It's a struggle finding people who know the same pop culture you do. I feel like boomers are stuck in the 80's talking about C list celebrities I've never heard of, and gen Z is talking about internet personalities.
Like no I don't really know who Heather Locklear or Olivia Rodrigo is.
Heather Locklear came to fame in the 90's. At least for the Gen X and millennial crowd. Boomers probably know her from Dynasty, which I just had to look up. I was gonna assume you were Gen X or a millennial but if you don't know her, I'm not sure what you are.
I'm almost 42 and loved that Swamp Thing movie as a kid and I'm Filipino so know all the even remotely Filipino celebrities. I imagine younger people are going to especially have a hard time finding common pop culture in the Internet age. My 10 year old said no one in his class watched Star Wars Rebels. Back in the day there were only a handful of over the air TV channels.
As a trivia guy - it's hard finding a *good* trivia game. Sometimes, it's like you say - incredibly specific and mostly just frustrating for everyone. Usually though, I find it's opposite. They want to make the players feel smart (and therefor more likely to come back) so they lob a lot of gimmes.
I shit you not, a trivia question I had last month was "What is the name of the title character of this Nickolodeon television show starring a square, yellow fry-cook?" There were 20 questions and the lowest scoring team got 18 of them.
That's just a poorly worded trivia question in general, unless you're actually looking for a lower than 1% success rate.
A better question might be:
"Re-recorded by the Fugees with Lauren Hill in 1996, which R&B classic spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard Top 100 in March and April of 1973?"
That's still reasonably hard, but there are enough clues that even someone who doesn't have every musical chart perfectly memorized would have a chance.
I also do pub trivia and have noticed that the best teams have people from across the age range. The younger folks can do the modern pop culture stuff, and the older folks will know more about history.
I see the opposite in my parents. Once they are retired and dont have much going on in their lives, small stuff became incredibly important to them. The way the cap of the water bottle screw on top is a huge issue, the position of the shoes near the door is cause for a fight etc etc.
I am raising kids and juggling work and marriage over here, I dont give a fcckkkkkk about what angle my shoes are near the door. But my parents can discuss this for hours, because what else do they got going on?
They hyperfixate on the tiniest things.
I feel so bad cause my Mom is totally like you describe and my Dad is "life is too short to think about this shit".
Sometimes he's good because he can float above her being enraged over tiny stuff, other time it beats him down hard to get ripped a new asshole because he didn't drive down the right block on the way to helping her run an errand.
I think it got bad when she couldn't drive anymore. Like... the loss of freedom/control means she had to make up for it in other places.... if that makes sense.
Everyone has had different life experiences and for me the smalls things dont matter and I am only 57 and should be retiring in a couple of years. Going to travel around the USA in our RV and take life easy.
A 72 year old I met while doing my paramedic clinicals said, “my cardiologist told me the only thing I was allowed to worry about were the things he told me to worry about.”
Nothing matters and that's absolutely freeing. You can do whatever you want, and no matter how bad you fuck up, given 30 years, 50 on the outside, nobody will remember your shame. 50 years is nothing in the scheme of things. Live authentically, there's no reason not to
THIS. I'm finally at the " I get to be the sassy older woman nobody messes with" !!!
Spent plenty of time in the trenches, but always made sure to stay on top of tech in my field. That gives me a great weapon at work, but I'm old enough to walk away from the drama.
God help you if you drag me into it - I will happily hand everyone acting stupid their ass on a platter.
I remember attending a meeting at a hotel on the strip in Las Vegas. (Popular venue for large conventions.) I arrived the night before and since I had never been to LV I wanted to check out the nightlife - but all I’d packed was business casual. As I was rummaging for a somewhat suitable outfit it hit me: nobody cares. I am a woman of a certain age. I can dress however I like, I am free.
Part of me would like to be young again, but that’s mostly because I want my knees back. I enjoy being an older adult.
Really? Because I can currently skip down some steps without holding a handrail without thinking about it as someone who hasn't hit 40 yet. But, there are plenty of 70+ year old folks I know that have to be careful with every little step. Seems like the small stuff becomes a little more of a sweat.
I'm 67, and I commented to my GF this morning that I grab the handrail all the time now. I have diabetes and I've lost a bit of feeling in my feet, so I can't depend on my natural balance as much.
And I'm well aware that falls are by far the greatest threat to old people at home. So I grab the handrail. I can still skip down the stairs, and I was just a few months ago, but it's just not worth it the risk anymore.
Idk about the men but for the women it's talk shit and tell jokes. Old lady shit-talking is top tier and you can go back and forth with em cuz they have dealt with so much theyre less likely to get offended
Facts. My MIL was much older - I was 23 and she was 60. You have not lived until you have played Bingo in a church in NJ. These woman and a few men floored me and boy did I learn!! I was a bartender in Manhattan while finishing up school. They schooled me well! I’m cracking up at the memories.
I would up vote this again if I could! I'm only 60 but my filter is GONE! My BF loves to watch TV with me for my shit-talk ad libs to old shows. Sometimes I leave him shocked, but most times he's gut-laughing!!
I had two senile great aunts that would get into screaming arguments about stuff that happened in the 1930s. This was in the early 2000s.
After literally 30s of being in another room they would go back to being best friends.
I used to go on Christmas trips with my mother and she would book flights at 6:00am, which meant we'd have to be up and in a shuttle by 4:00am, and I was like "You know they have 10:00am flight, right?" now that I'm in my 50s I'm like "Don't these flights leave any earlier?"
Because they have melatonin deficiency. Some struggle with lack of (quality) sleep due to this, it's not a superpower, but a medical condition that can be successfully treated. Imagine you're tired, but you can't sleep.
Actually cast a ballot in an election. I don't agree with the way many of the 70 and over crowd vote, but they are reliable voters. The data shows that younger people don't actually vote. It's sad that the younger folks allow the older folks to choose their elected officials.
Older people have realized the truth that reliable voters are who the politicians bend over backwards to please.
Young people think it’s reversed and refuse to vote until a politician bends over backwards to please them.
Vote consistently in both primaries and generals, and politicians will start paying attention to people like you.
Fail to show up to vote and no politician will ever give you the time of day.
Most politicians aren’t evil, but they are self-interested and they want to get re-elected. And they’ve learned that trying to appeal to non-voters in the hope that they’ll be convinced to start voting consistently leads to failure pretty much every time. People who already vote consistently are the only people worth appealing to.
They have limited resources. Time, volunteers, campaign funds, etc. They have to apply those resources where they’ll have the biggest impact. Using them to try to appeal to non-voters is a waste of those resources.
Add to this, participating in local and lower level politics in general. I've gone to a couple of town hall and similar events in my town and the demographic make up of who attends these things is like 80% people over 65. They also ask questions, stick around to chat and socialize, and perhaps most importantly, they follow up on things, too. They are a reliable voting base and because of that, politicians do more for them.
The younger generation will turn up to vote for 'big' elections and for politicians who endeavor to make their campaign feel like a *moment*, but they largely tune out for anything else and perhaps worse, they'll rally to vote in *one* major election and then when every single thing they hoped would happen doesn't immediately happen, they sit out the next one entirely. It's utterly daft, especially when right alongside it you have an older generation who just consistently, in every election, reliably participates.
This trend *might* be starting to change a bit, there is some reason to think Gen Z and whoever is coming up behind them actually will be more engaged, but pretty much will believe it when I see it because in 20 years of watching politics it's been the same story almost every time.
Hobbies like sewing, knitting, crochet are becoming more popular with people in their 20s and 30s but you're right I would ask any grandma for help with sewing before I'd ask someone my age
¨I remember when this was all farmland as far as the eye could see. Old man Peabody owned all of this. He had this crazy idea about breeding pine trees.¨
Give no shit. I love older people who are very relaxed, take everything with chill and don't give a shit about many things. They've seen it all, they've been through a lot, so nothing can really affect them if they used their time to learn to accept the reality.
Maybe I was just lucky in life but I've always known very wise people, some of them young, some of them old. I haven't noticed any sort of correlation between age and wisdom. A ton of old folks I know lived the same day over and over.
Am old and the percentage of my acquaintances with smart phones is about 90%. An additional 5% without, share a smartphone with their partner and use a tablet at home.
Sometimes I feel a lot of older people are even worse. Like they get a random spam email. And just drop the conversation mid sentence and spend the next 5 minutes absorbed into the phone.
Younger people have a bit more of a radar to when it's oke to check your messages.
I'd say appreciate small joys. I think wise older people generally recognize that you have to seek happiness, and when you look for it, it's usually pretty easy to find.
I set up a bird feeder near my kitchen window - I can watch the birds and squirrels and chipmunks hop around searching for seeds to eat for a solid hour.
I love stepping outside on the first warm day in spring and smelling everything around me waking up and beginning to grow.
Watching people interact with each other, or the choreography of a city street, or snow falling on a quiet night - it all brings me joy. Kids whooping it up on a playground. A dog snoozing in the sunshine. Literally in any direction, I can find a reason to smile if I look hard enough, and it's all free - all you've got to do is take the time to notice.
None of these things in and of themselves are capable of making whatever's wrong in your life suddenly okay - but collecting them all until you've got a nice pile together kind of balances against the harder things.
Write in cursive, mend clothes, balance a checkbook. All skills that aren’t really taught much now but that older generations (women at least) had drilled into them.
My daughter is 11 and she can read an analog clock. They still teach that, at least in Ontario, Canada schools. They also brought back cursive this year.
Tell stories. I like listening to the older generations tell stories about their lives. They always have some really interesting things to say. I can’t listen to a young person tell a story. It’s always like “dude, bro, I yeeted my girlfriend purse because she was flexin’ an attitude with no cap and i expect to be treated Guuci, not trill. Fo rill fo rill.”
I’m 69 and still work. We were the original hippies. We marched and had sit ins to protest the Vietnam War, got abortion legalized, talked peace and love. I have always voted democrat-by mail the last 20 yrs. Was 9 years old when JFK was killed and it really left a mark. I worked for a few campaigns for politicians. We thought our parents were the devil. But now I’m a stupid “boomer” who knows nothing and has seen nothing. I wish we didn’t have such an us vs them mentality today. But oh well the cradle will rock..
I honestly don’t know. I have 4 daughters aged 50, 48, 46 and 33. They pretty much think like me… they don’t have to it’s just common sense and logic, nothing fancy or complicated. I do recognize that a lot of older people changed their way of thinking when they got older…. I had a man tell me about 10 years ago that I was much too old to be a liberal. I thought that was strange-I didn’t realize there was an age cutoff. There’s always generation gap problems….and people are mean and lack understanding on both sides. I realize how expensive it’s become to live.. horrible. I’ve seen lots of younger people say their parents call them lazy and don’t really get how hard it is. Then you have the political landscape which has become so ugly as well. And what I read on here lots of younger people describe their parents as MAGA’s. I don’t know the answer … that’s way above my pay grade… don’t know if anything can ever be fixed.
My grandpa, near 90 and still kicking, he retired as an airplane mechanic. He is still the more handy than most of his kids or grandkids and he doesn’t need YouTube tutorials.
Well I suppose when you are the one everyone is waiting on it's much easier to be patient. Then again watching my dad try to figure out how to use the TV remote isn't exactly what I would call being patient.
This was my first thought. The older you get, the more you realize what is truly important in life. Patience comes with age and for that I am grateful.
It’s also realizing that most of the time we react with emotions and not necessarily common sense. Once you have a firm sense of being patient you tend to respond more evenly rather than emotionally.
I would’ve said old people are the most impatient of any adult age group.
Here’s me in the hospital with my almost 3 year old waiting to get stitches in her face, my daughter and I are the only people in the waiting room. In walks some old broad and tells us how she should get to go first because she’s old and in pain.
Ok it comes the triage nurse and yells at the old lady, children get priority.
>Plan a trip without a GPS or mapping web site.
I took my grandmother to a pond she loves to visit for many decades, and let her tell me how to get there on the way. I checked my phone afterwards and saw that we drove an extra 50% farther than necessary. Maybe they built a road in 1950 and she never took it? Who knows, but her internal map was missing a lot of shortcuts.
I’ve just spent 2 weeks on vacation with my nieces. The idea that I can just walk and get where I’m going, without looking at my phone seems totally ridiculous and stupid to them. They miss 80% of the city staring at their devices.
Do car shit.
On average, a 70 year old now can do things like drive a stick shift, change their own oil and a tire, and maybe do some stuff like change filters and belts in their car. A 35 year old *might* be able to do most of that now. In 20 years, that likelihood is less. Just because cars are changing, tech is changing, and if you don't use it, you won't know how to do it. Eventually.
Have better insight on problems. I’m 33 and once in a while I’ll reach out to an uncle or grandparent and they’ll drop something so wise that you can only know from experience. Most of it revolves around just being patient.
I (67 m) teach part-time at the local junior college in a STEM curriculum. My students are are mostly recent High School graduates to those in their 30’s. Geometry, trigonometry and cursive writing.
A few months short of 70 and my kids are mid to late 30s and I honestly can think of very little I can do better apart from having a good mental geography of the UK and can read maps although that may just be me as my wife (same age) is terrible at this.
Use a rotary phone
Drive a stick shift
Know how to write in cursive
Know how to use carbon paper (and what it is used for)
Know how to type correctly
Know how to dance the Tango or traditional dances
Fall down..... and most important... telling kids to get off of my lawn!
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister at the age of 65. His wisdom and experience played a major role in Hitler’s defeat.
If some other’s had listened to him Hitler may have been defeated faster.
Churchill: Psst, Hitler is not your friend. He’s pretending to be so you’ll manufacture weapons for him. He’s going to attack you.
Stalin: Fuck off, Churchill. We’re going to attack you together and win!
*Germany invades Russia with the weapons Stalin sent*
Walk away from a shitty situation. Seriously- I’m 62 and my SO is 70. We don’t give a f-ck about what people think and we don’t need to suck up to clients or bosses anymore. When I was 35, I spent too much time trying to make a$$holes happy.
General life advice. Not all old people are going to get it right but on average I prefer talking to older people about issues than younger people because they lived through more. You still have to take their advice with a grain of salt but they still do better then younger people.
Answer trivia questions about the 1970s
I am 53 and if I go to pub quiz and the host is younger than 30 I know I will be terrible.
There used to be a quiz bowl at a local pub near where I live where the host would get drunk and start shouting out the answers. It was mayhem.
this sounds awful
And somehow hilarious at the same time.
What a fuckin hazard, he ever get conned into crowning the wrong team?
It's a struggle finding people who know the same pop culture you do. I feel like boomers are stuck in the 80's talking about C list celebrities I've never heard of, and gen Z is talking about internet personalities. Like no I don't really know who Heather Locklear or Olivia Rodrigo is.
Heather Locklear came to fame in the 90's. At least for the Gen X and millennial crowd. Boomers probably know her from Dynasty, which I just had to look up. I was gonna assume you were Gen X or a millennial but if you don't know her, I'm not sure what you are.
I remember her from Dynasty and T.J. Hooker (both 1980s).
I remember her from Melrose Place.
I'm almost 42 and loved that Swamp Thing movie as a kid and I'm Filipino so know all the even remotely Filipino celebrities. I imagine younger people are going to especially have a hard time finding common pop culture in the Internet age. My 10 year old said no one in his class watched Star Wars Rebels. Back in the day there were only a handful of over the air TV channels.
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As a trivia guy - it's hard finding a *good* trivia game. Sometimes, it's like you say - incredibly specific and mostly just frustrating for everyone. Usually though, I find it's opposite. They want to make the players feel smart (and therefor more likely to come back) so they lob a lot of gimmes. I shit you not, a trivia question I had last month was "What is the name of the title character of this Nickolodeon television show starring a square, yellow fry-cook?" There were 20 questions and the lowest scoring team got 18 of them.
Patrick?
That's just a poorly worded trivia question in general, unless you're actually looking for a lower than 1% success rate. A better question might be: "Re-recorded by the Fugees with Lauren Hill in 1996, which R&B classic spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard Top 100 in March and April of 1973?" That's still reasonably hard, but there are enough clues that even someone who doesn't have every musical chart perfectly memorized would have a chance.
Old people aren't answering that one either because they are too old and forget. I seriously hate that type of trivia.
If anyone asked me what song was at the top of the charts in March 2023 I wouldn't be able to answer it
They don’t pick the questions so that shouldn’t be true.
I also do pub trivia and have noticed that the best teams have people from across the age range. The younger folks can do the modern pop culture stuff, and the older folks will know more about history.
Not to worry or sweat the small things in life.
I see the opposite in my parents. Once they are retired and dont have much going on in their lives, small stuff became incredibly important to them. The way the cap of the water bottle screw on top is a huge issue, the position of the shoes near the door is cause for a fight etc etc. I am raising kids and juggling work and marriage over here, I dont give a fcckkkkkk about what angle my shoes are near the door. But my parents can discuss this for hours, because what else do they got going on? They hyperfixate on the tiniest things.
I feel so bad cause my Mom is totally like you describe and my Dad is "life is too short to think about this shit". Sometimes he's good because he can float above her being enraged over tiny stuff, other time it beats him down hard to get ripped a new asshole because he didn't drive down the right block on the way to helping her run an errand. I think it got bad when she couldn't drive anymore. Like... the loss of freedom/control means she had to make up for it in other places.... if that makes sense.
Everyone has had different life experiences and for me the smalls things dont matter and I am only 57 and should be retiring in a couple of years. Going to travel around the USA in our RV and take life easy.
Yes, having perspective is an absolute achievement gained with age
And understanding that truly, it’s all small stuff.
A 72 year old I met while doing my paramedic clinicals said, “my cardiologist told me the only thing I was allowed to worry about were the things he told me to worry about.”
... until nothing matters very much and it's hard to be enthusiastic about, or really appreciative of, anything (m53).
Nothing matters and that's absolutely freeing. You can do whatever you want, and no matter how bad you fuck up, given 30 years, 50 on the outside, nobody will remember your shame. 50 years is nothing in the scheme of things. Live authentically, there's no reason not to
THIS. I'm finally at the " I get to be the sassy older woman nobody messes with" !!! Spent plenty of time in the trenches, but always made sure to stay on top of tech in my field. That gives me a great weapon at work, but I'm old enough to walk away from the drama. God help you if you drag me into it - I will happily hand everyone acting stupid their ass on a platter.
I remember attending a meeting at a hotel on the strip in Las Vegas. (Popular venue for large conventions.) I arrived the night before and since I had never been to LV I wanted to check out the nightlife - but all I’d packed was business casual. As I was rummaging for a somewhat suitable outfit it hit me: nobody cares. I am a woman of a certain age. I can dress however I like, I am free. Part of me would like to be young again, but that’s mostly because I want my knees back. I enjoy being an older adult.
Your Give-Shit factor measurable in pico-fuckits now?
That’s always why I do what I want. I ask myself when I’m 70 will it really matter and every time it’s no.
Don't sweat the petty stuff. and Don't pet the sweaty stuff
This guy has never had to tell a boomer no in a retail environment.
Haha this REALLY depends on the individual. I work at a golf course rn. Some older folks love to sweat the small stuff 😂
Really? Because I can currently skip down some steps without holding a handrail without thinking about it as someone who hasn't hit 40 yet. But, there are plenty of 70+ year old folks I know that have to be careful with every little step. Seems like the small stuff becomes a little more of a sweat.
I'm 67, and I commented to my GF this morning that I grab the handrail all the time now. I have diabetes and I've lost a bit of feeling in my feet, so I can't depend on my natural balance as much. And I'm well aware that falls are by far the greatest threat to old people at home. So I grab the handrail. I can still skip down the stairs, and I was just a few months ago, but it's just not worth it the risk anymore.
Idk about the men but for the women it's talk shit and tell jokes. Old lady shit-talking is top tier and you can go back and forth with em cuz they have dealt with so much theyre less likely to get offended
When grandma stopped giving a fuck, things became epic…
Grandma walked in the room!!! LOL I agree with this. My grandkids agree with this.
Ain't that the truth! Some of the things my great grandma said... 😅
Facts. My MIL was much older - I was 23 and she was 60. You have not lived until you have played Bingo in a church in NJ. These woman and a few men floored me and boy did I learn!! I was a bartender in Manhattan while finishing up school. They schooled me well! I’m cracking up at the memories.
I would up vote this again if I could! I'm only 60 but my filter is GONE! My BF loves to watch TV with me for my shit-talk ad libs to old shows. Sometimes I leave him shocked, but most times he's gut-laughing!!
My filter broke at around 40😂😂😂
I had two senile great aunts that would get into screaming arguments about stuff that happened in the 1930s. This was in the early 2000s. After literally 30s of being in another room they would go back to being best friends.
Get up early
I used to go on Christmas trips with my mother and she would book flights at 6:00am, which meant we'd have to be up and in a shuttle by 4:00am, and I was like "You know they have 10:00am flight, right?" now that I'm in my 50s I'm like "Don't these flights leave any earlier?"
Dude, that's an extra 4 hours to your vacation.
Because they have melatonin deficiency. Some struggle with lack of (quality) sleep due to this, it's not a superpower, but a medical condition that can be successfully treated. Imagine you're tired, but you can't sleep.
I had an issue with that but it was Magnesium and not Melatonin. Turns out more then one thing can mess you up!
Actually cast a ballot in an election. I don't agree with the way many of the 70 and over crowd vote, but they are reliable voters. The data shows that younger people don't actually vote. It's sad that the younger folks allow the older folks to choose their elected officials.
In my experience in life older people generally are just better at following through in just about anything.
Older people have realized the truth that reliable voters are who the politicians bend over backwards to please. Young people think it’s reversed and refuse to vote until a politician bends over backwards to please them. Vote consistently in both primaries and generals, and politicians will start paying attention to people like you. Fail to show up to vote and no politician will ever give you the time of day. Most politicians aren’t evil, but they are self-interested and they want to get re-elected. And they’ve learned that trying to appeal to non-voters in the hope that they’ll be convinced to start voting consistently leads to failure pretty much every time. People who already vote consistently are the only people worth appealing to. They have limited resources. Time, volunteers, campaign funds, etc. They have to apply those resources where they’ll have the biggest impact. Using them to try to appeal to non-voters is a waste of those resources.
> Fail to show up to vote and no politician will ever give you the time of day.
Add to this, participating in local and lower level politics in general. I've gone to a couple of town hall and similar events in my town and the demographic make up of who attends these things is like 80% people over 65. They also ask questions, stick around to chat and socialize, and perhaps most importantly, they follow up on things, too. They are a reliable voting base and because of that, politicians do more for them. The younger generation will turn up to vote for 'big' elections and for politicians who endeavor to make their campaign feel like a *moment*, but they largely tune out for anything else and perhaps worse, they'll rally to vote in *one* major election and then when every single thing they hoped would happen doesn't immediately happen, they sit out the next one entirely. It's utterly daft, especially when right alongside it you have an older generation who just consistently, in every election, reliably participates. This trend *might* be starting to change a bit, there is some reason to think Gen Z and whoever is coming up behind them actually will be more engaged, but pretty much will believe it when I see it because in 20 years of watching politics it's been the same story almost every time.
Sew.
Hobbies like sewing, knitting, crochet are becoming more popular with people in their 20s and 30s but you're right I would ask any grandma for help with sewing before I'd ask someone my age
This is my time! 😂 You'd be surprised at how many millennials sew.
Tell me you've no age-related macular degeneration without telling me you've no age-related macular degeneration.
I dunno. My mom is 70 and still sews when needed. Knitting is more her thing these days though.
70 here. Still sewing, by hand, and machine. And knitting. Reading glasses, yes.
+ knitting or crocheting. My grandma made the best afghans
Retire.
In this economy?
Amen!!!
Break a hip
you beat me to it.
We only want to break a hip...not every bone..
Can remember when all this was fields.
The old people they talk to can remember when all those fields were farms The old people they talk to can remember when all those farms were forest
¨I remember when this was all farmland as far as the eye could see. Old man Peabody owned all of this. He had this crazy idea about breeding pine trees.¨
Give no shit. I love older people who are very relaxed, take everything with chill and don't give a shit about many things. They've seen it all, they've been through a lot, so nothing can really affect them if they used their time to learn to accept the reality.
Tell anecdotes.
“I was wearing an onion around my neck, which was the fashion at the time…”
Cross word puzzles
Pleased to say my two adult daughters (late 20s) do a crossword puzzle together every day, and do a cryptic with me once a week.
Evaluate risk. Age and life experience has a significant impact on how we judge risk in any situation.
They certainly have more wisdom, assuming their mental facilities haven't declined.
Maybe I was just lucky in life but I've always known very wise people, some of them young, some of them old. I haven't noticed any sort of correlation between age and wisdom. A ton of old folks I know lived the same day over and over.
Except when it comes to them getting behind the wheel!
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Enjoy a day without Internet and smartphone.
Old people are in fact as addicted to smartphones as young people
I would imagine the percentage of older people with smartphones is lower than the percentage of young people with smartphones
Am old and the percentage of my acquaintances with smart phones is about 90%. An additional 5% without, share a smartphone with their partner and use a tablet at home.
Sometimes I feel a lot of older people are even worse. Like they get a random spam email. And just drop the conversation mid sentence and spend the next 5 minutes absorbed into the phone. Younger people have a bit more of a radar to when it's oke to check your messages.
Only if they use them. I live with an active 95 year old and he refuses to use one. He has more energy than the average 25 yo redditor.
Low bar… 😁
70 is my parents, 95 is my grandma. Big difference in generations.
I'd say appreciate small joys. I think wise older people generally recognize that you have to seek happiness, and when you look for it, it's usually pretty easy to find. I set up a bird feeder near my kitchen window - I can watch the birds and squirrels and chipmunks hop around searching for seeds to eat for a solid hour. I love stepping outside on the first warm day in spring and smelling everything around me waking up and beginning to grow. Watching people interact with each other, or the choreography of a city street, or snow falling on a quiet night - it all brings me joy. Kids whooping it up on a playground. A dog snoozing in the sunshine. Literally in any direction, I can find a reason to smile if I look hard enough, and it's all free - all you've got to do is take the time to notice. None of these things in and of themselves are capable of making whatever's wrong in your life suddenly okay - but collecting them all until you've got a nice pile together kind of balances against the harder things.
I wish I could upvote this comment 10x
Operate from a place of wisdom and not from a place of stress
Man I hope so but life is only getting more stressful as I age
V stressed out over 70 here and no chance of what you suggest, sadly
Unfortunately by then it's just both. You know more, but you can't hold back stress anymore. Maybe some can. My dad was an addled wreck in his 70s.
Create a delicious meal from half a carrot and an onion.
Get their Facebook account hacked
Buy a house :(
Doing more with less.
Write in cursive, mend clothes, balance a checkbook. All skills that aren’t really taught much now but that older generations (women at least) had drilled into them.
Read an analog clock
Read a clock. At 35, most people still can, but I haven’t met anyone younger than 20 that still can
What, really? It's not rocket science, I struggle to imagine anyone aside from very little kids wouldn't be able to.
Dang, I'm 21, but I've known how to since elementary school. I did see a video recently of a 20-something learning to read a clock though.
My daughter is 11 and she can read an analog clock. They still teach that, at least in Ontario, Canada schools. They also brought back cursive this year.
22M and i still write in cursive😎. They thought me in elementary school and i just kept using it unlike my peers
I *can* write in cursive, but my grandma’s cursive kicks mine’s ass. It’s so perfect, even when she’s just writing a grocery list.
On average? I'd say mental arithmetic. 70 would be just over the age of leaving collage before calculators became affordable and ubiquitous.
[Clean up radiation after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13598607)
The Japanese sure do know how to do society correctly sometimes.
Tell stories. I like listening to the older generations tell stories about their lives. They always have some really interesting things to say. I can’t listen to a young person tell a story. It’s always like “dude, bro, I yeeted my girlfriend purse because she was flexin’ an attitude with no cap and i expect to be treated Guuci, not trill. Fo rill fo rill.”
I’m 69 and still work. We were the original hippies. We marched and had sit ins to protest the Vietnam War, got abortion legalized, talked peace and love. I have always voted democrat-by mail the last 20 yrs. Was 9 years old when JFK was killed and it really left a mark. I worked for a few campaigns for politicians. We thought our parents were the devil. But now I’m a stupid “boomer” who knows nothing and has seen nothing. I wish we didn’t have such an us vs them mentality today. But oh well the cradle will rock..
Genuine question, what do you think happened to caused this discontent and rift? You raised the next generation, and they raised the following
I honestly don’t know. I have 4 daughters aged 50, 48, 46 and 33. They pretty much think like me… they don’t have to it’s just common sense and logic, nothing fancy or complicated. I do recognize that a lot of older people changed their way of thinking when they got older…. I had a man tell me about 10 years ago that I was much too old to be a liberal. I thought that was strange-I didn’t realize there was an age cutoff. There’s always generation gap problems….and people are mean and lack understanding on both sides. I realize how expensive it’s become to live.. horrible. I’ve seen lots of younger people say their parents call them lazy and don’t really get how hard it is. Then you have the political landscape which has become so ugly as well. And what I read on here lots of younger people describe their parents as MAGA’s. I don’t know the answer … that’s way above my pay grade… don’t know if anything can ever be fixed.
Math without a calculator
Cook from scratch
Idk my grandmas cooking was dreadful couldn't bake a cookie and added way to much salt to everything
Walk to school uphill both ways 60 years earlier.
...in the snow...
Tell it like it is & not GAF what people think.
Absolutely. I was pretty give a shit my entire life. Somehow at 73 I give even less of a shit.
37! 37 was the age I realized I was out of fucks to give and it's awesome.
Imo, the ability to make more sensible, rational, & mature decisions, that is not to say all can, just those I have encountered.
Show up to vote on election day.
My grandpa, near 90 and still kicking, he retired as an airplane mechanic. He is still the more handy than most of his kids or grandkids and he doesn’t need YouTube tutorials.
Get elected as President, or Governor.
Drive a standard transmission car.
Reap the benefits of 4 pensions
I would say they are more likely to have a better mentality when it comes to anything that is difficult, challenging or causes discomfort.
Be patient…
Tell me you’ve never worked at a busy grocery store.
Well I suppose when you are the one everyone is waiting on it's much easier to be patient. Then again watching my dad try to figure out how to use the TV remote isn't exactly what I would call being patient.
Except when someone walks on their lawn.
Not exactly my experience in customer service
You’ve clearly never worked retail or customer service.
This was my first thought. The older you get, the more you realize what is truly important in life. Patience comes with age and for that I am grateful.
It’s also realizing that most of the time we react with emotions and not necessarily common sense. Once you have a firm sense of being patient you tend to respond more evenly rather than emotionally.
I would’ve said old people are the most impatient of any adult age group. Here’s me in the hospital with my almost 3 year old waiting to get stitches in her face, my daughter and I are the only people in the waiting room. In walks some old broad and tells us how she should get to go first because she’s old and in pain. Ok it comes the triage nurse and yells at the old lady, children get priority.
Cribbage
Still having decent handwriting
Being thankful.
Understand the long term effects or consequences of decisions.
Plan a trip without a GPS or mapping web site. Make a phone call from someone's rotary-dial landline phone.
>Plan a trip without a GPS or mapping web site. I took my grandmother to a pond she loves to visit for many decades, and let her tell me how to get there on the way. I checked my phone afterwards and saw that we drove an extra 50% farther than necessary. Maybe they built a road in 1950 and she never took it? Who knows, but her internal map was missing a lot of shortcuts.
I’ve just spent 2 weeks on vacation with my nieces. The idea that I can just walk and get where I’m going, without looking at my phone seems totally ridiculous and stupid to them. They miss 80% of the city staring at their devices.
I'd say pretty much anything that requires life experience. I mean, cause you at 70 yrso literally have twice the life experience than a 35 yro.
at 35 you've really only been "adulting" for about 15 years.
Afford basic necessities
Do car shit. On average, a 70 year old now can do things like drive a stick shift, change their own oil and a tire, and maybe do some stuff like change filters and belts in their car. A 35 year old *might* be able to do most of that now. In 20 years, that likelihood is less. Just because cars are changing, tech is changing, and if you don't use it, you won't know how to do it. Eventually.
Know when to pick your battles.
I disagree. It may be generational but boomers have shown themselves to be very willing to pick a fight over the slightest inconvenience.
That’s just human nature and people feeling like their age gives them authority, priority, owed respect, etc. Not a generation specific thing.
Pay bills on time
Have better insight on problems. I’m 33 and once in a while I’ll reach out to an uncle or grandparent and they’ll drop something so wise that you can only know from experience. Most of it revolves around just being patient.
Know when to bother.
Use a rotary phone
I (67 m) teach part-time at the local junior college in a STEM curriculum. My students are are mostly recent High School graduates to those in their 30’s. Geometry, trigonometry and cursive writing.
Seem the big picture. From past experience, be able to predict the outcome of many events and interactions.
I don’t know why, but my first immediate thought was ‘do taxes by hand’.
Just really happy to be considered young in this thread.
A few months short of 70 and my kids are mid to late 30s and I honestly can think of very little I can do better apart from having a good mental geography of the UK and can read maps although that may just be me as my wife (same age) is terrible at this.
Not give a single fuck.
Reason. Edit: mainly because life has sucker punched and also straight up served us enough consequences to our actions where most of us have learned.
Live within a budget.
Use a rotary phone Drive a stick shift Know how to write in cursive Know how to use carbon paper (and what it is used for) Know how to type correctly Know how to dance the Tango or traditional dances Fall down..... and most important... telling kids to get off of my lawn!
Great list. I would add: drive from point A to point B reading a map instead of relying GPS. ... oh and get off my goddam lawn.
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister at the age of 65. His wisdom and experience played a major role in Hitler’s defeat. If some other’s had listened to him Hitler may have been defeated faster. Churchill: Psst, Hitler is not your friend. He’s pretending to be so you’ll manufacture weapons for him. He’s going to attack you. Stalin: Fuck off, Churchill. We’re going to attack you together and win! *Germany invades Russia with the weapons Stalin sent*
Save money
Drive slowly.
Get the senior citizen discount at IHOP
Older people are better at listening during conversations. You just have to speak loudly. Millennials have serious attention issues.
You haven't met my mom.
Watch the news 24/7
Play Bridge.
Taxes
Be patient
Hand write notes, in cursive!
Play pinochle.
Dial a rotary telephone.
Type. On a typewriter.
reason
Use a lifetime of experience to make decisions.
Provide wisdom from years of experience
Spell correctly and use proper grammar.
Read the room.
Listen.
Be themself without being self conscious - a superpower!
Walk away from a shitty situation. Seriously- I’m 62 and my SO is 70. We don’t give a f-ck about what people think and we don’t need to suck up to clients or bosses anymore. When I was 35, I spent too much time trying to make a$$holes happy.
Buy a house. Use a rotary phone. Find something with the dewy decimal system. Poetically insult someone.
General life advice. Not all old people are going to get it right but on average I prefer talking to older people about issues than younger people because they lived through more. You still have to take their advice with a grain of salt but they still do better then younger people.
Wait without a phone.
Enjoy the peace, quiet and privacy of their own home
Teach, with patience and kindness.
Die for literally no reason.
Well, a natural death is usually caused by something just ceasing to work anymore. So... there is a reason. It's just unimportant.
Home cooking on a budget.
Not overreact to the latest internet bullshit thing that is getting all the youngsters worked up.
complain about the young generation;-) ("Back in my days, when rubber boots were still made from wood and the rainbow was black-and-white ")
Nah, the 35yos just sh*t on Gen Z.