There is a refracted sort of toughness you meet when you sit with someone who was born in the 1960s or 1970s. It is not the showy resilience of a motivational poster. It is quieter. It smells of routine and of doors opened and then closed without an audience. Psychologists studying generational differences point to a constellation of emotional habits that were ordinary then and look almost artisanal now.
Why this feels important now
We live in a moment that prizes speed and visibility. Emotions travel at the frame rate of a story and then disappear. The emotional skills forged in earlier decades were practiced in ways that screen mediated life did not allow. That gap matters. It explains why meetings, family rows and small crises are handled differently across age groups. It also explains the curiosity younger people express when they watch older relatives absorb disappointment without turning it into content.
Not nostalgia but a pattern worth noticing
I am wary of sentimentalising the past. People born in the 1960s and 1970s experienced hardship and blind spots just like any cohort. But pattern recognition is not the same as rose tinted history. The patterns here look like practical lessons repeated often enough to become muscle memory. Those lessons produced emotional habits that are now rarer because the training ground has shifted.
What psychologists call these strengths
Researchers use terms like internal locus of control emotional regulation and social attunement to describe abilities that older cohorts often display. Those phrases are dry but the behaviour is not. It is the person who receives bad news and immediately asks what must be done next. It is the person who picks up the phone to clear a misunderstanding rather than reply later with a carefully composed message. These are actions that train the nervous system to tolerate uncertainty and to prefer repair over performance.
“Teen depression and digital media use increased in lockstep. Internet use social media use and smartphone ownership rose as depression rose.” Jean M Twenge Professor of Psychology San Diego State University.
Twenge is talking about the generation that came after those born in the 1960s and 1970s. Her research helps explain how an altered social ecology reshaped emotional practice. When social rituals are mediated by screens the feedback loop that teaches us how to rebound from humiliation or boredom changes radically.
Hands on life made a different mind
If you were raised when waiting was structural then waiting taught you something. Slow logistics slow news cycles and fewer curated social feeds made avoidance more costly. If you wanted to repair a thing you had to learn to tolerate being unfamiliar with it for long enough to figure it out. That friction produced a tolerance for incomplete information and a habit of iterative problem solving that looks like steadiness today.
How emotional regulation showed up in everyday life
Emotional regulation in the 1960s and 1970s was not a branded practice. It was household management. Parents and neighbours modelled a kind of containment that was not hypocritical but pragmatic. Feeling upset was not always spoken about but it was usually acted through. People learned to modulate because jobs required it mortgages required it and communities expected it. The result was adults who could hold grief or anger and still be present for the next hour or the next phone call.
A counterpoint to the fragility argument
I do not believe the past produced uniformly tougher humans. Many people then were also brittle in different ways. Yet the argument that earlier cohorts developed durable emotional tools because of environmental necessity has merit. It is a sociological argument with psychological consequences. Environments train skills. Remove the environment and you remove the default trainer of those skills.
Social courage and face to face friction
One strength that rarely appears in think pieces is what I call social courage. Not bravery for its own sake but the low level willingness to risk awkwardness in order to resolve things. When relationships were built and repaired in face to face settings there was less room to anonymise conflict. People learned to apologise to each other in real time. The muscle for doing that can atrophy when most communication fits in a glossy rectangle.
What younger observers notice
Young people often describe older relatives as unflappable or inscrutable. Both can be true. Sometimes that unflappability is active containment. Sometimes it is simply an avoidance strategy. The important point is the skill set is readable. It is visible in how someone handles a cancellation how they answer a blunt question and how quickly they return to ordinary life after a shock.
Why some of these strengths are rarer today
The modern environment reshapes rehearsal opportunities. Instant gratification gentle rounding of discomfort via curated friend groups and the habit of outsourcing emotional labour to professionals or to algorithms produce fewer chances to practise the old routines. Replace rough social practice with moderation tools and you will find fewer people with the old reflexes. That does not mean today’s people are weaker. It means they have practised different skills. Those skills have their own value and their own costs.
Not a generational condemnation
I refuse to write a moral indictment of younger cohorts. They inherited different problems and have solved some of them elegantly. But we should recognise loss when we see it. If you find you are more reactive than reflective it might be because your training ground is online. That is a diagnosis not a condemnation.
How to borrow from that playbook without pretending to time travel
There are small structural experiments that replicate the formative conditions of older cohorts. Longer waits for some pleasures less curated social time and taking responsibility in concrete projects produce a different kind of practice. Not everyone will want to do this and not every benefit is universal. But habits that once emerged by chance can be cultivated with intention.
A final wrinkle
There is an economy of attention at play. Older cohorts learned to ration it. Younger cohorts are learning to invest it differently. Both are responses to the material and cultural constraints of their times. Which means the question is not simply who is tougher. The question is which skills we want to keep and which we are comfortable losing.
Summary and synthesis
The emotional strengths many people born in the 1960s and 1970s display are the product of repeated practices embedded in a slower and more frictional social world. These include internal locus of control emotional regulation social courage and a tolerance for waiting. Modern life trades some of those skills for others that suit a connected world. Recognising this tradeoff lets us choose deliberately rather than surrender by default.
| Key Idea | What It Looks Like | Why It Mattered Then |
|---|---|---|
| Internal locus of control | Taking responsibility and problem solving | Fewer immediate options meant practice in agency |
| Emotional regulation | Holding feelings while acting | Daily responsibilities required steadiness |
| Social courage | Facing awkward conversations in person | Conflict resolution happened face to face |
| Tolerance for friction | Waiting and iterative problem solving | Repair required time and effort |
Frequently asked questions
Are people born in the 1960s and 1970s naturally more resilient?
Not naturally. Resilience here is ecological. Circumstances trained habits that look like resilience. Narrowing the cause to genetics would be wrong. The generations under discussion often practiced behaviours in daily life that fostered steadiness. Those behaviours were reinforced by the lack of instant substitutes and by social expectations. The upshot is a cohort level pattern that looks like greater emotional durability but that durability is largely learned.
Can younger generations develop the same emotional strengths?
Yes. Skills are trainable. Intentional changes to routine can replicate some of the frictional conditions that taught older cohorts. Slowing certain gratifications creating more face to face interactions and taking on repair tasks are practical steps. These are experiments not guarantees. The modern world offers different tradeoffs and not everyone will prioritise the same skills.
Does technology make people weaker emotionally?
Technology changes the rehearsal environment. It reduces some types of practice and increases others. Rather than think in terms of weaker or stronger it is more useful to think in terms of what skills are being trained. Some technologies reduce opportunities to practise face to face repair and waiting. Others create new forms of collaboration and emotional expression. The effects are mixed and mediated by individual use.
Is this a generational blame game?
No. The point is not to blame any cohort but to notice shifting skill distributions. Each generation adapts to its context. Calling attention to loss is not the same as moralising individuals. Honest appraisal allows older people to share useful practices and younger people to decide what to adopt without shame.
Where does this leave families and workplaces?
Awareness is useful. Families can create spaces where unsupervised face to face interactions happen more often. Workplaces can value patient problem solving and give people time to practice emotional repair. Practical policies that recognise different training backgrounds produce fewer misunderstandings and better outcomes. Small structural changes matter more than exhortation.
