Addie C. Rolnick
March 22, 1996
Generation X is always discussed in terms of the numerous issues comprising our
world. The "slacker" attitude is associated with us because our economic and
educational opportunities are considerably bleaker than those of previous generations,
particularly baby boomers. Our attitudes, however, can only be discovered by
listening to our own experiences. Every aspect of our world affects each of us
differently, so that the manifestations and impact of increasing violence, decreasing
job opportunity, or high divorce rates must be looked at through our eyes to see the
effect they have on our generational character. The second, or Nintendo, wave of this
generation (born in the 70s and early 80s) is particularly subject to generalizations
about our attitudes, since most of us have yet to write our own books. Born in 1977,
the middle of the Nintendo wave, I grew up among references to our "lost
generation." Problems like youth violence and AIDS were part of the landscape of my
adolescence, even if they did not always affect me personally. Like most people my
age, I am unwilling to swallow the writings of baby boomers, or even Atari-wavers as
accurate definitions of today's teenagers. Neither, however, am I ready to completely
dismiss the generalizations. Applied to what I see everyday, these myths and
stereotypes emerge as tools to understand the issues affecting our generational
experience. AIDS and violence, perhaps the two most immediate death sentences for
my generation are examples of how many Nintendo-wavers are able to take national
crises in stride in order to exist within the supposed mayhem of "the only [generation]
born this century to grow up personifying (to others) not the advance, but the decline
of their society's greatness." (Howe and Strauss 1993: 7)
The Nintendo wave of Generation X entered into sexual activity already at
least dimly aware of the specter of AIDS. By 1985, it was just beginning to be
recognized as a disease affecting the entire population, rather than only homosexual
males, heroin users and Haitians. (Garrett 1994) At that point, we were getting our
first doses of middle school sex education classes. Sexuality, which in previous
generations had meant anything from rebellion to freedom to responsibility to love,
became in part a matter of life and death for us. In a decidedly unglamorous and
undramatic way, we must face the possibility of a deadly disease just as we face all
the other questions and insecurities which accompany adolescent sex.
These complications, while perhaps sobering our attitudes about sex, have
certainly not scared us away completely. Teenagers are having sex at increasingly
younger ages. The average age of first intercourse is between 16 and 17. One fourth
of females and one third of males have had sex by age 15, and 75 percent of females
and 86 percent of males are sexually active by age 20. (Sunburst Communications
1991)
I have noticed certain trends in dealing with sexuality among people I
know. Some are fully conscious of the dangers inherent in sex today, but do not
necessarily modify behavior accordingly. Others are cognizant, but seem completely
apathetic, or unwilling to deal with risks responsibly (but they are still having sex.) In
high school, I was part of a group of HIV educators. We all knew the facts of HIV
and AIDS forward and backward. We could enlighten any classroom or assembly
about risks and safety strategies, but many of us had a difficult time translating this
knowledge into a change in personal behavior. A friend told me she couldn't
communicate with her sexual partners the way she should, because they weren't in the
healthy relationships we used as examples in workshops. Sexual inequality and
confusion became even more salient issues for us, because our lack of knowledge and
communication skills could be fatal.
The other side of this consciousness, though, is an all-encompassing
apathy I have seen in too many people my age. Most of them are fully entrenched in
sexual activity by the time they reach their twenties. Sometimes they use condoms,
sometimes they don't. Maybe they are tested for HIV occasionally, often at the
insistence of a partner. The risks associated with sexuality are clear to them, but
perhaps they are too overwhelming to consider on a personal level. Or perhaps they
simply don't care what happens to them beyond the immediate future. In the movie
Kids, Larry Clark and Harmony Korine portray a level of sexual detachment
which exemplifies this willful obliviousness. Perhaps the virgin-hunting Telly is a
slight exaggeration, but older guys bedding a succession of 12-14 year-old girls is an
all-too-common sight among teenagers. Disregard for their own health is rivaled only
by their disregard for anyone else. Certainly, many of these kids simply do not care.
But that attitude is often a coping mechanism for dealing with specific issues, not an
example of generational malaise.
Younger members of Generation X have also come under fire for our excessive
violence, which many see an age-specific attitude. It is not the violence, however,
which permeates the generation so much as the acclimation to an increasingly violent
atmosphere. Holtz (1995) describes this generation's criminal activity as "more
random, senseless, and savage than it had been for previous generations." Howe and
Strauss (1993: 122) say young criminals "seem emotionally detached, even
insensate." Although there is some debate about the exact increase in crime rates, it
seems clear that the Nintendo-wavers have been committing increasingly violent
crimes. Teenage homicide arrests more than doubled between 1985 and 1991. (Holtz
1995: 96) This increase in youthful violence has been accompanied, and often
preceded, by harsher trends in juvenile justice. At the time of its conception around
the turn of the century, the juvenile justice system existed to "offer assistance and
guidance; intervention in the lives of 'delinquents' was not supposed to carry the
stigma of criminal guilt." (Platt 1995: 21) In our lifetime, juvenile justice has shown
sharp shifts toward punitive treatment of young offenders, with less emphasis on
rehabilitation. Howe and Strauss point out that Generation X is the most incarcerated
generation in U.S. history. (Howe and Strauss 1993: 123) Holtz (1995: 65) assures
us that the incarceration was happening to the Atari-wavers as well, despite their
lower crime rates. As Nintendo-wavers grew up, then, high incarceration rates were
already part of the atmosphere, before we had begun raise the rates of violent crime.
Even growing up in Portland, Maine, I saw the violence that the media
kept insisting had consumed this generation. No one was killed, and it certainly was
not the Blood-Crip warfare of South Central Los Angeles, but the attitudes were the
same. Fights and stabbings happened among people I knew. Even my eighth-grade
sister knew a kid up the street who carried a gun to school. The kids who fought the
most did not seem to care about the repercussions of their actions beyond the fact
that probation might make it difficult to get drunk. Perhaps the culture of violence
was so ingrained from the start that they did not believe their life could play out any
other way.
I did not emerge from early childhood as accustomed to surrounding
violence as many other people my age. Not until high school did I start to see how
close it was to me, and in less than a year I was astoundingly desensitized. I had to
avert my eyes the first few times I saw fights. I even walked out of Terminator 2
.
As I met more and more kids who fought routinely, I would agonize over how
my friendships with them could hold up in the face of my pacifist values. Gradually,
though, the violence became normal. I listened to endless battle stories, and even
concealed screwdrivers and brass knuckles when the cops drove by. Then, one night,
without realizing it, I jumped up to get a better view when I saw a fight break out on
a dance floor. My repulsion with violence had somehow become a morbid
fascination. I found myself fantasizing about starting fights every time I was angry. I
cannot help but think that if my reaction to mild violence could be so completely
tempered in such a short time, I could probably undergo a similar desensitization to
murders and drive-by shootings if they were part of my daily existence.
Certainly every generation has its own issues to deal with, but Generation
X has been tagged as the one to come of age in an era of hopelessness. Holtz (1995:
1) refers to "the uphill battle to overcome preexisting obstacles" and Howe and
Strauss (1993: 7) compare this generation's world to a trashed beach at the end of
summer. All of us could list the evils of the world without flinching: poverty,
economic despair, deadly STDs, juvenile killers, media violence, racial tension, sexual
violence. Some of these we have seen, some we have been told about, but the endless
succession has been drilled into our heads from the beginning. For me, such "issues"
effectively enhance my sense of belonging to a certain generation. No other
generation grew up facing quite the same degree of harsh reality from the day they
were born. My attitude and experience, while framed by these issues, is formed
through Mills's concept of sociological imagination; that is, the relationship between
larger issues, such as AIDS and violence, and the everyday effect they have on my
personal life. Desensitization and calculated apathy are often results of this
relationship. Such attitudes, rather than being inherent personality characteristics of
Generation X, are the ways that many members have found to synthesize the
presence of larger phenomena into their lives on a personal level.