Generation Jones is the microgeneration of people born from 1954 to 1965.
Generational labels have become cultural identifiers. These include Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And each of these generations is defined by its unique characteristics, personalities and experiences that set them apart from other generations.
But in-between these generational categories are "microgenerations", who straddle the generation before and after them. For example, "Xennial" is the microgeneration name for those who fall on the cusp of Gen X and Millennials.
And there is also a microgeneration between Baby Boomers and Gen X called Generation Jones, which is made up of people born from 1954 to 1965. But what exactly differentiates Gen Jones from the Boomers and Gen Xers that flank it?
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What is Generation Jones?
"Generation Jones" was coined by writer, television producer and social commentator Jonathan Pontell to describe the decade of Americans who grew up in the '60s and '70s. As Pontell wrote of Gen Jonesers in Politico:
"We fill the space between Woodstock and Lollapalooza, between the Paris student riots and the anti-globalisation protests, and between Dylan going electric and Nirvana going unplugged. Jonesers have a unique identity separate from Boomers and GenXers. An avalanche of attitudinal and behavioural data corroborates this distinction."
Pontell describes Jonesers as "practical idealists" who were "forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part." They are the younger siblings of the boomer civil rights and anti-war activists who grew up witnessing and being moved by the passion of those movements but were met with a fatigued culture by the time they themselves came of age. Sometimes, they're described as the cool older siblings of Gen X. Unlike their older boomer counterparts, most Jonesers were not raised by WWII veteran fathers and were too young to be drafted into Vietnam, leaving them in between on military experience.
How did Generation Jones get its name?
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
Gen Jones gets its name from the competitive "keeping up with the Joneses" spirit that spawned during their populous birth years, but also from the term "jonesin'," meaning an intense craving, that they coined—a drug reference but also a reflection of the yearning to make a difference that their "unrequited idealism" left them with. According to Pontell, their competitiveness and identity as a "generation aching to act" may make Jonesers particularly effective leaders:
"What makes us Jonesers also makes us uniquely positioned to bring about a new era in international affairs. Our practical idealism was created by witnessing the often unrealistic idealism of the 1960s. And we weren’t engaged in that era’s ideological battles; we were children playing with toys while boomers argued over issues. Our non-ideological pragmatism allows us to resolve intra-boomer skirmishes and to bridge that volatile Boomer-GenXer divide. We can lead."
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However, generations aren't just calculated by birth year but by a person's cultural reality. Some on the cusp may find themselves identifying more with one generation than the other, such as being culturally more Gen X than boomer. And, of course, not everyone fits into whatever generality they happened to be born into, so stereotyping someone based on their birth year isn't a wise practice. Knowing about these microgenerational differences, however, can help us understand certain sociological realities better as well as help people feel like they have a "home" in the generational discourse.
As many Gen Jonesers have commented, it's nice to "find your people" when you haven't felt like you've fit into the generation you fall into by age. Perhaps in our fast-paced, ever-shifting, interconnected world where culture shifts so swiftly, we need to break generations into 10 year increments instead of 20 to 30 to give everyone a generation that better suits their sensibilities.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
Left: An older women side by side with a younger woman. Right: A young male hospital worker and a male patient.
In a recent, thought-provoking episode of the Impact Theory podcast with Tom Bilyeu, renowned divorce attorney and author James Sexton shared how being a hospice volunteer drastically changed his perspective on life.
"I think when you turn 18, you should have to do a year or two of mandatory hospice volunteering," Sexton said. "It changed my entire way of viewing the world."
Sexton recalled that while death itself wasn't necessarily the prime source of conversation—most of his volunteer work involved doing little odds and ends for folks—its presence was still palpable. Because of that, he walked out of each visit feeling like a "samurai," as all the things he thought were "so important five minutes ago" fell to the wayside.
"Spend time with people that are dying," he said. "All their stuff is a great big pile of nothing. Like, all that they can talk about is the people that they love, the connections that they made, the experiences that they had that were beautiful or painful."
That realization became even more apparent when he learned that his own mother was terminally ill with cancer and past the point that any doctor could help her.
"In that moment, all of the other things that I was stressed about and worried about, the volume was turned so far down on all those things because my mom was gonna die," Sexton said. "All that became important was how could I spend a little more time with her. How can I make sure she knows that I love her? How can I savor this?"
Developing an awareness of death during early adulthood, Sexton argued, would help people not get "distracted" by a society that constantly tries to make you forget that death is inevitable. Therefore, they wouldn't pay attention to the "meaningless sh*t that keeps the machine moving," and instead focus on what really matters.
And what really matters? Important things like kissing a spouse, for example, which Sexton reminded Bilyeu (and, conversely, all of us) happen a finite number of times. You won't know what that finite number is "until you've passed it," he warned.
A couple kissing.Photo credit: Canva
"If you don't keep that in your line of sight, you're a fool," Sexton said. "You're gonna think you're gonna get to do that forever. You're gonna think you can do that all time and you don't. You will not do that forever. ... And that's the most beautiful thing in the world. It's what makes that so special."
For Sexton, being a hospice volunteer cemented this perspective, and since then, "nothing has been the same." It didn't mean suddenly "living life like a monk," but it did mean sharing his love a little more freely and appreciating that "things have to end."
Between hospice volunteering and working as a divorce lawyer, Sexton has become an expert of sorts with "endings." He argues that we must look at life through this lens because the one constant is that "everything is ending all the time," and ignoring that fact "does a tremendous disservice."
American culture generally treats death with avoidance, viewing it as a taboo topic or a medical failure rather than a natural stage of life. It is highly clinical and sanitized, with many people dying in hospitals away from family and loved ones. While shifting toward more home-based hospice care, U.S. society remains heavily influenced by "death-denying" attitudes that emphasize quick, efficient mourning. Compare that to other cultures with consistent mourning rituals, like Mexico's Día de los Muertos and Japan's Obon.
Perhaps Sexton's hospice volunteering concept could act as something similar to these traditions—a rite of passage that doesn't have us avoiding death, but walking alongside it.
You can watch the full Impact Theory episode below:
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Person says they're more productive and excited when pretending their life is a TV show
"This is the one time that being delusional actually helped me."
Be the main character in your life.
A lot of the time, life can be boring. There's lots of waiting and wondering, and the mundane every-day chores can demotivate you, making you really feel the drudgery of it all. If only life were as interesting as a TV show. Wouldn't that make a big difference? For one person, doing just that changed their attitude and outlook on life for the better.
On Reddit, a poster shared that once they started treating life as if they were on a television show, they started feeling more excited to participate in the everyday and even began accomplishing more. They start each day with an episode title and end the "episode" by going to sleep. They claimed to be more excited each day to "unfold the cliffhanger I had of yesterday's episode," and would look back on their "season" (week) feeling prouder and "cooler" about their life. "This is the one time that being delusional actually helped me."
Many commenters brought up how this reframing of life and other similar tricks worked out for them, too:
“Honestly, same! Sometimes when I’m stuck, I imagine I’m in a movie and the audience is screaming at the screen and I think, what are they yelling at me to do that’s so obvious to them? Helps with indecision or hard decisions.”
“I did this a lot as a kid. It made life feel exciting for sure.”
"Framing your day as an episode is genius because it turns the boring parts into plot development instead of just stuff you have to get through…My show would be a lot of filler episodes where the main character is on the couch with his dog but honestly those are the best episodes of any series anyway.”
“Sometimes, when I need to really lock in at work. I'll put earbuds in, put on some music, and imagine watching myself work like it's a dramatic montage in a movie. I don’t know why but it helps.”
“I started treating cooking like I was hosting a show.”
“I actually love this. It is a clean trick to beat boredom and procrastination. Giving the day a title and a clean ending makes you act like the main character instead of a background extra. I might steal it.”
“I kinda do this, I try to romanticize my life by saying oh I’m just the main character of my movie. I go through the struggles I’m going through only because it's the climax of the movie, and it’ll resolve eventually.”
This isn't the first time someone stumbled upon this type of mind hack. Licensed therapists who spoke to Upworthy weighed in on the mental reframing and discussed its effectiveness.
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"In many ways, viewing your life as a T.V. show is just a cognitive reframe, which can be helpful when overcoming hurdles," said therapist Jerred England. "On T.V., we expect the main character to face challenges and then overcome them as they reach their goal. In many ways, that's life, too. We don't watch programs where the main character has a victim mentality, is defeated, and then lies around at home for a week. Having a mindset that expects and overcomes challenges can be truly helpful—after all, life hands us plenty of them!"
"Thinking this way can give someone a nudge out of passivity," said narrative therapist Claudia Johnson. "Rather than waiting to feel motivated, they start living 'as if' their choices matter to a bigger arc. That can foster curiosity, openness to new experiences, and tolerance of short-term discomfort."
"It can also provide some psychic distance," Johnson added. "By thinking of your life as a movie during anxious times, rejection or failure feels like part of a plot rather than evidence against your self-worth."
While both therapists said that this reframing can be helpful, it can become harmful if taken too literally.
"Believing you are the main character can lead to performing life instead of being present in it. You start going through life instead of living it by curating experiences that look meaningful on the surface," said Johnson.
"One of the dangers is that you'll start basing your worth on whether you're excited or productive. Real life isn't a movie—it's full of mundane stretches where you're just maintaining the pace," she explained. "These 'everyday' chapters are vital but never make it into the highlight reel."
"I would caution that in T.V., we like to have drama, enemies, and constant challenges. If you find too much of that in your life, you might stay in a bad situation too long," concluded England. "If your friends tell you that your life is a T.V. show, you might consider changing your work or relationships. After all, most of us wouldn't actually like to live in The Truman Show."