As a card-carrying Gen-Xer, I usually approach the endless, raging internet war between Boomers and Millennials the way my generation approaches everything: by sitting back, eating popcorn, and watching the show.
The endless memes, the TikTok rants, the comedy routines, sure, they’re funny. But lately, I’ve had to scratch my head at the sheer amount of energy we spend ripping on each other. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of cheap caricatures. We’ve all seen the grumpy, textbook Boomer shaking their fists and yelling from the porch, and the hyper-connected Gen-Z kid whose eyes are permanently fused to a smartphone screen.
They make great snapshots, but they’re lousy representation.
I happen to sit right in the messy middle. I can appreciate the ancient arts of changing a flat tire and re-sewing buttons on my shirt. But I’m also tech-literate enough to navigate digital world of social media, video games and Teams meetings with minimal cussing and temper tantrums.
If I’m being completely honest, the internet’s obsession with dividing us by birth year completely falls apart the second you step into the real world.
Take my day jobs, for instance. Between coordinating teenage lifeguard crews at the YMCA pool and deploying onto active wildland fire lines, I am constantly trapped in a demographic blender. On a wildfire deployment, you quickly realize that fire doesn’t care what year you were born. I’ve stood on a line next to old-school crew bosses who can read weather patterns like a book, and 20-something rookies who can pack hose with terrifying, high-speed efficiency.
No matter how much I think I’ve completely mastered a job, some kid half my age or a veteran with decades on me will casually drop a bit of wisdom that leaves me thinking, Huh. Well, I’ve been doing that wrong for years.
I had this reality check hit me hard recently while watching a reality competition show. One particular competitor caught my eye; not just because she was incredibly talented, but because of how she carried herself. She was refreshingly genuine. When someone else won a challenge, her happiness for them wasn’t a fake smile for the cameras; it was real.
I ended up reading her biography because I wanted to know how someone built that kind of grace under pressure. Learning about her experiences made me want to look in the mirror and be a better human being.
Here’s the kicker: she was 15 years old.
That stuck with me for days. I’m a grown adult, and I was getting schooled by someone who isn’t even old enough to drive a car.
It made me realize how much we lose when we let internet stereotypes dictate how we treat each other. There are plenty of “those darn kids” out there who are casually setting a standard I’m still trying to reach. And on the flip side, there is a mountain of hard-earned wisdom locked inside the older generation that we are just letting fade away because we’d rather argue about emojis and lawn care.
Age doesn’t automatically guarantee wisdom, and youth doesn’t automatically mean entitlement. If we stop treating generations like sports teams, we might actually learn something.
Even if it means admitting a teenager outclassed us.
