Yet Gen X isn’t just a time period; it’s also, as Rushkoff writes in “The GenX Reader,” “a culture, a demographic, an outlook, a style, an economy, a scene, a political ideology, an aesthetic, an age, a decade and a literature.” It’s a moment, a mood, an ethos and an enduring way of being, the hallmark characteristics of which — anticorporatism, anti-authoritarianism, ironic detachment, artistic independence, an existential horror of selling out and a live-and-let-live philosophy of life — feel like the antidote to a lot of what’s currently wrong in our culture. Lately, I’ve noticed that whenever I recount stories of my youth, the response is one of intense yearning, especially from young people, who never knew that mythical time before social media turned everyone into mirror stars and ruined social life.

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Without doomscrolling, texting, emailing, online shopping, tweeting or posting, there seemed to be eons to fill. I remember lying on my carpeted bedroom floor, waiting for a particular song to come on the radio so I could record it. I remember long afternoons spent reading books that were far too adult for me, like “The Thorn Birds” (1977) or the “Flowers in the Attic” series (1979-87). “You had to figure out a way to keep yourself entertained,” says Molly Ringwald, 57, the queen of Gen X films, who starred in “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink” (1986). “I was always creating or collaging or putting outfits together, singing, dancing. I didn’t have this little box to distract me.” Our focus wasn’t fractured, our attention spans hadn’t yet been destroyed. “You were always just working on your next script or your next idea — it’s not like the level of distraction now, and just being spread so thin,” says the director Gregg Araki, 65, who’s best known for the films in his queer “Teen Apocalypse” trilogy — “Totally F***ed Up” (1994), “The Doom Generation” (1995) and “Nowhere” (1997) — and who still doesn’t use social media.

As a Gen X’er—class of 1974—this is exactly why things felt different. We had the time and space to solve our own problems, to pick up instruments and actually learn them, to be fully present with our friends. Most importantly, we had the luxury of being bored. We could experience the world through our own eyes, without a million influencers telling us who we should be.

Gen X - the last generation to live life on its own terms.