The takeaway: Researchers found that "kids these days" pessimism isn't about kids at all and it's a mix of two mental shortcuts: we notice flaws in others where we personally excel, and we misremember our own younger selves as better than we were. In short, the line says more about the person saying it than the kid they're judging.
The line is older than you think
"Back in my day" and "kids these days" aren't new complaints — they've been around for millennia. One of the researchers behind this study traced the complaint back roughly 2,600 years, and only stopped there because older references couldn't be verified. So somewhere around your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (give or take a few "greats") crochety uncle Platonius, someone in your family line was already grumbling that his generation was superior to the one after him.
You and your kid are nowhere near the first to hear this. You won't be the last, either.
What the researchers actually measured
A study published in Science Advances — based on more than 3,400 American adults across five separate experiments — didn't try to measure whether kids are actually in decline. Instead, it looked at why so many people believe they are.
That distinction matters because this kind of research is tricky. There's no hard metric for "kids these days." It relies on personal opinion and memory, and human memory isn't exactly reliable. Even so, the study found that most participants leaned into the belief anyway.
Researchers focused on three areas where people often feel younger generations fall short:
- Reading
- Respect
- Intelligence
The better you are at something, the worse you think kids are at it
Here's the pattern researchers found: people who read a lot themselves were more likely to think kids today read less. People who scored higher on measures of authority and respect for elders were more likely to see today's kids as disrespectful. The same held for intelligence.
In their own words, the researchers pointed to two mechanisms:
- A person-specific bias — we notice shortcomings in others most clearly in areas where we personally excel.
- A memory bias — we project our current qualities onto our memory of our younger selves, effectively rewriting how good we actually were.
Mix those two together, and you get the perfect setup for a "back in my day" moment.
So what does this actually mean for you?
Kids these days are fine. If humanity had really been declining for 2,600 years, we'd all be trying to order pizza from a shoe by now. Next time someone drops the "kids these days" line, you can smile knowing it says a lot more about their memory and ego than it does about your kid.
If you're hearing this a lot as a new parent
This line tends to show up loudest in the newborn and toddler years — usually from a grandparent, in-law, or well-meaning stranger in a grocery store line, right when you're already running on no sleep and second-guessing every choice you make. That timing isn't a coincidence. New parents are an easy target because you're new at this, and doubt is loud in year one.
Knowing the psychology behind it can help take the sting out. The person saying it isn't seeing your kid clearly — they're seeing themselves, filtered through a memory that's quietly rewritten itself to make them look better. It's not a verdict on your parenting.
If you want a graceful response in the moment, something simple works: "Interesting, the research actually says that's more about memory bias than kids' behavior." ("Okay, Boomer" also works.) You don't have to defend your child or your choices. You can just let the science speak for itself.
As a mom of two, I've heard this line lobbed more times than I can count, usually about something as small as a tantrum in a checkout line. It never gets less annoying. But knowing there's real research behind why people say it has made it a lot easier to shrug off and get on with my day.
Has anyone pulled the "kids these days" line on you? Vent in the comments below.
Our next reco: How to Gracefully Deal with Unsolicited Parenting Advice
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