Editing Generation X (section)

====As young adults====
=====Continued growth in college enrollments=====
[[File:Total Fall Enrollment in US degree granting Institutions 1965-1998.png|thumb|upright=1.2|Total Fall Enrollment in U.S. degree granting Institutions 1965–1998]]
In the U.S., compared to the Boomer generation, Generation X was more educated than their parents. The share of young adults enrolling in college steadily increased from 1983, before peaking in 1998. In 1965, as early Boomers entered college, total enrollment of new undergraduates was just over 5.7&nbsp;million individuals across the public and private sectors. By 1983, the first year of Gen X college enrollments (as per Pew Research's definition), this figure had reached 12.2&nbsp;million. This was an increase of 53%, effectively a doubling in student intake. As the 1990s progressed, Gen X college enrollments continued to climb, with increased loan borrowing as the cost of an education became substantially more expensive compared to their peers in the mid-1980s.<ref>{{Cite book|last=US Congress, Senate Committee on Finance Staff|title=Education Tax Proposals: Hearing Before the Committee on Finance|publisher=US Government Printing Office, 1999|year=1999|isbn=978-0-16-058193-9|pages=99}}</ref> By 1998, the generation's last year of college enrollment, those entering the higher education sector totaled 14.3&nbsp;million.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d00/dt174.asp|title=Total fall enrollment in degree-granting institutions, by control and type of institution: 1965 to 1998|date=July 2000|website=National Center for Education Statistics|access-date=3 February 2023|archive-date=1 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230101005108/https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d00/dt174.asp|url-status=live}}</ref> In addition, unlike Boomers and previous generations, women outpaced men in college completion rates.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Bialik|first=Kristen|url=https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations/|title=Millennial life: How young adulthood today compares with prior generation|date=14 February 2019|work=Pew Research Center|access-date=3 February 2023|archive-date=8 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210208213629/https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations/|url-status=live}}</ref>

=====Adjusting to a new societal environment=====
For early Gen Xer graduates entering the job market at the end of the 1980s, economic conditions were challenging and did not show signs of major improvements until the mid-1990s.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Ericksson|first=Tamara|title=What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want|publisher=Harvard Business Review Press|year=2009|isbn=978-1-4221-2064-4}}</ref> In the U.S., restrictive monetary policy to curb rising inflation and the collapse of a large number of [[savings and loan association]]s (private banks that specialized in [[home mortgage]]s) impacted the welfare of many American households. This precipitated a large government bailout, which placed further strain on the budget.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Walsh|first=Carl E|date=1993|title=What caused the 1990-91 Recession?|journal=Economic Review: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco|pages=33}}</ref> Furthermore, three decades of growth came to an end. The social contract between employers and employees, which had endured during the 1960s and 1970s and was scheduled to last until retirement, was no longer applicable. By the late 1980s, there were large-scale layoffs of Boomers, corporate downsizing, and accelerated [[offshoring]] of production.<ref>{{Cite book|last=. Erickson|first=Tamara|title=What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want|publisher=Harvard Business Pres|year=2012|isbn=978-1-4221-5615-5}}</ref>

On the political front, in the U.S. the generation became ambivalent if not outright disaffected with politics. They had been reared in the shadow of the [[Vietnam War]] and the [[Watergate scandal]]. They came to maturity under the Reagan and [[George H. W. Bush]] presidencies, with first-hand experience of the impact of [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] policies. Few had experienced a Democratic administration and even then, only, at an atmospheric level. For those on the left of the political spectrum, the disappointments with the previous Boomer student mobilizations of the 1960s and the collapse of those movements towards a consumerist "[[greed is good]]" and "[[yuppie]]" culture during the 1980s felt, to a great extent, like hypocrisy if not outright betrayal. Hence, the preoccupation on "authenticity" and not "selling-out". The [[Revolutions of 1989]] and the collapse of the socialist utopia with the [[fall of the Berlin Wall]], moreover, added to the disillusionment that any alternative to the [[capitalist model]] was possible.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Erickson|first=Tamara|title=What's Next, Gen X?: Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want|publisher=Harvard Business Press|year=2010|isbn=978-1-4221-5615-5}}</ref>

=====Birth of the "slacker"=====
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| footer = [[Skateboard]]ing, [[BMX bike]]s, and [[Raleigh Chopper|chopper]] bikes first became popular among Generation X.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Williams |first1=Alex |title=Skateboarding Past a Midlife Crisis (Published 2012) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/fashion/skateboarding-past-a-midlife-crisis.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/fashion/skateboarding-past-a-midlife-crisis.html |archive-date=2 January 2022 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |work=The New York Times |date=9 May 2012}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
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In 1990, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine published an article titled "Living: Proceeding with Caution", which described those then in their 20s as aimless and unfocused. Media pundits and advertisers further struggled to define the cohort, typically portraying them as "unfocused [[Twentysomething (term)|twentysomething]]s". A [[MetLife]] report noted: "media would portray them as the ''[[Friends]]'' generation: rather self-involved and perhaps aimless...but fun".<ref name="MetLife">{{cite news|title=The MetLife Study of Gen X: The MTV Generation Moves into Mid-Life|url=https://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/mmi/publications/studies/2013/mmi-gen-x.pdf|access-date=19 June 2016|publisher=MetLife|date=April 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161021014452/https://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/mmi/publications/studies/2013/mmi-gen-x.pdf|archive-date=21 October 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="Time1">{{cite magazine|last1=Gross|first1=David|title=Living: Proceeding With Caution|url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,970634-1,00.html|access-date=19 June 2016|magazine=Time|date=16 July 1990|archive-date=1 July 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160701074300/http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,970634-1,00.html|url-status=live}}</ref> 

Gen Xers were often portrayed as [[Apathy|apathetic]] or as "[[slackers]]", lacking bearings, a stereotype which was initially tied to [[Richard Linklater]]'s comedic and essentially plotless 1991 film ''[[Slacker (film)|Slacker]]''. After the film was released, "journalists and critics thought they put a finger on what was different about these young adults in that 'they were reluctant to grow up' and 'disdainful of earnest action'".<ref name="Time1"/><ref>{{cite news|last1=ScrIibner|first1=Sara|url=http://www.salon.com/2013/08/11/generation_x_gets_really_old_how_do_slackers_have_a_midlife_crisis/|title=Generation X gets really old: How do slackers have a midlife crisis?|date=11 August 2013|work=Salon|access-date=19 June 2016|archive-date=19 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160619213301/http://www.salon.com/2013/08/11/generation_x_gets_really_old_how_do_slackers_have_a_midlife_crisis/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Ben Stiller]]'s 1994 film ''[[Reality Bites]]'' also sought to capture the [[zeitgeist]] of the generation with a portrayal of the attitudes and lifestyle choices of the time.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/reality-bites-captured-gen-x-25-years-later-helen-childress/583870/|title=Reality Bites Captured Gen X With Perfect Irony|last=Roberts|first=Soraya|date=March 2019|website=The Atlantic|access-date=3 February 2023|archive-date=1 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230101005107/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/reality-bites-captured-gen-x-25-years-later-helen-childress/583870/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Negative stereotypes of Gen X young adults continued, including that they were "bleak, cynical, and disaffected". In 1998, such stereotypes prompted sociological research at [[Stanford University]] to study the accuracy of the characterization of Gen X young adults as cynical and disaffected. Using the national [[General Social Survey]], the researchers compared answers to identical survey questions asked of 18–29-year-olds in three different time periods. Additionally, they compared how older adults answered the same survey questions over time. The surveys showed 18–29-year-old Gen Xers did exhibit higher levels of cynicism and disaffection than previous cohorts of 18–29-year-olds surveyed. However, they also found that cynicism and disaffection had increased among all age groups surveyed over time, not just young adults, making this a period effect, not a [[cohort effect]]. In other words, adults of all ages were more cynical and disaffected in the 1990s, not just Generation X.<ref>{{cite news|title=Generation X not so special: Malaise, cynicism on the rise for all age groups|url=http://news.stanford.edu/pr/98/980821genx.html|access-date=19 June 2016|publisher=Stanford University|archive-date=14 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160814224207/http://news.stanford.edu/pr/98/980821genx.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Oldsters Get The Gen X Feeling|url=http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980729080415data_trunc_sys.shtml|access-date=11 July 2016|publisher=SCI GOGO|date=29 August 1998|archive-date=18 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160818120039/http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980729080415data_trunc_sys.shtml|url-status=live}}</ref>

In a 2023 interview with television host [[Bill Maher]] on the podcast ''Club Random with Bill Maher'', vocalist and guitarist [[Billy Corgan]] hinted at how [[the Smashing Pumpkins]] spoke to the disillusionment felt by many Gen Xers as they reached adulthood, noting:

{{Quote|text=At least generationally, I think that's why I connected with so many people—because I was speaking the patois of: ''[[Gilligan's Island]]'' meets "What the fuck happened in my life?"<ref>{{Cite web |last=Club Random Podcast |date=2023-05-28 |title=Billy Corgan – Club Random with Bill Maher |website=[[YouTube]] |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ1JP0j1wj4}}</ref>|author=}}