People Raised In The 60s, 70s & 80s Seem A Lot Smarter About 8 Things Younger Generations Struggle With
Bruno M Photographie | Shutterstock People who grew up in the '60s, '70s, and '80s lived completely different lives than young people today, and despite the technological advances, they may have turned out smarter for it.
There are a lot of advantages that come with better tech, but there are also some skills younger generations have never nailed down. Actually, these are skills they are completely clueless about. Meanwhile, older generations are experts.
Younger generations struggle with these skills that people raised in the '60s, '70s, and '80s are pretty much experts at:
1. Navigating on their own
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Young people are used to relying on GPS apps to get them everywhere they need to go, and they don’t have a backup plan. In a 2019 survey, 15% of millennials said they had never even attempted to read a paper map, and the statistics have probably gotten worse since then.
'60s, '70s, and '80s kids learned an entirely different set of skills. They actually developed a sense of direction. If they wanted to get somewhere, they had to be able to read a map or follow directions from another person.
Maybe this seems unnecessary now, but younger generations would be stuck, both literally and figuratively, if their phone died. That dependence is concerning because even the best technology isn’t foolproof.
2. Being disconnected from other people
It seems kind of crazy to think there was a time when people couldn’t easily call or text anyone they wanted to from wherever they were. These days, people panic when they realize they forgot their phone at home as if that wasn’t just the norm several decades ago.
Earlier forms of communication weren’t always the most convenient, so the best bet for older generations was for them to make plans well in advance and stick to them so people knew where they were. But even when they had to go off script, everyone still survived somehow.
3. Knowing what should stay private
Privacy is something older people seem to understand better in several ways. Young people rarely think twice about what they post on social media, but sharing something with personal information can put them at risk.
What might be even more interesting is the way different generations think about oversharing in general. Young people tend to say whatever they’re thinking online with no inhibitions, while older people know that some things really aren’t meant to be on display for the whole world to see.
This different perspective is probably keeping them physically and emotionally safer, even though it seems old-fashioned to some.
4. Interacting with strangers and making small talk
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Social media has completely changed the way people communicate, which can put younger people at a bit of a disadvantage. Someone who grew up online will feel more comfortable with that than they will interacting face-to-face.
This means people raised in the '60s through the '80s are usually better at holding conversations and meeting new people. Younger generations complain about some of the more traditional social etiquette rules they think they shouldn’t have to follow, but they could probably learn a lot from them.
5. Remembering stuff off the top of their head
It’s strange to think about young people having weaker memories than their older counterparts, but it seems like that might be our new reality. Using technology a lot affects people’s cognitive abilities across the board, including memory.
A lot of young people have never had to memorize phone numbers or remember how to spell someone’s name with nothing to rely on other than their brain. Older people didn’t have any other choice when they were growing up, so their recall for certain facts seems to be stronger now.
6. Figuring out how to do new things
Back before the internet was available in every home, there weren’t YouTube or TikTok tutorials for pretty much everything, from putting furniture together to fixing a clogged drain. People raised during this era had to figure those things out themselves, sometimes with the help of confusing written instructions.
This meant that visual learners were pretty much out of luck. Now, whatever someone’s learning style is, they can quickly find detailed instructions that are easy to understand. If they were left to solve a problem on their own, they would probably become totally overwhelmed.
7. Waiting for pretty much anything
Modern technology has given young people instant access to so much that they never really learned how to be patient. They’re used to choosing the fastest reward possible, even if it’s not as good as something they could get if they waited longer.
Older generations learned how to wait for everything from a new episode of their favorite show to a chance to talk to their friends. This gave them a different set of values that younger people would do well to learn from since there are a lot of things that require patience that we have absolutely no control over.
8. Concentrating while reading
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Experts have been warning about a decline in literacy for years now, but it might be more accurate to say the problem has to do with young people’s attention spans. Multiple college professors have gone public with their complaints about new students not being able to read much at once.
It’s not hard to understand why people can’t focus on novels when they’re used to short-form content nowadays. That was never a problem for boomers, Gen X, and elder millennials. Back then, people could read longer texts and understand them at the same time.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
