Why Every Generation Gets It "Wrong"

I was intrigued by an FT article that highlighted a new trend - that young people don't say "hello" when answering their phones anymore – they just pick up and wait for you to start talking.

It's a small thing, really, but it sparked a bigger thought: is this just a normal social evolution, where each generation horrifies the previous one with their audacious refusal to do things "properly."

This phone greeting thing? It's just this year's model of moral panic. And like every generational shift before it, it's simultaneously earth-shattering and completely predictable.

Acceleration

What probably feels different now is the speed.

Our great-grandparents had decades to digest the telephone, radio, and automobile. Whereas we get new ways to fundamentally alter human behaviour every few months.

TikTok dances replace handshakes, voice notes replace phone calls, and entire relationships unfold through carefully curated Instagram stories.

COVID turbocharged this acceleration.

In eighteen months, we rewrote the rules for work, school, dating, and family gatherings. Suddenly, formal business meetings happened in bedrooms, kindergarteners learned to mute themselves, and grandparents became Zoom experts.

The old boundaries between professional and personal, formal and casual, collapsed overnight.

Every generation pushes back against the previous one

Haven't we been here before?

But Let's take a trip through the greatest hits of "kids these days" moral panics:

The 1920s: Young women shortened their skirts and bobbed their hair. Society was surely doomed. Jazz music would corrupt America's youth with its wild rhythms and improvisation. Dancing the Charleston was basically announcing the end of civilization.

The 1950s: Rock and roll would destroy America's moral fabric. Elvis's hip gyrations were too scandalous for television. Comic books were rotting children's brains and turning them into delinquents.

The 1980s: Video games would create a generation of antisocial zombies. MTV would ruin music appreciation. Mall culture was destroying family values and creating mindless consumers.

The 2000s: The internet would end real human connection. Text messaging would destroy grammar and spelling forever. Social media would create narcissistic sociopaths incapable of genuine relationships.

Notice the pattern?

The Defence of Change

Here's the thing older generations often miss: young people aren't just being rebellious for the sake of it. They're problem-solving.

That phone greeting thing? Maybe it's not rude – maybe it's efficient. When caller ID tells you exactly who's calling, performing surprise about their identity feels unnecessarily theatrical.

Similarly, texting isn't killing conversation; it's creating new forms of it.

Voice messages aren't lazy; they're intimate in ways traditional calls often aren't. Even the dreaded "ghosting" might be a more honest response than elaborate rejection rituals that help no one.

Every generation inherits a world their parents built, then immediately sets about fixing what seems broken to them.

Boomers saw their parents' conformity and chose rebellion.

Gen X saw Boomers' idealism and chose irony.

Millennials saw Gen X's cynicism and chose authenticity (even if performed).

Gen Z sees Millennials' anxiety and chooses... well, we're still finding out.

As for my own Generation Alphas? They probably inherit a challenging legacy of climate change, global wars and threats to democracy, but they too will recast the world in a way that makes sense to them.

The Wisdom of Both Sides

The older generation's concerns aren't baseless hand-wringing. I am old enough to have earned the right to set some basic standards.

Manners and social rituals exist for reasons – they create shared understanding, show respect, and oil the gears of social interaction. When we abandon these wholesale, we risk losing something valuable.

But younger generations aren't wrong either. Many traditional courtesies were designed for different times and technologies.

Insisting on outdated forms can create artificial barriers to authentic connection. Sometimes progress requires leaving perfectly good traditions behind.

The COVID Catalyst

The pandemic didn't just accelerate technological change – it gave everyone permission to question everything. Suddenly, practices we'd never examined ("Why do we shake hands?" "Why do we work in offices?" "Why do we answer phones formally?") became open for debate.

This questioning isn't destructive – it's healthy.

A society that can't adapt its customs dies, but one that abandons all customs dissolves. The art lies in knowing which traditions to preserve, which to modify, and which to abandon entirely.

Finding the Rhythm

Perhaps the real skill isn't mastering any particular set of manners, but learning to read rooms and adapt accordingly.

The young person who knows when casual works and when formal is required. The older person who recognizes that efficiency isn't always rudeness and authenticity isn't always disrespect.

Every generation thinks they've figured out the perfect balance between tradition and progress.

Every generation is wrong, but not entirely wrong. The dance continues, each generation adding their own steps while trying not to trip over the previous generation's feet.

The phone greeting thing will resolve itself, probably through some compromise we haven't thought of yet.

Something more important will replace it as the symbol of generational divide. And the eternal dance will continue, as it always has, as it always should.

Because change, as they say, is the only constant. Even if some of us still prefer to announce ourselves when we answer the phone.