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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."