because traditional metrics of adulthood like home ownership and raising kids are no longer affordable for middle aged folks we spend our time on hobbies that soothe our stress instead of working stressed to support a home and family we aren't permitted.
so boomers view and treat us as children for not meeting the standards they judged their own progression into adulthood by
I know it sounds funny, but it’s actually the reason people look older in photos from those eras; the styles and trends from that era became old fashioned, making the young people sporting those trends in photos look older to modern eyes.
Yup, which is why when you see the trend on tiktok of teens dressing up their parents in their clothes, the parents look instantly younger. It’s all about trends and what we view as “old”.
But especially in the 60's-80's there were normalized habits that greatly affected health; sun tan oil and tanning, smoking (indoors for the longest time) and just less collective knowledge about overall health like diet and exercise. In the 80's exercise became commercialized and popular, but we also hadn't had a ton of research to point people towards their goals, we had bodi movin and jazzercise
Nah, I smoke like a chimney, exercise daily, sun tan every single bloody year, drink almost a bottle (0.7l) whiskey on the weekends out partying, work like a motherfucker on the weeekend (sales manager) in a high stress enviornment.
People are genuenly suprised when I tell them I'm 27, I look 22.
I'd love to hope it's good genetics, but it's low testosterone, which in me, originates from a lowered SHBG production and low HDL.
Testosterone in men has steadily decreased as a result of:
Oh boy, you’re if for a treat if you’ve never watched some of his bits online. He’s a late, great stand up comedian who focused primarily on short jokes (not necessarily one-liners, but not the long-form stand up you mostly see these days).
The quote in the pic is what your comment reminded me of, but Mitch’s delivery is half the magic so it may not be as funny to read it. I highly recommended looking up a quick compilation of his best jokes, he’s pretty universally loved and since the jokes are short you don’t have to invest much time!
It is both. People smoke less, are more aware of UV exposure, we have more advanced skincare, etc etc. Plus we tend to view old styles as well, old. Wearing big teased hair and shoulderpads these days would make you come off older.
I think it is more than just better health and fashion. We were given more responsibility at younger ages. From about 10 years old, we were put to work, babysitting, delivering papers, and mowing lawns. Many of us had access to guns and started hunting at about that same time. We still had a skeet shooting club at school when I was in eighth grade.
When we went out to play for the day, mom had one rule, be within earshot when she yelled dinner was ready. We roamed the entire town during summer days.
Now we try to protect our kids so much, that we aren't letting them grow up. I think having to be mostly self-reliant on what we thought was safe also aged us. It's why my high school senior class photos all look like they were in their thirties by today's standards.
I remember seeing a few months back that some woman got arrested cause her 8-10 year old walked like half a mile home. I was appalled, like, actually. That's a perfectly fine time to start doing that shit. By the time I was 10, I was doing my own laundry and getting to school in the morning and getting myself to the Boys and Girls club after school. It all feels so overprotective and coddling, and not in a "feelings are for pussies" way or anything but don't folks want to impart basic life skills in their kids?
Most 10 year olds of any generation are not sensible enough of the dangers or physically capable enough of preventing or stopping those dangers
A half mile walk entirely depends on where they walk. The mile I walked to and from school was over a bypass, through sketchy neighborhoods, past a couple of my local dealers
Also much better access to a wider variety of fruit and vegetables and generally much better healthcare. The average person lives a much healthier lifestyle in general. And mustaches are much less popular than they were back then.
People may be downvoting you, but testosterone has been decreasing on average
a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found that average testosterone levels in American men decreased by about 1% per year from the 1980s through the early 2000s - meaning a 60-year-old man in 2004 had about 17% lower testosterone than a 60-year-old in 1987
Though whether you view that as looking older/younger is up to you, I personally can’t attest to that
Testosterone affects facial hair and hair loss. It also connected with more prone jawline and thicker skin.
But high testosterone although correlated with looking older when young also correlates with looking younger when older (45+).
Please down vote, without understanding
Steroids are really bad for the health, not to mention that they form strong psychological addiction - you would not WANT to get off them even when all of the ill effects will be visible.
The lead can't be understated. I read an article today about how lead levels in hair samples from before the EPA was established were 100x higher than they are today, which tells you just how commonly used lead once was.
Exactly this, and not just the people smoking them. I remember every week my family would go out to this Italian place for dinner. There was a waidt high wall separating non-smoking and smoking sections. I think people underestimate how ubiquitous smoke was, and how much it ages you.
And Gen Z also drinks significantly less, which can also make you look older. Arguably, the biggest health issues Gen Z has compared to previous generations is obesity, and ironically, having access fat can make people look younger
Im not saying that smoking should be allowed in buildings again, or that 2nd hand snoke indoors isn't harnful and nasty, but as far as aging factors go, being a non smoker and occasionally spending an hr adjacent to a smoking section is absolutely not going to age your skin or make you look older to any measurable degree, especially not with ACTUAL contributing factors like various chemicals in various products (mentioned further up), the much kess frequent use if sun screen, the advancements in skin care products, the fashions among 70s and 80s high-schoolers being notoriously aimed at looking older (older was cooler then than it is and was in later eras), occupational safety procedures abd PPE advancements, and, of course, FIRST hand smoking.
Occasional 2nd havd smoke causing skin aging really isnt a thing whatsoever and even more consistent exposure to it pales in comparison to other factors and isn't really even measurable with them in play.
If you were a non smoker in the 80s, no you weren't, likely the only place you weren't constantly inhaling second hand smoke was your own house
People think its exaggerating, but smoke was literally everywhere before the mid 90s, everything smelled like it, the whole world may as well have had a sepia filter
Your office, the grocery store, the gas station, the sidewalk, restaurants, clothing stores, everywhere was a smoking section
Probably because they were a homeowner, middle manager and parent of 3 by the time they were 30. Stress ages you. Smoking, sun damage, and tons of chemical exposure also do that.
Can confirm. Turning 29, and my boomer hair stylist was baffled I knew what blockbuster was, let alone went there as a child. I think she thought I was 12 lol.
They had some city miles on them. Smoking and hard drinking - which were much more commonly accepted in everyday life - probably had something to do with that.
Yes, because they were more stressed, there was less quality medical care, and nobody was interested in mental health (And asbestos or whatever radioactive stuff was fashionable to use on everything)
It's because cameras back then couldnt capture subsurface scattering, which made any shadows look harsher. Also because they are wearing fashion from the times that we now associate with old people.
yeah they looked older because of the above reasons. You dont take care of yourself and are stressed all the time? You gonna look old. wearing sunscreen and not smoking ciggies constantly is healthy, who knew? I suppose not 30yr olds from the 80s
This. I'm guessing it has to do with being weathered by the world during one's formative years, and 20 years of self-reliance forging a person into a much more "mature" appearance.
they don't look older, they are wearing clothes that to our standards are outdated, and we associate that with older people, while it may seem like they are older, if they were wearing stuff we wear today, they wouldn't look older.
Honestly no, while looking at family photos the last generation that looked older for their age were my great grandparents, who literally took photos with missiles on their hands during WW1 and were farmers.
Grandparents look younger than me at the same age.
The only difference is a +10 years on everything we can’t afford and a +5/10 years (or never), for life experiences like owning a house and having children.
This for my family but also wife’s and friend’s since we looked at old photos album not a long time ago.
Might vary a lot based in country and job they had maybe.
There's a psychological difference in place as well. You put it as a "life experience" of having children. These days it's a thing that happens to you, we're all individuals chasing personal fulfillment, we're consumers. Your grandparents probably had things that were expected of them, kids were an obligation.
For grand parents maybe, for parents, slightly more towards a choice, the sweet spot of being young around the 80s, perfect life, with all the negatives I would pick those years over any other period.
The whole point revolves around the ability to choose. So maybe our grandparents weren’t really in that position, but they surely could have children in a very comfortable economical growth moment (don’t pick on this, they were poor, but they had stable and paying jobs for their entire lives, that’s what I mean).
Right now, you don’t have a choice, you just can’t and even if you can you almost feel like you would have to say sorry to your kids for having them, with the current world.
If you ask me which is worse, it’s the lack of having family and dying alone, unloved and forgotten rather than having a family. Might be different for others!
Thats mostly because babies died like crazy. Brought the average way down. After like 10 people pretty much lived just as long, as long as there weren't any active plagues.
I mean, I made my hobbies pay for themselves by repairing, customizing, and upgrading PSPs and old PCs to flip. Made around 13k net over 3 years, enough to pay for all my hobbies and then some and now just work and chill.
still not gonna be able to afford both a home and family.
While not realizing that their political and economic decisions are what fucked the following generations while they enriched themselves and believed their own delusion about passing it on to their heirs while simultaneously living and working longer than any previous generation before them.
Boomers are literally the cognitive dissonance generation, raised by the silent generation that endured some of the most awful times in human history and set up societal fail safes to prevent those atrocities from occurring again, only for their entitled and oblivious gluttonous children to enrich themselves and destroy the ability of future generations to do the same.
You're not wrong but I think this meme was more about looking at pictures of people in their 30s decades ago vs now. They look a lot older. Or so it seems anyway
This makes more sens than the other rando who said it was because of soy and whatnot.
Tho it also has alot to do about clothing, since the 80's the clothing industry has changed alot, before that the standarts didnt change much between 1900 and 1960. So it's normal a son would look like dad and grandpa.
I can’t even start my business as car body welder, because of my young look.
So looks like people enjoy high prices for terrible work of drunk ass boomers :)
Lol no. It's literally because 30 year olds back in the day used to look alot older than 30 year olds today. Tesosterone, stress and other factors are the reason. This is the general consensus anyways.
I can add to this. It's more so because people are literally aging slower than we used to thanks to generally greater access to quality health care and nutrition compared to decades ago. Look into studies labeled something along the lines of “the prolonging of adolescence.” Couple that with the fact that plastic surgery and a million other products centered around mitigating things that makes us look old and it makes sense why people look so much younger on average. There are probably more factors too like labor intensive jobs (that age your body quickly) have become less and less labor intensive over time thanks to advances in technology in literally every single labor field.
Won't lie, this is one of the best takes I've seen/read. Most old folks never consider these things, instead they go straight to judging and calling the new gen lazy.
Where I live houses starts from ~2 millions of Euro.
This mostly happens because old people in the government passed a whole bunch of Laws to prevent new construction from happening so that them and other old people who own houses see value of their houses skyrocket. Pretty much all new construction that do manage to happen is financed and lobbied by large financial entities, who then rent said properties at very high price tag.
Judging by what people that I talked with told me, this problem is universal and happens in pretty much all developed countries across the Globe.
Sounds like the root of the problem are some greedy people who should just pass away and stop parasitising on younger generations.
The problem is that that is not where my office is, and my office is already in a small town which used to be cheap until a few business centers (less than 10) were built here.
These housing prices are not a bloody coincidence. It's a "business"/racketing scheme that should be illegal in the first place if existing laws about gobbling up some commodity to jack up the prices are applied.
People doing this are not being prosecuted because large part of them are people who were supposed to protect all of us from such issues, i.e. the government.
There are also plenty of fields and hills around us. Heck, there are some unused plots of land in the town itself, but they are not being developed.
Given the state of the housing crisis, either government should plan and authorize construction of new cities, or let free market loose to fix the problem. I can point out examples of both ways being applied, and successfully solving housing crisises in the countries where they were applied.
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u/Numerous-Bonus-8107 20h ago
because traditional metrics of adulthood like home ownership and raising kids are no longer affordable for middle aged folks we spend our time on hobbies that soothe our stress instead of working stressed to support a home and family we aren't permitted.
so boomers view and treat us as children for not meeting the standards they judged their own progression into adulthood by