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generations

Pop Culture

What is 'Generation Jones'? The unique qualities of the not-quite-Gen-X-baby-boomers.

This "microgeneration" had a different upbringing than their fellow boomers.

Photo Credits: Michelle Obama, US Department of Education, Lawrence Jackson

Generation Jones includes Michelle Obama, George Clooney, Kamala Harris, Keanu Reeves and more.

We hear a lot about the major generation categories—boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z and the up-and-coming Gen Alpha. But there are folks who don't quite fit into those boxes. These in-betweeners, sometimes called "cuspers," are members of microgenerations that straddle two of the biggies.

"Xennial" is the nickname for those who fall on the cusp of Gen X and millennial, but there's also a lesser-known microgeneration that straddles Gen X and baby boomers. The folks born from 1954 to 1965 are known as Generation Jones, and they've been thrust into the spotlight as people try to figure out what generation to consider 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris.

Like President Obama before her, Harris is a Gen Joneser—not exactly a classic baby boomer but not quite Gen X. Born in October 1964, Harris falls just a few months shy of official Gen X territory. But what exactly differentiates Gen Jones from the boomers and Gen Xers that flank it?

"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.

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."

Time will tell whether the United States will end up with another Generation Jones leader, but with President Biden withdrawing his candidacy, it has now become a distinct possibility.

Of note in discussions over Kamala Harris's generational status is the fact that generations aren't just calculated by birth year but by a person's cultural reality. Some have made the argument that Harris is culturally more Gen X than boomer, though there doesn't seem to be any record of her claiming any particular generation as her own. However, a swath of Gen Z has staked their own claim on her as "brat"—a term singer Charli XCX thrust into the political arena with a post on X that read "kamala IS brat." That may be nonsensical to most older folks, but for Gen Z, it's a glowing endorsement from one of the top Gen Z musicians of the moment.

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Joy

Gen Z is allegedly ‘aging like milk’ and this TikTok star’s proof has people rolling

The 26-year-old’s encounter with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was too hilarious.


@jordan_the_stallion8/TikTok

Jordan Howlett is 26, but people always think he's in his 40s.

Every generation eventually reaches the point where they realize they're aging, but apparently Gen Z is hitting that milestone a lot earlier than most. Despite—or perhaps because of—growing up during the biggest anti-aging beauty product boom the world has ever seen, the young folks born between 1997 and 2012 are gaining a reputation for looking old before their time.

How can anyone who is younger than 27 look old, you may ask? It's a valid question. According to one cosmetic doctor, young adults are engaging in anti-aging interventions like fillers and Botox prematurely, which ironically is making them "age" faster. Another culprit could be that smoking and vaping have taken hold of Gen Z in a way that their millennial predecessors generally managed to avoid.

According to Jordan Howlett, better known as Jordan the Stallion on TikTok, it's "mainly because of the stress" that Gen Z is "aging like milk." But it's Howlett's own personal anecdotes of looking older than his age as a Gen Zer that has people marveling—and laughing out loud.

Howlett is at the oldest end of Gen Z at age 26, but he shares that he is often mistaken for twice his age.

"We live in a time now where millennials look way younger for their age while Gen Z looks way older for their age. If you don't believe me, I'm Gen Z," Howlett says, zooming in on his gotta-be-older-than-26 face. "I am Gen Z and nobody ever believes me."

Howlett explains that people mistake his mom for his younger sister and that when he say he's going to hang out with his family, people assume he means his kids.

"I don't have kids," he says. "I'm talking about my parents. I'm still the child."

He points out that Zendaya and Tom Holland are older than him (only by a year, but still).

Then he shares a story about getting an autograph from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who talked to him like he was a peer—The Rock is 52 years old—and it's hilarious.

Watch:

@jordan_the_stallion8

#stitch with @staying up podcast #fypシ

People in the comments were incredulous that he actually is only 26.

"Ain’t no way in the world this man is gen Z. This generation be recycling ancestors 😂 wtf 😂," wrote one person.

"Forget about the beard. It's his voice 😂. Bro got the voice of someone who walked hand in hand with MLK," joked another.

"On behalf of the millennials we accept you as our own," wrote another.

To be fair, Howlett shared in another video that he might be more millennial than Gen Z at heart. Watch him talk about the "millennial zoom" vs. the "Gen Z zoom."

@jordan_the_stallion8

#stitch with @samsreb #fypシ

In all seriousness, though, there may be something behind the "trying so hard not to age that they are actually aging faster" thing with Gen Z. We're seeing pre-teens asking for skincare products for Christmas, for the love. Nobody in Gen Z really needs an anti-aging anything, and using certain products too early can actually backfire.

"Some skin care products claim to increase cell turnover or to repair collagen breakdown," Joshua Zeichner, MD, director of cosmetic and clinical research in dermatology at New York’s Mt. Sinai Medical Center, told WebMD. "In your 20s, you have excellent turnover without any help, and your skin is fully capable of repairing itself. The downside is that these products may irritate your skin or make it more sensitive to the sun."

In fact, daily sunscreen and avoiding smoking are the most important "anti-aging" habits for teens and young adults who want to keep wrinkles and other signs of aging at bay.

It may just be a fear of aging from constant anti-aging messaging and unrealistic social media filters that has Gen Z worrying so much about looking old and going to great pains to prevent it. There's nothing wrong with wanting to slow down the aging process or not wanting to look older than we actually are, but there's also nothing wrong with getting older—at all. It's literally how time works. We're all getting older every minute of every day, and our bodies are naturally going to show that progression.

Take it from a Gen X elder, young folks. What you do with those minutes matters far more than any creases or lines on your face.

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Joy

Comedian's song about life in the 90s has Gen X giggling with nostalgia

Ah, the good old days, when you had to choose between the phone or the internet.

ABC TV + iview/Facebook

Sammy J took us on a trip down memory lane.

Those of us who remember life before the internet love nothing more than to share "back in my day" stories with today's youngsters who've never had to try to get somewhere without GPS. When we tell our kids about dial-up internet, they look at us the same bewildered way we looked at our parents when they talked about party lines. So much fun.

Nothing splits the generations like what was considered advanced technology during our formative years, and one comedian has encapsulated that divide in an ode to the 1990s.

Sammy J sang "You'll Never Know What It's Like" at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and had the audience giggling along with recollections of life in the 90s. Driving around in the car with a big book of maps? Check. Making a collect call to tell your mom to pick you up but avoiding the collect call charges by telling her where you were instead of saying your name? Check. Agonizing over whether to take a photo because you only have 24 shots in your disposable camera? Check.

Younger generations will never know what it was like to live so primitively, it's true. But Gen X does, and this song is like taking a cold plunge into a pool of nostalgia.

Enjoy:

People loved the musical trip to the past.

"Thank you for taking me down memory lane! It was a blast 😀" wrote one commenter.

But some couldn't agree on whether young people have it better today or had it better in the 90s.

"All true! If only our teenagers knew who good they have it!" wrote one person.

"Life was so so good in the 90’s I feel lucky it didn’t have to grow up in this era 😕," shared another.

"God I miss the 90s!" wrote another. "Both my daughters always say they wish they grew up in the 90s bc it seemed so much fun and it was!!"

Kids today really will never know what those days were like, but that's okay. They'll be singing their own "back in my day" songs someday and marvel at how much has changed since they were young.

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Popular

A cringey essay on 'easy breezy millennials' generated an avalanche of hilarious responses

Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash, @lenikacruz/Twitter, @appleciderwitch/Twitter, @eplerjc/Twitter

The battle between millennials and older generations isn't exactly a generational war—it's more a case of mistaken generational identity. A decade ago, whining about millennials being young adults unprepared to make their way in the world at least made sense mathematically. But when people bag on millennials now they end up looking rather foolish.

A marketing researcher with a doctorate in social psychology wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune titled "Post-pandemic, some millennials finally decide to start #adulting." And when the Tribune shared it to Twitter, their since-deleted tweet read, "Writer Jennifer Rosner predicts COVID-10 lockdowns will force easy-breezy millennials to grow up."

Hoo boy.

Interestingly, the writer of the op-ed is a millennial herself, but she repeats generalizations about her entire generation that seem like they mainly apply to her own social circle. Read it yourself to decide, but regardless, the tweet of the op-ed itself set off a firestorm of responses from millennials who are tired of being painted as irresponsible young people who don't know how to "adult" instead of what they actually are.

First of all, the oldest millennials are turning 40 this year The youngest are 25—either well out of college or well into grad school. And yet, they've been thought of as the youngest adults for the past 10-15 years, even as they've aged into full-on adulthood.

The struggle of millennials is not that they don't know how to be adults. It's that the financial reality of the world in which they came of age made it much harder to get established than previous generations, with two recessions, stagnant wages, rising costs of living, and crippling debt from skyrocketing tuition costs.


Nonetheless, most millennials are 30-somethings who are in the midst of careers, paying mortgages, raising kids, and other extremely adult things. And they're doing it with less security and stability on a basic level than previous generations experienced. They are resilient because they have to be. They are resourceful because they have no choice.

What they, as a generation, are not? Easy breezy.

A good chunk of the parents who have had to figure out childcare for their young kids during a pandemic or learn on the fly how to help their children with virtual school while also managing their own careers from home? Millennials.

Seriously, the oldest millennials were early in their career years when the 2008 recession hit, and the youngest millennials are at that stage now, during this pandemic recession. Those lucky middle-millennials may have had an easier time finding a job—maybe—but they're still dealing with wages that haven't kept up with costs of living increases while trying to getting their families started.

Oh yeah, and they're inheriting a crescendoing global climate crisis to boot. Easy breezy!

The responses were swift and fierce.

And some of them were simply, wryly hilarious.







Every generation has its share of struggles and every generation thinks the generation before and after it is somehow flawed, but it's those generalizations themselves that are the biggest problem. Sure, there are generational differences born of changes in the world, social pendulum swings, and reactions to our own upbringings, but to blame a generation for circumstances they can't control is pretty crappy and to lump them all together as lazy or entitled or "easy breezy" is as inaccurate as it is rude.

I'm not a millennial—solidly Gen X here—but the millennials I know are great people. Leave them alone unless you've got a solution to the challenges they're facing beyond "stop buying avocado toast" and "save up money from your underpaid job for a house you can't afford." And for the love of all that is good and holy, stop talking about them like they're doe-eyed college students. Time to give them the full respect we give all "real" adults. They've definitely earned it.

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