothing wrong with drinking. But people are looking to evolve. They’re looking to wake up,” said Katie Tallarico, 33, a Brooklyn psychotherapist.
I recently had a conversation with a charming brunch friend who said, in front of the host, that she would rather have stayed home and watered her cacti than leave the house that day. And the crazy thing is, everyone around the table, including me, agreed with her.
Guys, we are fucking squares! We are senior citizens with Moon Dust™.
Between underpaid jobs, saving money while paying off loans, eating clean, engaging in enough online activism to satiate our guilt, and, sometimes, raising kids, we’re exhausted. Even our vacations are productive. So when we do find time for ourselves, we collapse.
“A lot of them are afraid that they’ll get into something they can’t get out of and they won’t be able to get back to their desk and keep studying,” said Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University, of this “highly motivated, ambitious generation” called Millennials.
My older family is so much cooler than me. My dad listens to vinyl, smokes weed, and volunteers for the ACLU. My mom and stepdad are retired and, apparently, immune to hangovers. My Gen X half-brother is a killer artist and lifetime bohemian conservationist. What do I have that’s cool? Chokers and a book club.
“The classic wild, angsty and carefree behaviours traditionally associated with rebelling as a young adult are not only already being exhibited by our parents and older siblings, but have become more and more difficult for us as a generation to justify,” wrote Tom Usher for the BBC.
“Everyone’s too busy worrying about whether they will ever be able to afford a mortgage or children to throw away money every week on a [nightclub],” Ruth, 22, from Edinburgh, told The Guardian. She doesn’t tolerate hangovers.
So, we don’t rock out. We’re paranoid problem-solvers whose biggest issue, besides debt, is learning to relax. If the 1960s catchphrase was “tune in, turn on, drop out,” and Gen X’s was “Whatever,” then Millennials might be “Keep calm and carry on.” (Sorry.)
