Generation X

»	Generation X

Generation X is a term used to describe generations in many countries around the world born during the 1960s and 1970s, although the exact demographic boundaries of Generation X are not well defined. The term has become used in demography, the social sciences, and marketing, though it is most often used in popular culture.

Some of the defining factors used in describing Generation X stem from social transitions resulting from the decline of colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Another more prevalent factor is a bell curve bottoming out in American births from 1960 through 1980, after the American baby boom from 1946 to 1964. A small, often `invisible generation` in the wake of the socially-reconstructing baby boomers, those born in the U.S. between 1964 and 1980 received the `X` tag for lack of a defining social identity.

As young adults, Generation X drew media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gaining a stereotypical reputation as apathetic, cynical, disaffected, streetwise loners and slackers, though this reputation only describes a portion of the generation itself.

In addition, Generation X is noted as one of the most entrepreneurial and tech-friendly generations in American history, as they`ve driven a majority of the Internet`s growth and ingenuity from day one.

In the U.S. Gen X was originally referred as the `baby bust` generation due to the small number of births following the baby boom. But describing a generation of people as a `bust` was not going to be accepted. The not so creative researchers came up with Generation X and it stuck.

In the UK the term was first used in a 1964 study of British youth by Jane Deverson. Deverson was asked by the editor of the magazine Woman`s Own to conduct a series of interviews with teenagers of the time. The study revealed a generation of teenagers who `sleep together before they are married, don`t believe in God, dislike the Queen, and don`t respect parents,` which was deemed unsuitable for the magazine because it was a new phenomenon. Deverson, in an attempt to save her research, worked with Hollywood correspondent Charles Hamblett to create a book about the study. Hamblett decided to name it Generation X.