Older People Are Sharing The Things Younger Generations Believe That Are Actually BS, And My Apologies To Gen Alpha
“Thinking that all struggle is bad. Some struggle is good for you and helps you grow as a person. It also makes you much more interesting.”
Every generation puts its unique stamp on the world, bringing new ideas to the table and pushing the boundaries of society.
But not every idea is a good idea, and often, older generations push back against the way younger folks do things. With that in mind, Reddit user Impressive-Grass6438 tasked the AskReddit community with answering this question: “What is one thing that the younger generations believe that is bullshit?” Whether wise or ornery, here’s what people had to say.
1. “Thinking that their boundaries are other people’s responsibility. It’s their responsibility to maintain their boundaries and mental health, not everyone else’s.”
2. “That being a cynic is the same as being a critical thinker.”
—u/Gr0zzz
3. “That clout equals value. No! Validation is cheaper than ramen, and it doesn’t feed your soul.”
–u/ClairSunset
4. “That dating apps want you to find someone.”
5. “I teach seventh graders. Most of them think they’ll be making $200k per year. They can’t even read at grade level.”
—u/Moonwrath8
6. “That influencers live the lives they post.”
7. “That AI is making their writing better.”
—u/compassrunner
8. “Believing tolerance is synonymous with unconditional acceptance.”
–u/D3us-Ecks
9. “Saying that punctuation and grammar don’t matter. The lack of writing skills is appalling. I was once called a ‘bigot’ for saying that people can, and will, make judgments about your intelligence and take you less seriously for bad writing.”
10. “As it relates to labels, it seems like for older millennials, we were generally taught that pigeonholing people into arbitrary labels and stereotypes is not good and that everyone is unique. Later generations continued with the idea of an infinite rainbow of diversity, but wanted to label each and every one of them. To continue with the rainbow analogy, it’s like one group saying, ‘I’m neither green nor blue, I’m just me!’ and another being like ‘My hex code is #2CC1C9.'”
—u/Excelius
11. “Thinking that all struggle is bad. Some struggle is good for you and helps you grow as a person. It also makes you much more interesting. There is such a thing as too much, though.
12. “That Anne Frank didn’t exist and Helen Keller was a fraud/hoax. Straight from my college-age Gen Z niece. She saw it on TikTok, don’t you know?”
—u/LiluLay
“I’ve come across a LOT of kids who believe that Helen Keller didn’t really exist or that she was faking it. It boggles the mind.”
—u/Cap-n-Trips
“Not only did Helen Keller have a full and meaningful life, she was very politically active: suffragist, socialist, cofounder of the ACLU, feminist, and more. She died in 1968 at age 87!”
—u/frightnin-lichen
13. “That rights and freedoms older generations have fought for can’t be taken away.”
14. “They think that they somehow have this wealth of information and brainpower that no previous generations had. Anyone under the age of 45 has had access to the internet since they were in high school. If you want to talk about Boomers, sure, but if you think you are somehow intuitively smarter than your millennial uncle, you’d be wrong. The arrogance of some younger people I’ve worked with is off the charts, to the point that I can’t even teach them what they need to know. Then they fail and complain they aren’t getting promoted.”
—u/Single-Actuary4447
15. “Being an ‘alpha’ will get you laid. The boys need to get off the algorithm and get outside.”
—u/Fit_Yogurtcloset_291
16. “That all Boomers are MAGA, or that they ‘ruined the world’ on purpose, as if they weren’t scrambling to survive in a world and society that was destroyed by two world wars.”
17. “I taught journalism as an adjunct. I had students complain that I didn’t give them trigger warnings on the syllabus or warn them ahead of time if I switched up the lesson plans for breaking news. One student insisted that the final project was too triggering — they did not mention that to me at any time during the semester, as certain assignments built up to it — and wrote a whiny email to the department head when I failed them.”
“My favorite complaint: Students were not allowed to use first-person POV. It was a news writing class, requiring a lack of opinion. A student told me I didn’t understand how her generation got their news and that I should be looking at Tumblr instead of newspapers and magazines. It was a news writing class!”
—u/reporterbabe
18. “They DGAF about the word no. They think it’s just the other person trying to manipulate you.”
—u/1961tracy
19. “Thinking that people with the loudest voices represent the group as a whole.”
20. “One misstep or misspoken word requires someone to be ‘canceled’ and their lives burned to the ground. There’s a huge difference between someone being bigoted and pathological, versus someone making a one-off mistake.”
21. “Buying into ‘hustle culture.’ It’s just a way for companies to make more money and abuse their employees more.”
—u/djlittlehorse
22. And finally, “Acting like it’s not weird to just breathe into the phone when someone calls and expecting the caller to say hi first because they’re ‘the ones who wanted to talk.'”
Are there other things that younger generations believe should be included in this list? Or do you think any of these views are unfair? Let me know in the comments! Your responses could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.