Great Xpectations of So-Called Slackers

Who would have thought the kids would start taking over so soon? Or that they would even want to? They were supposed to be slackers, cynics, drifters. But don’t be fooled by their famous pose of repose. Lately, more and more of them are prowling tirelessly for the better deal, hunting down opportunities that will free them from the career imprisonment that confined their parents. They are flocking to technology start-ups, founding small businesses and even taking up causes–all in their own way. They are making waves on the Web, making movies in and out of Hollywood, making money, spending money. Slapped with the label Generation X, they’ve turned the tag into a badge of honor. They are X-citing, X-igent, X-pansive. They’re the next big thing. Boomers, beware! It’s payback time.

A few months ago, a prominent polling firm teamed up with a major advertising agency to undertake a comprehensive survey comparing three generations. They interviewed hundreds of twentysomethings from Big Sandy, Tenn., to Oak Lawn, Ill., to Riverside, Calif. They talked to scores of fortysomethings and sixtysomethings. Now, exclusively in TIME, the New American Dream study is ready for release. News flash! The youngsters are ambitious get-aheads–even more so than their parents or grandparents. They are confident, savvy and, the survey concludes with a measure of relief, materialistic. “Gen X is committed,” enthuses J. Walker Smith, managing partner at the polling firm Yankelovich Partners. “Gen X is connected. Gen X craves success American-style.”

So what happened to those lazy, listless baby busters who supposedly typified the new generation? Beavis and Butt-head were their icons; Beck’s Loser was their song (“Savin’ all your food stamps and burnin’ down the trailer park”); Richard Linklater’s Slacker, with its Austin, Texas, deadbeats, was their movie. This was the MTV generation: Net surfing, nihilistic nipple piercers whining about McJobs; latchkey legacies, fearful of commitment. Passive and powerless, they were content, it seemed, to party on in a Wayne’s Netherworld, one with more antiheroes–Kurt Cobain, Dennis Rodman, the Menendez brothers–than role models. The label that stuck was from Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel, Generation X, a tale of languid youths musing over “mental ground zero–the location where one visualizes oneself during the dropping of the atomic bomb: frequently a shopping mall.”

Whatever.

Albeit overshadowed by 78 million self-important boomers, the 45 million Xers born between 1965 and 1977 represent $125 billion in annual purchasing power a year. And of late, reading their psyches has become less a genteel academic pastime than an extreme sport in which sneakermakers, brewers and car manufacturers scramble for market share. Politicians trolling for votes, churches seeking converts, military services recruiting soldiers, moviemakers looking for viewers and magazines for readers: hardly a sliver of society is exempt from the need to understand and, indeed, cater to this generation. Yet Gen X has proved irritatingly contrarian. “The soul of Gen X is amorphous, intangible, elusive,” says Richard Thau, 32, who heads the civic group Third Millennium. “That’s why I like the term X: fill in the blanks.”

So convincing were the early stereotypes that three years ago, Coca-Cola, targeting teens and Gen Xers, test-marketed a new drink called OK soda. The gray cans featured grim designs, including one of a doleful youth slumped outside two idle factories. Slogans on the cans read, “Don’t be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything” and “What’s the point of OK soda? Well, what’s the point of anything?” The nine-city campaign fizzled. And the company that a quarter-century ago had celebrated the baby boom with the jingle, “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” killed the product. Meanwhile, a grunge-themed Subaru campaign that told viewers its cars were “like punk rock” fell flat, and Converse was surprised to find that Gen Xers were put off by a spot showing an All Star-shod youth spray-painting his name on a building.

Today forecasters, salesmen and pundits–many the middle-age parents of perplexing offspring–are acknowledging that their first X rays of the new generation were distorted. “The baby boomers of the media and marketing world were desperate to explain a generation they didn’t understand, so they reduced Xers to a cartoon,” says Adam Morgan, managing partner at TBWA Chiat/Day, the ad agency that collaborated with Yankelovich. “It may be the most expensive marketing mistake in history.” Last year the magazine Who Cares and the Center for Policy Alternatives, a Washington think tank, released a survey that showed 72% of 18-to-24-year-olds believe this generation “has an important voice, but no one seems to hear it.” Asked how older generations viewed them, their top answers were “lazy,” “confused” and “unfocused.” Asked how they saw themselves, they replied “ambitious,” “determined” and “independent.”

XERS, BOOMERS, MATURES

A generation is forged through common experience. The cohort described as “matures,” born from 1909 to 1945, was shaped by the Depression and World War II. “Boomers,” born from 1946 to 1964, grew up in affluence: economic progress was assumed, freeing them to focus on idealism and personal growth. Young Xers, however, lurched through the recession of the early ’80s, only to see the mid-decade glitz dissipate in the 1987 stock-market crash and the recession of 1990-91. Gen X could never presume success. In their new book Rocking the Ages, Yankelovich’s Smith and his colleague Ann Clurman blame Xers’ woes on their parents: “Forget what the idealistic boomers intended, Xers say, and look instead at what they actually did: divorce. Latchkey kids. Homelessness. Soaring national debt. Bankrupt Social Security. Holes in the ozone layer. Crack. Downsizing and layoffs. Urban deterioration. Gangs. Junk bonds…”

If twentysomethings entered the decade floundering in the job market, did they deserve to be labeled dazed and confused? They had come of age after the U.S. took what some economists call the great U-turn. Energy prices first soared in 1973, and workers’ wages stagnated. Between 1979 and 1995, some 43 million jobs were lost through corporate downsizing. Newly created jobs paid less and offered fewer benefits. Sharp cutbacks in federal grants since 1981 mean that 1 of 3 students works and attends school at the same time. Says Paul Rogat Loeb, author of Generation at the Crossroads, a study of college students: “The issue today is finding a job–in a fragmented workplace–that will allow them to avoid being crushed by their loan payment.”

While the economy is improving to the point that many of this year’s college graduates have multiple job offers, the climate of the early ’90s left its mark on the generation. Sixty-one percent of Xers told Dream study pollsters, “Worrying about the future is a major source of stress”–far more so than for their parents or grandparents. More than three-quarters of Xers say, “No matter what I plan for the future, when I finally get there, it’s always something different.” Some opt out of the rat race. “What seems like apathetic hedonism actually represents a fairly informed bet,” American Demographics columnist Marc Spiegler wrote recently. “Why put up with the cubicled world’s woes when its promised delayed gratification is an ever more dicey proposition?” The slogan on Eddie Bauer’s shopping bags puts it succinctly: “Never confuse having a career with having a life.”

But rather than electing to tune in, turn on and drop out, Gen Xers are proving to be deeply competitive. Back when bumper stickers exhorted one to make love not war–in 1973, to be exact–only two-thirds of twentysomethings polled by Yankelovich agreed that “competition encourages excellence.” Today 82% of their counterparts say, “I like to compete: it makes me perform better.” The recent surge of extreme sports–from bungee jumping to sky surfing–is no accident. The hip slogan of the Gen X T shirt? NO FEAR. Indeed, adversity, far from discouraging youths, has given them a harder, even ruthless edge. Most believe “I have to take what I can get in this world because no one is going to give me anything.” And 71% of Gen Xers–a higher percentage than their parents or grandparents–believe “In this world, sometimes you have to compromise your principles.” Do they identify more with success or integrity? More than half choose success; only a third of their elders select it.

High-tech wunderkinder, such as Yahoo! Web-search founders Jerry Yang, 28, and David Filo, 31, are role models because of their affinity for risk and their entrepreneurial spirit. Some advertisers have caught on. Two years ago Prudential replaced its longtime slogan “Get a Piece of the Rock,” with the more enterprising “Be Your Own Rock.” As the Dream study describes it, this is the new “generation on the make.” While interest in corporate careers is sliding, business schools have expanded their courses in entrepreneurialism. A recent University of Michigan study found that 25-to-34-year-olds are trying to start businesses at three times the rate of 35-to-55-year-olds. “Having your own business means not worrying about what some head guy in Dallas thinks,” says Sky Eacrett, a Redlands, Calif., tile-store manager who dreams of striking out on his own. “No matter how much money you make for them, you are still just an x. And you can be x-ed off. With my own business, I could come in at 7 a.m. and leave at noon to play golf.”

MATERIAL GIRLS AND BOYS

Voter participation is dropping in all age groups but in none so steeply as among 18-to-24-year-olds, less than a third of whom voted in last year’s presidential election. A generation ago, in 1972, 42% of this group went to the polls. But those were the days when young people still believed they could change the world. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson’s poverty chief, Sargent Shriver, predicted the war on poverty would be won “in about 10 years.” Today everyone knows better, and Gen X was molded during that learning process. “In the old days, politicians at least pretended to have principles,” laments Beth Englander, 26, a former VISTA volunteer. “Now they’re not ashamed to switch values just to get elected. Every time we hear of a new scandal, we’re, like, ‘Yup!'” she says with a shrug.

Although Xers tend to be more liberal and Democratic than the general population–53% voted for President Clinton, vs. 34% for Bob Dole–12 years of growing up under Reagan and Bush imbued them with a distrust of government. “The do-it-yourself, no-one-is-going-to-look-out-for-me-but-me spirit among Xers is a product of coming of age when that was the message coming from the Administration,” says Mia von Sadovsky, 29, an ad-agency researcher. “We have hard-wired into us a different approach to getting things done.” A survey by Third Millennium found that 53% of Gen Xers believe that the TV soap opera General Hospital will outlast Medicare. If permitted, 59% of Xers would opt out of Medicare and save on their own. Of any adult generation, they have the weakest attachment to political parties, and in 1992 Gen Xers cast a higher percentage of votes for Ross Perot than older adults did. “We have a libertarian streak,” says Thau. “We grew up in a period with one instance of government malfeasance and ineptitude after another, from Watergate to Iran-contra to the explosion of the Challenger to Whitewater. We believe government can’t be trusted to do anything right.”

If mass protests are passe, a new personalized activism is growing. Grandiose is out; pragmatic is in. Asked if “all products that pollute the environment should be banned,” only a third of Xers agreed, vs. half of boomers. Self-righteousness has given way to situational ethics. Their parents fought attack dogs and fire hoses to desegregate lunch counters; now Xers struggle with ambiguous battles over affirmative action, where helping blacks and Hispanics arguably hurts Asians and whites. Xer activism is a chain Internet letter calling on friends to “Save Sesame Street” by E-mailing Congress about public-television funding. Or it is donating a few hours to transport meals to aids patients. Independent Sector, a Washington-based research group, found that 38% of 18-to-24-year-olds volunteered within the past year, along with more than half the 25-to-33-year-olds. Without a Vietnam War, the new generation is less polarized. “Young people today are not as struck by life’s fragility,” says John Gardner, head of the National Resource Center for the Freshman Year Experience at the University of South Carolina. “They’re not thinking about thermonuclear Armageddon.”

Burdened by college loans and facing a shifting job market, Gen X yearns for affluence. In that, it takes after its grandparents more than its parents. A generation ago, small was beautiful and materialism had fallen out of fashion. Only 31% of twentysomethings in 1973 agreed that money is “a very important personal value.” Today 64% of Xers and matures say, “Material things, like what I drive and the house I live in, are really important to me.” Only half of boomers feel that way. Fewer twentysomethings seek “a simpler life,” and, strikingly, a third of them agree that “the only meaningful measure of success is money.”

Alexander Astin, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has monitored student values for three decades, attributes the change to television. Since childhood, this new generation of screenagers has been blitzed by advertising and glitzy programs, from Dallas and Dynasty to Beverly Hills 90210. “Kids in the ’60s had nowhere near as much exposure to TV,” Astin says. “TV’s message is: You can be happy by having these products. The programming, often about rich and powerful people, celebrates greed.” Violence and graphic sexuality, once rare on the airwaves, became a staple of television and film just as Xers were moving through adolescence. Three-quarters of Xers describe themselves as heavy consumers of violence on television; only half of boomers and 20% of matures do.

While Gen Xers may be avid shoppers and dominate the market for designer jeans and expensive sneakers, they are as skeptical of the media as they are of politics. The hippest ads tap into their hostility toward hype. “Don’t insult our intelligence,” read one Nike magazine spread. “Tell us what it is. Tell us what it does. And don’t play the national anthem while you do it.” Sprite rocketed from seventh to fourth best-selling soft drink after scrapping its schmaltzy jingle, “I Like the Sprite in You,” in 1994 in favor of the slogan “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst.” Self-mockery is a mark of Xer sophistication, and thus a staple of any show–from David Letterman to Conan O’Brien–seeking twentysomething viewers. Might, a San Francisco-based Gen X magazine, features tongue-in-cheek tables of contents, as in “Pages 157-72: Unflattering Gossip About Owners of Companies That Won’t Advertise with Us” or “Pages 161-168: Some Stuff We Didn’t Fact Check.”

Gen X is wary of packaged news, linear-plotted entertainment and happy endings. “Xers prefer to get their information unembellished,” says Yankelovich’s Smith. The hit TV show X-Files weaves in layered story lines and leaves questions unresolved. In MTV News Unfiltered, viewers call in story ideas and the network sends out video cameras for them to record their own segments. On last month’s show, South Carolina’s underground tattoo artists told of their efforts to legalize the practice of body art, and a 16-year-old Oregonian recounted her hard life as a single mother. “Generation X actively pursues the deflation of the ideal,” says Karen Ritchie in her book, Marketing to Generation X. “No icon and certainly no commercial is safe from their [Xers’] irony, their sarcasm or their remote control. These are the tools with which Generation X keeps the world in perspective.”

GEN O: FOR OPTIMISM?

Fragmentation and eclecticism are Gen X hallmarks. For starters, Xers are more racially diverse: only 70% call themselves white vs. 77% of boomers. Compared to a generation ago, nearly twice as many of today’s twentysomethings–28%–agree “there is no single way to live.” In this cohort, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans assert their identity more than ever. And whites are more multicultural. Fair-haired dreadlocks are commonplace. Fashion designers knock off urban street trends rather than the other way around. Gay rights are assumed: the latest campus cause is discrimination against “transgendered persons.” Body piercing has gone mainstream. As in the return of Hush Puppies and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Xer chic is often retroeclectic. “Compared to any other generation born in this century, theirs is less cohesive, its experiences wider, its ethnicity more polyglot and its culture more splintery,” write historians William Strauss and Neil Howe in their new book, The Fourth Turning, a study of generational change. “Today’s young adults define themselves by sheer divergence.”

If boomers once boasted of never trusting anyone over 30, Xers have even more cause for disillusion. Between 1965 and 1977, the divorce rate doubled. More than 40% of today’s young adults had spent time in a single-parent home by age 16. Did the psychic toll produce latch-key basket cases or self-reliant survivors? Undoubtedly, both. In their coupling habits, Gen X is the “youngest copulating and oldest marrying generation ever recorded,” note Strauss and Howe. Since 1970 the average marriage age has crept up from 23 to 27 for men and from 21 to 25 for women. For many, it signals caution born of pain. “If I marry, I will never get divorced,” says Angel Gambino, a University of Oregon law student whose parents split when she was three. Next year she plans to move back with her mother and sister, following another trend. Whether for economic or emotional reasons, 30% of men and women in their 20s live with their parents. “For me,” Gambino says, “the American Dream is a stable family.”

Whether Xers stay home or strike out on their own, the generation gap yawns as wide as ever. Twentysomethings can paint a scathing portrait of their elders. “I think I was conceived on an acid trip,” muses one Xer in the film Reality Bites. Another asks, “How can we repair all the damage we inherited?” Novelist Coupland, in a memorable essay in 1995, accused boomers, “pummeled by the recession and embarrassed by their own compromised ’60s values,” of “transferring their collective darkness onto the group threatening to take their spotlight.” Indeed, pollsters find that boomers are markedly more pessimistic than Xers. Fully 71% of boomers say, “If I had the chance to start over in life, I would do things differently.” Only 59% of Xers and matures agree. Likewise, while Xers see themselves more as life-long job hoppers than as company loyalists, they profess far more satisfaction with their work than their elders. “Boomers entered the marketplace years ago with high expectations,” says Yankelovich’s Smith. “And when they were disappointed, they thought the future looked bleak for Xers. So they portrayed them as a loser generation.”

But today’s twentysomethings have learned to cope. They may be cynical about institutions, but they remain remarkably optimistic as individuals. At least half believe they will be better off financially than their parents. And an astonishing 96% of Gen Xers say, “I am very sure that one day I will get to where I want to be in life”–showing far more confidence than boomers did a generation ago. For all their ironic detachment, today’s young adults embrace an American Dream–albeit one different from the vision their parents or grandparents had.

For Gen X, the lyrics of Alanis Morissette’s Hand in My Pocket defines the guarded hopefulness of the new generation:

I’m broke but I’m happy I’m poor but I’m kind… I’m lost but I’m hopeful baby What it all comes down to Is that everything’s gonna be fine, fine, fine I’ve got one hand in my pocket And the other one is giving a high five.