What is an Oregon Trail Gen X (or Xennial)?

 

Photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture 

What is an Oregon Trail Gen X (or Xennial)?

by Jen Davies, nerd (and social scientist)

Nov 7, 2025

Note: There is no Google Maps here! This is demographics.

In demographics, generational patterns of attitude and beliefs are formed by major events and social trends during formative years (typically childhood and teen years). Looking at these generational patterns is sometimes helpful for discussing prevailing attitudes and social trends among large groups of North Americans. Some of the same trends can be seen globally, but my knowledge of these phenomena extend primarily to the USA and Canada, so that’s who I’m talking about.

Generation X - a name which was made to stick thanks to a book by the same name by a Canadian author, Douglas Copeland (see link above, it’s a great read) - is made up of people born at the end of the 1960s up to about 1980, and they became teenagers in the late 1980s and 1990s. If you have watched Stranger Things on Netflix then you have had a window into how we grew up: we were “free range” children in most ways you could imagine, though a lot of us also had jobs (paper routes, then fast food and whatnot) because the world economy was changing and life was more expensive, and our parents wanted us to learn responsibility. Our parents were Baby Boomers, responsibility mattered a lot to them. Our mothers entered the workforce so we learned to hang around with friends for long hours with little supervision, and let ourselves into our homes and be alone for a few hours after school and not burn it down - all without text messages/DMs or cell phones. You may have heard the term “latchkey kids” - that was us. As a result of all this unscheduled, unsupervised time we had a lot of space to think for ourselves and figure things out with friends. We talked (with our mouths) a lot, including over landline phones. If you have never watched this video, do, and know the adult here (cynically torturing these teens) is almost certainly a Oregon Trail Gen X (because it’s cruel but he’s hopeful they’ll catch on): https://youtu.be/oHNEzndgiFI?si=FC2cmojYyaCBnDnK 

The first Iraq war was the first war live-broadcasted into anyone's homes, and it scared the heck out of Gen X kids. They also saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the USSR as kids. Overall they learned about the failure of North American social movements in the 1970s to improve the lives of regular people, and the fake everything of the 80s, and settled on authenticity as a calling card. They were (and still are) distrustful and cynical. You can see it in the music they created: metal, grunge, alt-rock. They are now in their 40s and 50s, and they have cell phones but are happy to put them down - and they use them to actually call people. They use social media but understand that it's mostly a medium for advertising products and ideas, like a little TV in their pockets.

Millennials were born from around 1980 to the late 1990s, and were teenagers in the early 2000s. They grew up not really remembering a time before the Internet. They grew up with the social idea that technology could make anything possible, and they found friends and belonging in diverse communities on the Internet and through games. Their time tended to be more structured as children, and they grew up in economic turmoil but their parents were paying attention and provided emotional support. They are optimistic in spite of lots of very negative world events.

Between Generation X (born 1965-1980) and the Millennials (born 1980-2000), you can find the Oregon Trail Gen Xs, or the Xennials.

There was a lot of change going on in the 1990s, especially in technology and also media. Home computers arrived, as did the Internet, but math and communication were still very much “hands-on” and far from tech-enabled. It was a weird in-between period, which lasted longer in some rural places and among more traditional families, and it created a micro-generation usually framed for those born in the 1977-1983 period (roughly speaking), and as a result we have a weird in-between group of North Americans who do not hold all the attitudes of Gen X, or of the Millennials. We are the Oregon Trail Generation, or Xennials. We grew up without home computers as children (may have got one as a teenager though) so we are not technology advocates - we appreciate what tech can do for us, but learned how to do things manually and we’re proud of it.  We remember a time before the Internet, and we remember the patience required for dial-up. 

The Oregon Trail Gen Xs are named for a game which was not in any way fun. In our school classrooms, where there was often just a single computer with only one or two pieces of software, we were made to play a computer simulation called Oregon Trail. It was a life lesson based on the experiences of White settlers moving West at the behest of governments eager to steal land from Indigenous people (and Canada and the US were trying to establish the border between them). The game served to teach us that no matter how hard we would try or how creative we would be, any one of us could randomly die of dysentery at any time. The message we got was: life might be short, just do what you can and hope you live long enough to do the things you want. This was reinforced for us as late teens/young adults on Sept 11, 2001, and the rules for ideological warfare began to shift completely.

We’re cynical, but we really do care about people and what happens to the world.

We’re realists, but we’re hopeful that we’re wrong about our negative views.

We grew up with Tron, Robocop and Terminator (1 and 2) so we have NO faith in artificial intelligence to be our friends, but we appreciate the ways technology can make some things easier.

People who are in their 40s now (early or late) are very likely Xennials or Oregon Trail Gen Xs. We won’t rip your head off like true Gen Xers in their 50s and 60s might do, and we might even treat you kindly if you’re talking about things we like. We’ll even text/message you back if you use real words that we can understand - but you better pick up the phone if we call. 

#douglascoupland #generationx #xennials #oregontrail #lifelessons

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X 

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials 

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials