Talk:Generation X

❧

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Generation X article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives (index): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6: 2 months

This level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Demographics (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Demographics, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.DemographicsWikipedia:WikiProject DemographicsTemplate:WikiProject DemographicsDemographics

Geography Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Geography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of geography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GeographyWikipedia:WikiProject GeographyTemplate:WikiProject Geographygeography

Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Geography To-do list:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : See Requested articles/Social sciences/Geography, cities, regions and named places and Missing articles about Locations
Assess : Tag related article talk pages with {{WikiProject Geography}}. To help assess the quality and importance of geography articles, please see: Unassessed geography articles and Unknown-importance geography articles.
Cleanup : See Geography articles needing attention
Deletion sorting : Listed at Geographic related deletion discussions
Geographical coordinates : See Articles missing geocoordinate data by country
Infobox : See Geography articles needing infoboxes
Map : See Wikipedia requested maps
Notability : See Geography articles with topics of unclear notability
Photo : See Wikipedia requested photographs of places
Stubs : See Geography stubs

Sociology Mid‑importance

	Society portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Statistics Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.StatisticsWikipedia:WikiProject StatisticsTemplate:WikiProject StatisticsStatistics
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

Semi-protected edit request on 17 April 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

There is a more recent source article about Generation X and its behaviours on Silver Magazine as part of an in depth study. Please consider adding this to the External Links section: https://silvermagazine.co.uk/the-naked-truth-what-are-boomers-and-generation-x-really-like 2A00:23C7:F13:4301:F546:89B3:50BE:D188 (talk) 06:43, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Not done: Appears to be a primary source covering a survey that may or may not be scientific. LizardJr8 (talk) 13:17, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

The Cold War and nuclear proliferation

Speaking from an U.S. perspective: By far one of the biggest things going on during this generations childhood was the massive stockpiling of wepons of mass destruction. The notion of nuclear mutual assured destruction (M.A.D.) was a common topic in Washington and in the news. The airing of the network TV movie "The Day After" had a profound affect on this generation. Fear of a nuclear apocalypse deserves a section of it's own.

I think the collapse of the Soviet Union deserves a section as well.

The beginning of fears about Global Warming happened in this generation.

And some mention of the band U2 should be made. Aristarchus of Detroit (talk) 06:02, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request/ Question about lede

Hello. I have a question concerning the lede of the page, especially with the sentence "researchers and popular media often utilize the mid 60s as the... and the late 70s as the ending birth years". If 1980 is commonly cited as the last year of Gen X, would this mean that the previously mentioned sentence should say "and the early 80s as the ending birth years"? There are even other citations in the body that mention other multiple early 80s end dates. I wanted to ask if the sentence could be updated, or if this was purposely done to prevent people from including birth years that are generally considered Millennial, such as 1981-1983? However, as I've mentioned, 1980 is pretty much definitely considered Gen X throughout the article. 2601:940:C100:8890:2C00:985F:96F5:41ED (talk) 23:16, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this was a mistake. I've fixed it. Thanks, Dan Bloch (talk) 02:09, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

Generational labels are arbitrarily defined by various marketers and don't have official beginnings and endings

Wikipedia, please PLEASE stop promoting determinism and pseudoscience by pretending they do with infographics which purport to show the "official" beginnings and endings of arbitrary generation labels, which people see on Google and take to think are official and objective fact. This is damaging to society as a whole. ~2026-17541-2 (talk) 04:45, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi " ~2026-17541-2 " ,You have made this same discussion on Talk:Generation, Talk:Generation Z, and Talk:Millennials, Please stop trying to cause ruckus or useless flame wars on purpose, especially on Wikipedia. This is probably flamebait, since these are your first discussions on Wikipedia, may I ask why you're trying to cause useless internet arguments? ★ Campssitie (msg) (contribs) 🧋🏖 09:06, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

US-Centricity

I feel that this whole article is extremely US-centric yet it is completely unacknowledged. Gen X is also used in many other countries to describe the same demographic — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-50233-1 (talk) 14:45, 23 January 2026 (UTC)