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Generation X is a term for a cohort of people born following the peak of the post-World War II baby boom, especially in Canada and the United States. While all sources agree the group includes at least some people born in the 1960s, the exact demographic boundaries vary depending on whether each source means people born just before the end of the boom, or just after, or just whoever happens to be twentysomething at the time.^[1] The term is used in demography, the social sciences, and marketing, though it is most often used in popular culture. The generation's influence over pop culture began in the 1980s and may have peaked in the 1990s.

Although the term Generation X goes back as far as the early 1960s, it was popularized by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, in which Coupland described the angst of those born between roughly 1960 and 1965, who, while technically part of the baby boom generation, felt no connection to its cultural icons. In Coupland's usage, the X of Generation X referred to the namelessness of a generation that was coming into an awareness of its existence as a separate group but feeling dwarfed and overshadowed by the Boomer generation of which it was ostensibly a part. Afterwards the term stretched to include more people, being appropriated by the generation following the Baby Boomers and being used by marketers throughout the 1990s to denote potential buyers in their twenties.