What's Left of Generation X

For those of us born between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, the spate of Gen X reminiscences that have appeared over the past few months may have triggered consumer nostalgia (the Sony Walkman looks so quaint!), soul-searching, or lingering irritation. One never feels older than when reading a tribute penned by a twenty-something in the New York Times exploring how profoundly strange—almost unimaginable, really—it must have been to live in that glacial-paced era before smart-phones and the internet. Jason Wilson, writing in the Guardian, urges us to reclaim "irony and gloom" as features of cultural resilience, making the case for Gen X radicalism. Psychology Today has explored the "cultural psychology" of a generation that grew up with less access to the media spotlight that shone on the boomers—and that millennials now shine at each other on their social feeds.