The Debate Settled — Who Is The Best Generation Alive Today
It’s one of the great questions of our time, ranked somewhere between “is a hot dog a sandwich” and “why does my back hurt now, I was just sitting.”
Every generation is certain every other generation is the problem. So I’ve appointed myself judge, jury, and executioner of this debate. I’m going to break down every living generation—the good, the bad, the deeply concerning—and crown a definitive winner.
A word about my qualifications, which are none. I was born on the exact dividing line between Generation X and Millennials, in that mystical no-man’s-land the generation-namers couldn’t be bothered to label. Some people call us “Xennials.” I call us “the control group.”
I’m one of the few humans alive who remembers dial-up and knows how to clear a browser cache, even if I mostly use that second skill to hide search histories like “is my mole normal” and “how to fold a fitted sheet.”
I had a childhood with no cell phone, no internet, and the kind of unsupervised freedom that would get my parents reported today. I’d leave the house at 8 a.m. on a Saturday and return whenever, possibly bleeding, definitely feral. But I also got a computer at exactly the right age to become dangerous with it. I straddle both worlds—analog and digital, free-range and Wi-Fi-enabled. I am, essentially, Blade. A daywalker. I move between two realms and belong fully to neither.
Which is not to say I have it together. I do not. I’m a deeply average man who recently spent forty minutes assembling a chair, only to find I’d built it inside-out. I’m a bilingual mess, fluent in two eras of dysfunction. So with the authority vested in absolutely no one, let me tell you why every generation, including my own, is a disaster.
Baby Boomers (1946–1964)
What’s good about them: Genuinely, an incredible amount. They built things. They have pensions, houses they bought for the price of a sandwich, and a work ethic forged in an era when “burnout” wasn’t a word, it was just called “Tuesday.” They can fix a carburetor and survive a recession with nothing but a Folgers can full of nickels and pure spite.
What’s bad about them: They cannot, under any circumstances, locate the attachment in an email. They type full paragraphs into Google like they’re writing a letter to a wise old wizard. “Dear Google, please tell me, is the chicken still good?” They accidentally call you nineteen times a day and leave eleven-minute voicemails that are basically a podcast recorded entirely by a pocket. And they’re convinced one essential oil is locked in single combat with Big Pharma. (My own mother once asked me to “send her the internet.” I still don’t know what she wanted. I’m afraid to ask.)
Generation X (1965–1980)
What’s good about them: Effortlessly cool. The last people on Earth to experience genuine privacy. They invented sarcasm, grunge, and the art of not caring so hard it became their entire personality. They raised themselves, came home to empty houses, made their own snacks, and emerged self-sufficient and unbothered. A Gen Xer has never once asked for emotional validation and would visibly recoil if you offered it.
What’s bad about them: Nobody can find them. They’re the “oh right, that generation” generation. They’re so committed to being aloof they’ve opted out of the entire culture war, sitting in a hammock somewhere muttering “whatever” while the rest of us scream into our phones. Their cynicism is now load-bearing. You cannot get one to express genuine enthusiasm about anything without them immediately apologizing for it.
Millennials / Gen Y (1981–1996)
What’s good about them: Adaptable as heck. They grew up analog and went digital mid-stride, which—and I say this as a guy clinging to the edge of this very generation by my fingernails—is genuinely impressive. They care about things. They’ll unionize, they’ll go to therapy, they’ll talk openly about their feelings, and they make a genuinely excellent oat milk latte.
What’s bad about them: They will not stop telling you they’re tired. They’ve turned owning a houseplant into a personality and a side hustle into a survival strategy. They killed several industries (mayonnaise, doorbells, divorce) and refuse to apologize. And they’re still doing the thing where they put a Funko Pop on their work desk at age 41. (I will not say whether I own a Funko Pop. I will only say that if I did, it would be tastefully positioned.) Every sentence ends in a nervous “lol” because sincerity is terrifying.
Generation Z (1997–2012)
What’s good about them: Frighteningly competent with technology. Fluent in irony, deeply attuned to injustice, and unwilling to tolerate a single ounce of corporate nonsense. They’ll quit a bad job in a heartbeat and they’re right to. They invented a new language overnight and you don’t understand it, which is, frankly, the point.
What’s bad about them: They have the attention span of a doomscrolling goldfish. They text like punctuation is a hate crime. They think anything from before 2015 is a sepia-toned historical artifact and have called skinny jeans “ancient.” They cannot make a phone call without sweating through their shirt, though, in fairness, neither can I anymore. They’ve convinced me phone calls are weird, and now I screen my own mother.
Generation Alpha (2010–2024)
What’s good about them: Honestly? The jury’s out. They’re born swiping. Hand one a tablet and they’ll operate it more confidently than their parents operate a marriage. There’s raw potential here.
What’s bad about them: They think a magazine is a broken iPad. They’ll tap a printed photograph and grow visibly frustrated when it won’t zoom. They’re being raised by YouTube and the algorithm, which means their first words were “smash that subscribe button.” They have a skincare routine at age nine and say “rizz” in contexts no one can decode. Concerning. Monitoring the situation.
Generation Beta (2025–2039)
What’s good about them: Unknown. They are babies. They have not yet had the chance to disappoint me. This is, by definition, their best quality.
What’s bad about them: Give it time.
So here’s where I land. I’ve reviewed the candidates. I’ve weighed the evidence. And after promising to crown a winner, I’ve arrived at the only honest verdict: the best generation alive today doesn’t exist yet.
Because look at us. The Boomers broke the economy and blamed avocados. Gen X stopped paying attention around 1997 and never came back. Millennials turned their exhaustion into a brand and their healing journey into a podcast. Gen Z weaponized their phones and lost the ability to dial one. And Alpha, God help them, thinks a book is a tablet that died. We’re not a species at its peak. We’re the blooper reel that somehow got greenlit for nine seasons.
And yes, that includes me. Daywalker or not, I built a chair inside-out last week, and I once teared up at a yogurt commercial for a product that gives me gas. I’m not the hero of this story. I’m just the only person rude enough to grade everyone else while standing in the same burning building.
So my hope rests with some future generation we won’t live to insult. People competent enough to look back at all of us, in our doomscrolling, essential-oil-huffing, Funko-collecting glory, and feel the secondhand embarrassment we so richly deserve. “My God,” they’ll say. “One of them cried about yogurt. How did the species survive?”
It didn’t deserve to. But here we are.
The debate is settled. The best generation alive today? None of us. Not even close. Better luck next century.