Gen Xers must resist the distraction economy

"I'm working, but I'm not working for you. Slack mother******!"

Well, Happy New Year, Gen Xers! Something hit me the other day: It's possible that we Gen Xers have lost our way.

While I know variance exists within generations, Gen Xers — universally — used to stand for something. We used to be disaffected and cynical, and we popularized alternative rock, grunge and indie rock. We used to be cool, man.

Now, I'm not so sure what we stand for. We sold out, man, and we sold out for cheap. So this is a call for us Gen Xers to get off our phones, stop being distracted, get informed and fight for something we believe in. It's time to return to our Gen X roots.

Considering how the United States' media appeals to the lowest common denominator, it's time to give up on the gross, mainstream pop culture of this country and seek information elsewhere (if you haven't already). I highly recommend using DW from Germany as a national/international news source, and I also recommend limiting news infotainment and social media to 10 minutes a day and getting off that darn phone.

Unfortunately, in our current attention economy — which is more accurately called the distraction economy — many of us consume ourselves with nonsense. Whether it be social media, video games, political b.s. or reels, we give away our time to the digital slop-o-sphere, and I contend we don't actually want to spend our time that way.

We need to return to our Gen X roots of the '90s, when we knew that we'd have to fight to keep our souls because the U.S. economy had grown so huge and cruel that corporate life couldn't possibly work for us. (And, yeah, we knew that way back in the '90s.)

Recently, DW published the International Rescue Committee's Top 10 crises the world can't ignore in 2026. Guess what? I did not see the presidential ballroom, Epstein files or mindless U.S. propaganda in echo chambers on the list.

Rather, I realized that, more or less, the U.S. has turned its back on the actual world's crises and instead, enabled crisis No. 2, Palestine, in which 70,000 have been killed, 80 percent of the buildings have been destroyed or damaged and 90 percent of the population has been displaced. What peacemakers we are!

The U.S. ended USAID this year, and I find this morally reprehensible. The world's largest economy killed a huge international humanitarian organization. Yes, it kept 17 percent of its budget and put that in the State Department, but this is a loss. USAID had been around since 1961, and it is estimated that it help save the lives of 90 million people in its existence.

Now, USAID is wrangled lawsuits, and do we ever hear about this in any U.S. news sources? I don't think U.S. citizens are meant to. We have some sort of two-party-echo-chamber system in which discussion of actual issues rarely happens. I believe the masses are meant to consume, consume and consume, mostly digitally, and be sucked into this distraction economy and just accept that.

So what are we to do? Well, remember that the Superchunk anthem says, "I'm working, but I'm not working for you..." We got to get off our phones and get to work.

My suggestion is to think of a cause that really matters to you and do something about it. Replace screen time with action. If you can't find a cause, then maybe replace it with creating some sort of art or craft. Let's replace all this distraction with something worth our time.

I believe this sentiment is leaking through U.S. media, too, thankfully. This week, the Associated Press ran a story about how the U.S. needs a return to volunteerism, and I agree with this. With the billionaires and oligarchs and their corporations obviously not stepping out to help societal ills whatsoever, we everyday individuals are forced to do that on some level. ... Might as well. 

While it's unrealistic to go completely without screen time, we can reclaim our lives by limiting our digital world and living the Gen X life we want where we actually help ourselves and others. Yeah, slack, mother******.