Gen Xers have taken a hit from the pandemic. But in midcareer and with bigger-than-average households, they remain too important a cohort for marketers to ignore. Thus, it’s essential see how their finances, shopping behavior, and digital usage shape up amid the pandemic.

Gen X: Digitally Adept, but with Deeper Pockets than Their Younger Relations. Gen Xers display solid, if not advanced, digital behaviors. They may not have been in the thick of the digital culture changes that took place over the past couple of decades, but they watched on with a vested interest.

While Gen Z grows, this year will mark the first-ever decline in the number of Gen X users. As parents, they took to Facebook in the 2000s and 2010s to post countless pictures of their kids, travels, and food. But that excitement has faded, while concerns about privacy, misinformation, and inflammatory content have risen.

They join Gen Xers and Boomers, whose ranks started slipping last year. Facebook Daily User Time Is Sliding. The pandemic-driven surge is over. This year, average daily user time on Facebook will fall by 2 minutes per day, to 30 minutes. By 2024, it will drop under 27 minutes, a figure not seen since 2011.

Spending less time waiting for a visit was most important to Gen Xers (ages 41 to 56) and boomers alike, as was travel time to appointments. Younger generations (Gen Zers and millennials) liked the ability to make an appointment quickly via a telehealth service. Cost was also cited by more Gen Zers and millennials than by Gen Xers and boomers.

Millennials and Gen X are still Facebook’s main users. Together, those two generations will make up more than half of Facebook’s US user base in 2022. Even as Gen Z’s user share rises, it won’t reach that of either Gen X or millennials through at least 2025. Facebook will add nearly 9 million US users between 2020 and 2025.

Younger consumers—Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers—are poised to inherit the biggest wealth transfer in history, making them a lucrative prize for banks. The change in financial asset value from 2020 to 2030 will amount to $30.4 trillion for Gen Xers and $6.4 trillion for millennials, according to US management company McKinsey.

Much like millennials and Gen Xers, Gen Zers believe loyalty and rewards programs are important when deciding on companies or brands to buy from.

Across generations, retirement is the No. 1 investing goal in the US. That said, Gen Z is far more likely to focus on getting rich or learning to invest than older age groups. While 81% of baby boomer investors have their eye on retirement—no surprise as they approach that milestone—just 35% of Gen Z investors consider it their main priority.

In certain situations, younger adults—including older Gen Zers and millennials—prefer digital tools for health-related scheduling, though not to the same extent as Gen Xers. Gen Z prefers digital care, but will opt for in-person, phone-based, or hybrid care if it means expediency and instant gratification.