Boomer bedrocker or late achiever? The new rules for your generation

Are you swaggering through your 70s as a sexually adventurous “boomer bedrocker”? Or are you shuffling towards your 60th birthday as a lost “middlescent”, still wondering how to make your mark?

To a demographer or a brand consultant, you are more than an individual. You are a product of the era in which you were born — whether that makes you a cynical Gen Xer, or a buoyant millennial or an anxious tweenage Alpha.

Even in an age of hyper-personalised digital advertising, the idea that each generation has a distinctive character carries weight in the corporate world, said Fiona Harkin, director of foresight at The Future Laboratory, a consultancy whose clients include Chanel, Unilever, LVMH and Ikea. “This is still a very useful way for brands to understand consumers,” she said.

So what does her team’s latest research say about your generation?

Desire never retires. That’s one of the messages of a new report from The Future Laboratory. It highlights how a significant subset of the baby boomer generation — born between 1946 and 1964 — is refusing to go gentle into that good night, at least not without somebody to keep them company.

Half a century ago, the boomers ushered in the sexual revolution. In 1960, the invention of the pill gave them access to reliable contraception. And in the past decade or so, a spike in so-called “grey divorces” appears to have flooded the dating market with a glut of singletons in their 60s and 70s.

In the US, one in eight people aged between 57 and 85 is estimated to be in a “dating relationship” and about a third are unmarried. Across the West, “there is a later-life search for new relationship avenues,” Harkin says.

“Sex positive” role models like Kim Cattrall and Sting may have helped boost interest in “sexual wellness” and “exploration”. Feeld, an app aimed at singles and couples, has claimed that the number of boomers looking for threesomes increased by more than 500 per cent last year.

Brands are being urged to cash in: “Over-65s are hugely under-represented when it comes to sex — in health documents, popular culture and advertising — and often represented through an ageist lens,” says the report.

But the boomer’s sexual exploits have also fuelled a rising rate of sexually transmitted infections. In the past decade, STI rates among Canadians over the age of 65 have risen by 267 per cent for chlamydia, 340 per cent for syphilis and 388 per cent for gonorrhoea. This prompted Jems, a condom brand, to launch a campaign in which young family members were urged to speak to older ones about safe sex. “Talking about sex with your parents or grandparents may be awkward, but frankly, has never been more necessary,” it said.

It’s not a great time to be from Generation X. Born between 1965 and 1980, this is the generation most likely to be looking after both elderly parents and children. They’ve long been seen as a sceptical bunch, the most likely cohort to distrust the government.

But as they trudge through middle age, they’re feeling increasingly undervalued, according to Harkin. On the global stage, they’ve struggled to make an impression: boomers still account for nearly 60 per cent of the world’s heads of state, outnumbering Gen X leaders by three to one.

• Midlife loneliness: a packed diary, but something is missing

It’s a similar story in the workplace: by the time the average boomer was 50 in 2005, 65 of the 100 chief executives of Fortune 100 companies in the US came from that generation.

In 2021, when the average Gen Xer was the same age, they were in charge of only 23. It’s a sign of a broader delay in the transfer of power, property and influence that “has seriously affected Gen X’s earning power,” says Harkin — and, you’d imagine, their self-esteem.

Could there be a glimpse of light at the end of the Gen X tunnel? Increases in longevity mean that life beyond 50 is now “less about ageing and more about becoming a new you”, the research suggests.

Think of the entrepreneur Gregg Wallace’s fitness transformation, or how the Hollywood actress Drew Barrymore overcame addiction and now cherishes an “ultra-normal life”. Harkin predicts that for many Gen Xers, the traditional midlife crisis will be replaced by a more wholesome transformation — a “midlife chrysalis”. And that Gen Xers, despite their inveterate cynicism, will buy into the idea of “middlescence” — “an adult version of adolescence that provides space to grow and adapt ahead of the challenges in the second half of our lives”.

They may have no choice: the study also predicts that many Gen Xers (together with lots of boomers, millennials and Gen Zs) will have to keep on earning, at least part time, deep into their later years, as “worktirement” replaces retirement.

Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — are the largest generation in the UK as well as the most educated, and for a while it looked like they were set for a golden future. As teenagers, they often thought of themselves as being above average intelligence, according to Harkin’s research. They anticipated successful adult lives. Then came the financial crisis of 2007.

• Millennials set to become “richest generation in history”

They were “woefully unprepared for a reality in which they faced greater financial hardship than their parents, while finding it harder to get a good job and buy a house,” she says.

They have reached traditional milestones later than previous generations. In 1997, 55 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds in the UK were homeowners; in 2017, as the oldest millennials entered their mid-30s, this had fallen to 35 per cent. They are more likely to have children later, if at all. The average age of UK women at the birth of their first child rose by more than three years from 1990 to 2018, from 25.5 to 29.

Perhaps understandably, they’ve clung on to the toys they played with as children: Millennial Lego fans include Ed Sheeran, the singer, and Lego now puts on adult-only evenings where people can build things together.

In the US, Millennials are nearly twice as likely as Generation X or baby boomers to have relied on financial help from family members, with eight in ten having done so.

Yet despite these setbacks, they remain the most optimistic generation. It’s not that they won’t achieve their goals, says Harkin — it’s that they’ll have to wait. One role model could be Raye, the singer, who won seven Brit awards this month, a decade after her first self-released album.

In America, 84 per cent of Millennials say they feel upbeat about the future. They are reappraising what’s important in life and “finding new ways to thrive,” Harkin said.

Gen Z — born between 1997 and 2012 — are entering adulthood in a “complex landscape of climate catastrophe, pandemic afterquakes, information overload and tech-driven loneliness,” says the report.

No wonder they’re feeling burnt out. They campaigned as schoolchildren, inspired by Greta Thunberg’s climate activism. But has Covid, the cost of living crisis, a surge of geopolitical violence and a lack of progress on climate issues sapped their energy?

“As news of wildfires, droughts and extreme weather has consistently met with empty promises from governments and evasion by big corporations, the adrenaline has worn off,” Harkin said.

Gen Z, she argues, is defined by paradox. Many, like Billie Eilish, are teetotal — but addicted to social media. As a group, they avoid religion but seek spirituality and community; they are hyper-connected online but often lonely in real life.

And while nearly three quarters of them say that they want to shop sustainably, a third say that they are “addicted” to cheap fast fashion. “Burdened with the responsibility to provide solutions to the ‘polycrisis’ they’ve inherited, these young people are navigating a rocky path,” Harkin said.

In 2020, 73 per cent of Gen Z said that older generations couldn’t offer them meaningful advice as too much has changed in the world. “Without the tools or role models to help them enact the change they want to see, they find themselves paralysed,” she added.

Traditionally, parents have fretted about drugs, alcohol and teenage pregnancies. Nowadays, four in ten parents of Generation Alpha — children born between 2010 and 2024 — report being “extremely” or “very worried” about their offspring’s mental health.

• Young people are the least happy age group in the UK

The report suggests that they’re right to be concerned. The proportion of girls in the UK who describe themselves as “very happy” decreased from 40 per cent in 2009 to 17 per cent in 2023. The steepest decline was in those aged 7–10, from 57 per cent to 28 per cent. One theory is that social media is at least partly to blame — even though even the oldest Gen Alphas were below the age limit for platforms like TikTok until this year. Living through a pandemic and a cost of living crisis cannot have helped.

It’s too early to know how the Alphas will react. It’s possible, Harkin said, that they’ll learn from Gen Z’s mistakes and cultivate healthier online habits. Parents may intervene: Victoria Beckham has spoken about keeping her daughter Harper off social media for concern for her wellbeing.

Another idea in the report is that longer lifespans will change how they live. Gen X, Gen Z and the Millenials have all found the progress thwarted or slowed. The report suggests that Gen Alphas (whose parents are mostly Millennials) will make a virtue of this.

“Traditional life stages will be renegotiated,” it predicts. “Instead of considering young people living at home longer and having children later as ‘delayed adulthood’, the parlance will shift to ‘elongated childhood’. If humans are commonly living to 100 years, what is the hurry to take on responsibility at 18?”