The Story the Press Is Telling About Gen X Is Dangerous
Why is the media obsessed with making us extinct?
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a wave of stories pushing the idea that Gen X has aged out of relevance, our once mighty careers reduced to fossils in the age of AI.
Suddenly, the media collectively decided that anyone born between 1965 and 1979 is a dinosaur.
From The New York Times to The Independent, PBS to the Wall Street Journal, the message is the same:
We’re T rexes with short little arms.
We’re flailing
We’re screwed.
Steven Kurutz, writing for The New York Times and speaking on PBS, put it bluntly:
“You’re in your 40s and 50s… you had 10 to 15 years of a career before things started to get shaky. You are ten years away from retirement… and now AI is coming for your job.”
Across the pond at The Independent, Stephen Armstrong went even darker. He wrote a story with the cheery headline, “Fifty and out: How Gen X became the biggest work losers (with 10 years still to go), writing:
“For a brief moment, Gen X ruled the creative economy, but it was a mirage, and now it feels like we’re losing the plot completely.”
And The Wall Street Journal, in an upbeat article about how Gen X is faring financially, quotes Avery Nesbitt, 44, an operations manager in Atlanta:
“I fully expect to work until I die. It is what it is.”
Geesh. Read enough stories like this, and you’re likely to start believing it.
But even worse, people who are in a position to hire you start believing it.
And that’s where things start to get destructive.
Perception is Reality
These stories aren’t just reporting what’s happening. They’re shaping it.
They paint Gen X as obsolete, and in doing so, make it easier for employers, investors, and gatekeepers to buy it.
Why hire someone in their 50s if their skillset is stuck in 1997?
Why hire someone with a deep résumé if you just have to retrain them?
Why take a chance on someone the press has already written off?
These narratives might feel fresh in newsrooms, where editors drool over a clever, clickable headline.
Wall Street Journal: As Generation X Approaches Retirement, Reality Still Bites
PBS/Amampour and Co: The Gen X Career Meltdown
And how about this doozy from New York Times? it’s the end of work as we knew it and I feel...powerless to fight the technology that we pioneered, nostalgic for a world that moved on without us after decades of paying our dues for a payday that never came...so yeah not exactly fine.
But they have real-life consequences. Perception shapes policy.
Headlines affect hiring.
Ageism in Full Effect
Let’s be honest: these stories are borderline ageist and fuel bias.
Research backs this up. A study out of the Netherlands found that the more older workers were mentioned negatively in the media, the more age discrimination claims went up.
The cruel irony? The journalists declaring Gen X obsolete are often Gen Xers themselves—writing for the same legacy outlets they claim no longer matter.
Both Armstrong and Kurutz are in their late 40s.
Dudes, come on. Don’t be traitors to your people!
Double Standard
The idea that someone is unhireable at 50 because their job title once included the word print is ridiculous. But it’s real.
I’ve stopped putting Glamour and TV Guide on my CV—because I worry it makes me look like a guy wearing a trench coat with a press badge on his fedora.
As Kurutz said to Amampour:
“There’s no amount of training that you can get to keep your job. AI is now going to do that job.”
Really?
Why exactly is AI more of a threat to Gen X than anyone else?
I use AI every day. I teach courses on it. I coach executives on how to use it. I’d put my AI fluency up against any Millennial or Gen Zer.
To paint younger generations as somehow AI-native—when this tech only became widely accessible a couple of years ago—is just wrong.
Also, let’s not pretend this is some historically unique crisis.
Every generation hits a point where the world shifts under their feet.
Depression-era workers edged out in the postwar corporate boom.
Radio men at the dawn of TV.
Coldwar era engineers outsmarted by Silicon Valley nerds.
The difference?
They didn’t have to doom scroll daily to find out they were irrelevant.
They certainly weren’t expected to keep working while reading their own obituaries.
That’s the added twist here.
The suggestion that Gen X isn’t just struggling, but somehow failing. It’s our fault for excelling in positions that no longer exist, and now we’re whining about it.
That doesn’t sound like anybody I know. That sounds like a trend story that turned a nuanced and complex reality into a convenient narrative.
I just hope people don’t buy into it.
We’re not T. rex.
We’re Gen X.
We’re not extinct.
We’re evolving.
And the part that’s the most aggravating? All through the 1990s, we were told over and over that if we stuck with it and paid our dues, the boomers might - MIGHT - step aside and let us move up. During the Aughts, we were told over and over that we had to keep reinventing ourselves if we wanted to get to the levels our boomer parents already achieved. Now, we’re being told that the positions our parents had are being taken away, we’re unemployable because we aren’t 18 years old (with 30 years of experience), and we’re expected to fight two generations for the few entry-level positions remaining, but we’re watching as all of the perks we were told over and over that came with persistence and experience are being ripped away as being too expensive. Meanwhile, the boomers are crying “Why is nobody buying our crappy McMansions for four times for what we paid for them?” Who indeed?
We are an adaptable generation and will be just a-okay.
Thanks for their concern, but we’re good🖤