As The Official Spokesperson For Gen-X, I'm Here To Say We Got A Raw Deal
Gen-Xers were thrown for a loop in the wake of the quickly evolving digital era.
Krakenimages.com | Shutterstock Yes, I appointed myself the official spokesperson of Gen-X because somebody had to do it. That’s a total Gen-X move, by the way. We see that something needs to be done and we don’t ask; we just handle it.
As the official spokesperson for Gen-X, I'm here to say we got a raw deal.
My generation is the one that got screwed by the digital transformation. We grew up without computers.
Then, sometime in our early adulthood, everything changed all at once. Computers were everywhere. Everyone got cell phones and then smartphones. (Now they’re just phones because the old kind of phones barely exist.)
Our education didn’t prepare us for this. And our brains matured very differently than the brains of Gen-Y or Z. Imagine being a hunter-gatherer who was kidnapped, brought into modern civilization, and expected to teach yourself how to read and write.
That’s almost what it was like. I was here for this transformation, and it was hard.
The Baby Boomers, by and large, were spared this raw deal.
Yuri A / Shutterstock
Many (though not all) of them were able to retire without having to learn significant computer skills. (And yes, retirement was possible for that generation, unlike the rest of us. They had something called pensions. Except for government employees, almost nobody has had a pension for decades.)
If you’re Gen-Y or Z, you had it easy. (By the way, if you’re a Gen-Y who prefers the term “Millennial,” too bad. You don’t get a special name. You have to go by a letter, just like X and Z. Sorry. If I had my way, we’d call Boomers Gen-W. It would work out, because they were the generation who elected W. That’s George W. Bush, for you younger Zs.)
If you grew up using computers and the internet, you’re lucky.
We Xs had to teach ourselves. Nobody taught us anything! We bumbled our way through, figuring things out as we went along. I completed all my formal education, including college, without ever using a real computer.
As an elder X, I was one of the very last who did. I was a married mom of two and owned a house before I first owned a computer or had the internet. My children, who are both Gen-Y, can’t remember what it was like not to have a computer.
Of course, everyone loves to laugh now when somebody my age or older has to ask their kid or grandkid to help them out with their computer. How funny do you think it would be if we sent you back to 1985 and asked you to drive across the country with a paper map and no GPS? Huh? You’d probably have to ask your grandma to come along. She’d have a good laugh.
Things started changing fast for Gen-X in the 1990s.
Throughout history, no other generation before X experienced anything close to these changes we had to absorb. Let me say that again because I don’t think people realize this:
Gen-X has experienced more technological change in its lifetime than any other generation in history.
Cultural and technological change has always been slow. From prehistory until around the mid-1990s, most people lived pretty similarly to how their parents lived. The changes experienced between one generation and the next were small.
When the masses learned to read and write, that did not happen in a single generation. The move from only privileged males knowing how to read to poor little girls being taught was a slow change over many generations.
Other modern technologies, like automobiles and airplanes, moved a little faster, but none had such a universal effect on humanity as the internet. Technological breakthroughs are much, much faster now and continue to get faster.
My generation was the very last one to grow up without computers, the internet, and cellphones — all much the same thing, really, now — and to have been forced to learn them. If there’s an American my age now without knowledge of these things, they’re either Amish or mentally disabled.
My children grew up with digital technology.
My grandchildren were born with it. I can’t even imagine what technology they’ll grow up to use. Will they even carry phones or will there be something wearable or implanted? Who knows?
Will I even be alive to see that? Probably. As I said, technology changes fast now.
Digital technology is a tool that makes all other technologies move faster. Everything we did in history to get ourselves to this point is now paying off by making every other change easier.
People can collaborate with colleagues who live on the other side of the world and speak other languages. Information moves around the globe instantly. This was the change that fed every other change.
Life is extremely different now for Gen-X.
Yuri A / Shutterstock
We are all connected in a way humans never were before. All the world’s information is available to everyone. And everything is changing fast. Well, almost everything. Humans don’t change fast enough.
Our technology can do amazing things, but humans are the limiting factor. We aren’t as smart as we think we are.
We have figured out how to set up international monetary systems, but we haven’t figured out how to set up an economic system that functions without harming the environment. We can transplant organs but we can’t cure addictions.
We are no further along in figuring out what to do about criminals than we were a hundred years ago. We still have children we aren’t bothering to educate in any real way.
We invented social media but we can’t figure out how to keep it from harming individuals and societies. We encourage children to study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) by paying the most for those careers. We actively discourage children from studying or having careers in anything that would address the failings of humanity.
Does your kid want to study the humanities? Please. They shouldn’t go to college at all if that’s how they’re thinking. They should become electricians or plumbers instead.
Here I sit, a Gen-X woman, the daughter of Boomers, the mother of two Gen-Ys, and the grandmother of two Gen-Alphas. (I think we should call them Gen-A, honestly, even if it does sound too much like what Forrest Gump called his girlfriend. Nobody in that generation is going to get that reference anyway.)
Maybe our technology could slow down for Gen-X just a little bit.
Oh, you think we have to rush to develop new medical technologies? I would agree with you except that right now, I think I’d rather have the medical miracles we already have made available to everyone rather than just keep on figuring out new miracles nobody can afford because our insurance won’t cover them.
Can we not work on humanity for a little bit? The tech stuff is doing fine. I love my iPhone. I love my MacBook. We can live a little longer without whatever is coming after that. (If it’s the virtual world envisioned by Meta, you can keep it.)
It’s the human stuff we need to work on, and my generation might be the very last one to be able to notice that we’ve gone way off track because we remember what life was like as a human living in the BC (Before Computers) era.
Life in the BC era wasn’t all bad. We all talked to other humans face-to-face more. Life was human-paced, and as a human, I was more comfortable with that speed, honestly, than I am now in the AD (After Digital) era.
Anyway, I’ve had my say. Whoever the spokespeople are for Gen-Y, Gen-Z, and Gen-A are going to have to take it from here.
Michelle Teheux is a freelance writer, journalist, and former newspaper editor who writes about her experiences abroad.