People born in the 1960s and 1970s do not judge their mornings by a number. They do not wake up and tally approval as if it were temperature. You can see it in the way they hold a conversation for longer than a scroll, in the odd calm with which they walk past a queue at the bank when the app refuses to load. This is not romantic nostalgia. It is an attitude shaped by a different set of rhythms and scarcities. It has consequences for how these cohorts live now and how they watch younger people live.
Not indifferent. Just differently calibrated.
The shorthand version that critics love is that older generations are somehow immune to new social pressures. That is not true. People born in the 60s and 70s adopted email, smartphones, social networks. They post. They enjoy a compliment or two. But their internal valuation system often predates the feedback economy.
For many of them validation arrived through other channels. A letter from a parent. A boss who noticed the work. Being trusted to close a deal. Those were not instantaneous but they were tangible. The absence of the constant tiny feedback loop available to younger cohorts matters. You cannot miss what you never depended on.
How scarcity shaped patience.
When I was a child of the 70s the remote control was a luxury and the telephone lived by the hallway. Information came in waves not in taps. That cadence taught different kinds of patience. Waiting became structural. Waiting was ordinary. It did not need to be optimised out of the day because it was not yet monetised.
This history hardens into temperament. People who lived through those gaps built a resilience to ephemeral applause. They are not immune to loneliness or insecurity. They are simply less likely to let a like or a reaction define them in the immediate term. That seems small until you realise how the amplification of approval reorders priorities for those who never had to budget attention against an algorithm.
Public applause used to be local.
Before platforms turned vanity into industry the audience you sought was the one you could see. Neighbours at the pub. Colleagues in the office. Local newspapers. This constrained comparison to a human scale. It also made reputations stick to faces rather than profiles. Your status was built on repeated encounters, not a single viral moment. That matters psychologically.
Jean M. Twenge PhD Professor of Psychology San Diego State University has written about the cultural shifts wrought by technology and how they alter young people’s emotional lives. She notes that technology has reshaped how a generation seeks approval and how fragile those systems can make a person. Her observation is not moralising. It just explains why some groups are less likely to outsource esteem to metrics.
Technology has given us instant communication unrivaled convenience and the most precious prize of all longer lives with less drudgery At the same time technology has isolated us from each other sowed political division and stolen our attention.
Jean M. Twenge PhD Professor of Psychology San Diego State University
Experience beats impressions.
When a person has built a life where mastery counts more than momentary applause they measure differently. A good roof over the head a reliable friend a skill you can still do at sixty five these are currencies that do not translate into likes but they carry weight. People from the 60s and 70s often carry a quietly accumulating ledger of these things. It changes priorities.
That does not mean they never crave public recognition. Of course they do. But they learned to equate recognition with utility more often than spectacle. The cheeky compliment at a family dinner matters because it signals inclusion. A thousand anonymous hearts on a screen are less evidence of belonging and more evidence of broadcast.
Why this judgement is not about ageism.
It is tempting to weaponise the difference: older people are wiser younger people are shallow. I reject that binary. The point is structural rather than moral. Platforms were not designed to cultivate depth. They were built to generate engagement. That design preys on the vulnerabilities of people who grew up inside its loop. Younger cohorts came of age inside a world where attention was both currency and scarcity at once.
People born in the 60s and 70s have a habit of measuring outcome not signal. If a thing lasts if a relationship proves durable if a skill can be called upon then it wins a place in their hierarchy. That hierarchy can look stubborn or even conservative. It can also be protective. Denying the authority of metrics is sometimes an act of self preservation.
A personal confession.
I am inclined to defend the older instinct not because I distrust new signals but because I have watched the shape of certain anxieties accelerate. When a friend in their late fifties asked why their child cared about likes more than money we both laughed and then paused. The laughter covered a genuine worry that a generation is outsourcing an interior life to interfaces designed by strangers.
That worry is not absolute. Plenty of younger people resist the pressure. Plenty of elders chase attention as well. Life is messy. But patterns persist and they are worth naming.
Practical differences that add up.
Workplaces and politics magnify these differences. A manager born in 1970 might rely on decades of face to face negotiation. A younger employee might expect messages and transparent public praise on the platform that the company uses. Both approaches can coexist but they often collide. The older approach values discretion and slow credibility. The newer approach values speed and visible scoreboard impact. Both can be effective. Both require translation.
When younger people lose sleep over a dip in engagement they are asking their esteem system to stabilise on unstable ground. When older people scorn social validation they risk dismissing legitimate cultural shifts. The useful move for a society is to hold both as imperfect and learn to translate between them.
Not a return. A hybrid future.
We will not un-invent the algorithm. Nor should we pretend that the experiences of the 60s and 70s are a better default for everyone. Yet their skepticism is a resource. It can be taught not as an affront but as a strategy. Teach children how to make things that outlast the feed. Teach older colleagues to show the ledger of small durable wins in a language the feed recognises.
I will not moralise that one system of value is superior. I will insist that the old instincts protect against a particular kind of volatility. They buy time. Sometimes they also buy boredom. Both costs are real.
Conclusion
People born in the 60s and 70s do not measure life through likes because they carry currencies that likes cannot replicate. Those currencies were formed in a sparser attention economy and they still function. That difference is not an insult. It is a living alternative that says some worth is slow to earn and slow to spend.
| Idea | What it means |
|---|---|
| Delayed feedback | A tendency to value outcomes that arrive after time not instant applause. |
| Local audience | Comparison within human scale rather than an anonymous global feed. |
| Durable currency | Skills relationships and reputation that persist independent of metrics. |
| Translation needed | Different generations require new ways to communicate value to one another. |
FAQ
Do people born in the 60s and 70s never care about social media approval?
No. They do care sometimes. But care looks different. Approval is weighed against a history of experiences. A like can be appreciated but it rarely redefines status overnight in the way a viral moment can for someone who has grown up inside that economy.
Is this just nostalgia for a simpler past?
Not entirely. There is nostalgia but there are also measurable differences in upbringing technology exposure and economic conditions. These combine into patterns of attention allocation. The point is not to romanticise but to recognise that the timing and shape of validation matters.
Can younger people learn the older approach?
Yes. Some already do deliberately. Practices like deep work analogue hobbies and fewer platform driven comparisons replicate aspects of the older economy. It is not a biological inheritance but a learned set of habits that can be taught and practised.
Are companies ignoring this generational divide?
Some do and pay for it in staff turnover and miscommunication. The smartest organisations design hybrid recognition systems that reward visible impact and private durable contributions. That translation is becoming a managerial skill.
Does this view excuse older people from adapting?
No. The claim is not that one generation is morally superior. It is that different value systems exist and that a functioning society needs translation tools not contempt. Adapting is a two way street.
