When we tsk at the 'kids these days'

THERE is a new post-millennial catchphrase in town. Just this month, a 25-year-old New Zealand lawmaker zinged her older colleagues in Parliament who heckled her over her support for a Zero Carbon Bill. "Okay, boomer," retorted the young Member of Parliament Chlöe Swarbrick, as she pressed on with her speech to back a target of zero carbon emissions for the country by 2050.

The clapback is a snappy comeback to Baby Boomers whom young people feel have dismissed views ranging from a push for greater equality, to more focus on the devastating impact from climate change. And the derogatory tone is comically compounded when most Baby Boomers are only just catching on to the term, as the bewilderment from older New Zealand parliamentarians showed.

As The New York Times wrote, because Baby Boomers - those born between 1946 and 1964 - tend to negatively label those from the younger generation as "snowflakes", those of the Gen Z - those born between 1996 and 2010 - find it "particularly hilarious to watch them freak out about the phrase".

There's nothing new about complaints of a generational divide coming from both sides of the table. But the rapid speed of digital media transmission has meant the race for generational tit-for-tat discourse has become far more intense.

Even some in their 20s, I've found anecdotally, are putting very deliberate distance between their "generation", and those just a few years shy of them. So someone who is 22 years old sees herself very differently from a 19-year-old, partly because the digital lingo is evolving rapidly. (For example, call me when you understand the term "yeet".)

It has also taken me a few years to come to terms with calling myself a millennial. I judge the YOLO mentality of others while buying bottles of sake on a 11.11 sale.

A Vox article this week sagely states: "Here's a prediction: These 'Ok boomer' young people are going to get older and start complaining about the youth of the future. They'll probably use the same insults, complaining the kids of the '50s and '60s are more entitled, more narcissistic, and less self-sufficient than those of generations past."

A large reason for this generational diatribe - "Kids these days!" is this: we are prone to memory bias.

People apply something known as presentism, in which we try to construct a memory by piecing parts of the present and slotting them into the memory reel of past events. In order to frame a view of young people, those who are older try to pull together their memories of how kids of their time used to behave. But we forget our youthful mistakes.

"Since we don't have it all, we use information from the present to fill in the gaps... but we don't use information about present-day kids, we use information about ourselves," the report said.

Citing a study by a University of California Santa Barbara psychologist John Protzko, the Vox article showed that adults projected their priorities or inclinations today, on how they expect kids to behave.

So adults who tend to be more authoritarian would say that kids today are a lot less respectful of elders than previous batches of kids. Adults who are keen readers today are more likely to think "kids these days" are poorly read.

Of course, adults who think they are very smart will say that kids are not so bright as they used to be (even though evidence has shown that IQ levels have risen over the decades). So the bias endures in part, because of how adults behave when they look in a mirror.

"Adults are (hopefully) better behaved and more knowledgeable than they were as kids... generally, people become more conscientious as they get older," the article said. "It seems reasonable that we tend to project that increased conscientiousness on our evaluations of kids' pasts."

Still, for all that misplaced moral panic over millennials, there is room to say snappy comebacks from the young come up short on empathy as well.

Take it from former US president Barack Obama, who hit out recently at this "call-out culture" on social media among the youth, where an individual who puts out a view that is disagreed upon is then ostracised via a vitriol of social-media attacks. In millennial lingo, they've been "cancelled".

This behaviour has been accelerated by social media, Mr Obama said at a conference, pointing out that the idea of activism has been conflated with being "as judgemental as possible about other people".

"Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, 'Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out," he said.

"That's not activism... if all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far."

He referred to millennials who act out on "cancel culture" on college, but also pointed out that "people who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you".

Rather than vindicate young people, the study on memory bias' impact on ageism is meant to emphasise a common humanity, said the Vox report. Funnily enough, Mr Obama's comment managed to strike a chord with the young, and the old, the conservatives and the liberals, despite the general pigeon-holes these groups are in.

We probably cannot correct fully the tired "kids these days" cliche. We are prone to forget. But perhaps we should try to remember how disingenuous we can be when we say so.

And perhaps, knowing when to speak out to make it count, is when we realise we've started to grow up. That is wisdom. And that, in itself, is a lesson for the ages.