There are probably lots of examples of things that fall in the generation gap. I'm in my 60s along with a couple others at my library, then there's a range of ages. As we recently got a few children (in thier 20s lol) in my workplace as peers, I've found out some 'gap' items I didn't know.

Example, old people use ellipses too often and it drives the younguns crazy.

Now I find myself typing them and then deleting.

In my defense I'd say younguns still use the word LIKE much too often.

Anyone else have things to report?

I hate it when people use like as a word every other word. Sets my teeth on edge and I want to pop off a response but I hold my tongue.

A coworker and I had a another coworker say he loved and was listening to Oldies. We asked him what he considered Oldies. 90s he popped back. We groaned and had to explain that one to him.

My gosh yes.. same here -an oldie to one or our 'kids' was that recent!

At least my kid of 26 has a reasonable knowledge and appreciation for classic rock of the 70s.

I'm trying to relate- music played in the decade before my birth would be 49 and the 50s, I admit, I wasn't a huge fan of 50s but am listening to it more now.

50s thru early 70s is what we told him and he was like I've never listened to it. It's before my time but we used to have a station that only played that so I grew up listening to it and I still love it.

I also hate when they use the word like 10 times in one sentence. Or someone that is under 20 years old says back in the day. Another favorite is when they text each other even when they are sitting at the same table eating lunch.

"Like" replaced "You know." I blame the use of the latter on the Beatles in many interviews seen on TV. Young people in the sixties quickly picked it up and it stuck.

A pet hate of mine is seeing highly paid people on TV "who can't speak," without using their hands. Or cannot complete a sentence without an "umm" or an "err" in it. Sometimes both.
I went to an old fashioned grammar school, where in the weekly double English lesson, a few minutes were spent on "public speaking" training.
One of us would be told to stand in front of the class and talk for two minutes on a subject of our choice. Any use of the hands, the inclusion of an, "umm" an "err" or any use of a superfluous word and you'd find a soft blackboard rubber aimed at you from the back of the class, hurled by our English master, with deadly accuracy, accompanied by howls of derision from your classmates. You soon got out of these bad habits.

The gap was ably demonstrated once by one of my grandkids, who had never seen a 45rpm record. On the first sight of one of my two vinyl jukeboxes, I was asked, "What is it?"
I replied, "Think of it as a 300lb iPod."

She got the message.

Seems to me that plenty of adults have annoying speech habits too. I hear "I mean" as the most prevalent annoying sentence starter, but not limited to young people and especially common in unscripted television and radio conversation. And if you're still objecting to a trend you think the Beatles introduced nearly 60 years ago, perhaps it's time to get over it. Every generation has new linguistic trends.

At the risk of being a curmudgeon here, I think it's worth pointing out that every generation objects to the trends and tastes of the younger generation and thinks it is inferior in some way. I recall quite clearly my own father's very strong objection to my brother's "long" hair (collar length) and my mother's dislike of my music tastes in the 60s/early 70s (now considered "classic"), and of course hippies and war protesters signalled the end of civilized society! Before then was the immorality of the Beat Generation, before that, the scandalous 1920s.

Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four letter words
Writing prose, Anything Goes...
Cole Porter, 1934


There are a lot of things I find unsettling and even distasteful about modern life, but the future belongs to the young people, not me, so rather than grumble about it and be a grumpy old person, I try to keep abreast of the times, or at least just acknowledge the differences and move on. Nothing is more off-putting to younger people than hearing that everything was better "when I was young."

Some differences are fun and entertaining... I love Sally's example of ellipsis overuse, perhaps because I too have noticed that I want to use them more frequently these days and also have been deleting them (do they reflect a function of our older wandering brains?). Ditto commas—the current trend is to use way fewer than we were taught decades ago, so I delete a lot of those too.

When I was young I was only familiar with Big Band music as background to old cartoons. I learned to appreciate it when I got older and took up ballroom dancing. Not every young person needs to know right now about everything that was once popular decades ago.

I'm trying to not sound superior here; my inner judgmental brain is plenty active (Facial piercings! Bodywide tattoos! Influencers!) I'm just trying to present a different view.

The world changes.

I guess we are in the phase of our lives where we can view life in retrospect and compare the past and the present.

It is what it is. I have learned to go with the flow, to a certain extent. After all, the youth of today do face a different set of challenges too compared to our past experiences.

It is interesting to read everyone's observations. I felt that too. Many year's back when texting was already such a convenient tool, a more inexpensive way of communication in my old homeland, I was taken aback reading some text messages from a friend. I had to reply to her and ask..is this the new manner of writing, somehow if I read it, I felt I was being cursed mwhaha..I tried to read it in English or in my native tongue, Filipino, and I was so confused with the message. Later I found out, to maximize the dispatch of the message, they would coin the word phonetically or just drop vowels. When I finally got the "manner" of how they text it, I finally understood what they meant whew..for awhile I thought they were angry or being sarcastic.

But I am thankful messaging evolved again, so we can now use other messaging media/platforms, as long as one has good wifi/internet access...so just got to go with the flow. It is harder when family is abroad. I have also seen variances in communication nuances is heavily influenced by ones family and cultural upbringing. So I have learned not to be too critical of how others express themselves. But always with exception, since some do get carried away, and end up being too unjustly condescending towards others all because of cultural differences.

Just got done reading a book about Henry Ford, Thomas Alva Edison and Harvey Firestone, both Ford and Edison lamented the newer generation and what it was coming too. Think all generations believe that the youngsters are going to hell in a hand basket, nothing new and our kids and grandkids will be saying the something when they get older.

I work with a 30 something and he's the laziest guy I've ever worked with. H doesn't move off his counter stool unless he HAS to. He will lend me a hand with the heavier things I don't want to pick up[batteries, rotors, etc] but thats only if I stop him in his tracks. But he's an interesting kid and I enjoy speaking with him and we do share a like for some music. Meanwhile his counter mate is a 58 year old self proclaimed red-neck and the two of them go at it all day. And both are phone users. The 30 year old made a reference to "back in the day" and that started another round of bickering between the two of them. He's not old enough to have a "back in the day". However I tend to gravitate to younger people and relate well except the constant phone use. Drives me crazy! I do think that people of our ages 50, 60, 70.. have a huge amount to offer those younger. We had it better than our parents. We went through so many historical events, so many life altering changes for better or worse and we came out just fine. My friend/neighbor is in her early 40,s and she will refer to me frequently because even though I am older than her mother I am younger at heart. Still wild and crazy. We play well together.

Oh, I the kids I work with are a lot of fun and bring good energy to the place. I feel we're both the better for getting each other's perspectives on lots of things. I love doing the Let me tell you the background of xxx or Here's the thing about xxx. Cuz they don't have any historical perspective on the organization or some staff.

And I don't paint all young people with the same brush. But I laughed about these three young ones with two of my more mature coworkers, we all are surprised at how much these young ones complain and criticise and second guess management after only working there a couple months.


I had a 50 yr old coworker quite guilty of the LIKE thing, subconsciously I think he wanted to sound young and hip and or was just lazy.

I love antiques and actually have a working candlestick phone from the 1920s/30s that is primarily used as decor. It has a dial. I wasn't surprised that my grade school age great nephew and niece didn't quite realize that it was a phone, but what DID surprise me is that they had never seen or even knew how to use a dial. It was really amusing watching them try to figure it out. They were so awkward with it On the flip side, even though I use a smart phone, they were showing me things that were so natural for them and so alien for me.

Oh, and to go along with that thought, they were really confused when they started to move around when trying that phone out and realized that it was attached to the phone jack in the wall. They have known nothing but the physical mobility of their smart phones.

I never thought about that part! Must seem so odd to them!

I'm not much troubled by new styles or preoccupations, which have always been part of life, but it's the lack of curiosity and skepticism that I notice. We had to work so hard to get information and now it is so prevalent that it has become cheapened and polluted with maddening brief sound byte info that gets parroted without any attempt to test it - or delve into the history of it. It seems like you could tell them anything and if they believe YOU, they will believe everything you say. They do not seem to value facts and reality, emotions are more important than truth. Debating is dying, if not already dead, they call it arguing. I don't know a lot of younger people, so I hope these things are not applicable to most of them.

One of my bete noires on music boards is the all encompassing use of the word "band" to describe any musical combos.

This is a "band."



This isn't, although they call themselves a band.
They're a female trio or, pop group.



This isn't a band, it's a "group."



The use of the term "band" to describe any similar pop group is an attempt at "musical gentrification," by younger generations.

On the subject of cell phones, which for many, I believe is an obsession. I took this photo off my TV during an exciting game at the French Open Tennis Tournament last year.

Marin Čilić is about to serve at a critical moment.



Here's a close up of people behind him in the "posh seats."
All except two are absorbed looking at their phones, rather than watching the match

DoghouseRiley said: On the subject of cell phones, which for many, I believe is an obsession. ...
All except two are absorbed looking at their phones, rather than watching the match

Nothing really new. I believe I read somewhere that during the 18th and at least early 19th centuries musicians and actors complained that the audience up in the boxes were more interested in their own conversations than in the performance on the stage. The idea of any entertainment (sports, theater, concert) being the sort of thing that demanded our undivided, rapt attention seems to have been a creation of the late 19th century.

purpleinopp said: I'm not much troubled by new styles or preoccupations, which have always been part of life, but it's the lack of curiosity and skepticism that I notice. We had to work so hard to get information and now it is so prevalent that it has become cheapened and polluted with maddening brief sound byte info that gets parroted without any attempt to test it - or delve into the history of it. It seems like you could tell them anything and if they believe YOU, they will believe everything you say. They do not seem to value facts and reality, emotions are more important than truth. Debating is dying, if not already dead, they call it arguing. I don't know a lot of younger people, so I hope these things are not applicable to most of them.

As a member of the younger generation (in my mid 30s), my experience has been the opposite. I look at my parents' generation and often see a lack of tech literacy and inability to determine what is a reliable source of information on the Internet (a problem that has only gotten worse with the rise of misinformation and disinformation over the past decade). Certain news sources are taken as gospel or completely written off as biased. Ironically it is my generation that now finds themselves in the position of needing to "supervise" the previous two when it comes to the Internet!

I agree, though, that there is a lack of curiosity in some members of my generation. This does not seem to be an intrinsic fault in my generation, however, but rather a result of the environment they have grown up in. A considerable factor is that in low socio-economic areas of Australia, I have seen a distinct lack of value placed on education and learning by my parents' generation. Plenty of kids drop out of school after Year 10 (rather than going through to Year 12) whilst many others don't see the value in tertiary education (or are even encouraged just to get a job as a "checkout chick" by their families); I have to wonder if that is a result of the parents not having tertiary education and hence failing to understand the need and value of it in today's society.

Added to this is the failure of the education system, where skills like logic and critical thinking seem to have fallen by the wayside. These were simply not taught in primary or secondary school when I was growing up; I suspect they have not been for a long time, as even people at the older end of my generation often seem to lack these skills if they haven't had tertiary education.

One realisation I had recently is that my parents and grandparents' generation are probably experiencing a bigger shock in terms of changes in society and technology than any generation before them. They are the transition between a relatively slow and consistent development of technology during the 18th and 19th centuries and the latter 20th century, where technology is advancing and changing rapidly. My generation has grown up with this rapid development and are used to seeing things like:

- phones changing every 12 months (compared to previous generations who have had land lines the majority of their lives)
- new computer operating systems that completely change the look and feel of a system every few years
- the rapid transition from paper-based to Internet-based services (this definitely tends to "leave behind" my grandparents' generation)
- the rise of digital video and streaming services
- the rise of social media
- the rise of cybersecurity threats (e.g. malware, spyware, etc.)
- the rise of misinformation and disinformation

My grandparents have often admitted they can't keep up with all the change. My parents certainly struggle with some aspects of it (although that's not helped by my father's impatience with technology - I am quite confident he could learn a lot of it if he actually spent the time). I have sympathy for these generations who must sometimes feel as though they're being left behind or have had their world turned upside down by the rapid advancement of technology in the past few decades.

I am over 80 and have been online since MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.

Only one of my granddaughters uses texting shortcuts. In the beginning of texting, I think they had to use less characters per text. I still feel a little disappointed when she says, "How R U?" Or even worse, "How R U guys??"`The other 2 girls don't do that. And she is the youngest.

Even though I had a mobile phone for many years, it took a while before I purchased a smart phone. Just last month, I canceled our landline. The reason for this was we live in a rural area, and they have not upgraded their system in years. Every time we get rain or snow, the phone would cease to function. I got tired of complaining about this, as the equipment never got repaired or upgraded. If we had an emergency, if our cell phone went out, we would be in trouble. Also the power goes out here every year. So we switched from a portable generator to a stand-by generator, which comes on automatically, with its own propane tank, so no worrying about traveling in the snow or impassable roads to get fuel (petrol).

Sometimes with excessive rains, there is a creek at the end of the road that floods over, which makes exiting impossible.

However, I really like living here. It's nice to be on 12 acres and not having someone in the house next door peering into our living space, inside or outside. Previous to moving here, I lived in "the city" for many years, in the greater Los Angeles area, though the last place I lived in was Topanga Canyon, which is in the Santa Monica mountains.