Norm was only in his 30s?
Ever look at your parents' high school yearbooks and think people looked so much older back then? All of the teenagers look like they’re in their mid-30s and the teachers who are 50 look like they’re 80. When we watch older movies, even those from the 1980s, the teenagers appear to be a lot older as well. Why is it that they looked so much older? Was life harder? Did people act more mature? Did they spend more time outdoors and less time playing video games? Is it their sense of fashion? Were they all smokers?
Educator Michael Stevens, who runs the super-popular Vsauce YouTube channel, explains the phenomenon in a video called, “Did people used to look older?” In it, he explains that people in the past appear a lot older due to retrospective aging.
This is how it works: when we see people in the past, they are wearing outdated styles that we associate with older people; therefore, we think they have aged rapidly. For example, a teenager in the 1950s may have been in fashion while wearing thick Buddy Holly-style glasses.
Buddy Holly was 20 years old in this photo. upload.wikimedia.org
But as people age, they tend to cling to the fashion of their youth. So many people of that generation continued to wear the Buddy Holly-style glasses into their 50s. So when younger people see those glasses they see them as old people's glasses and not a hip kid from the '50s.
So in the photo from the '50s, the teen appears to look a lot older because our perspective has been tainted by time.
30 going on 60…media3.giphy.com
But it isn’t all just an illusion. Stevens also points out that people did age faster back in the day due to differences in nutrition, lifestyle and medicine. In addition, he also does a deep dive on how a person's name can affect their appearance, referencing the Dorian Gray effect, which theorizes that cultural stereotypes linked to a name come to be written on the faces of their bearers, as well as the name matching effect, in which people whose faces "match" their names tend to be better perceived.
Basically, this 22-minute video is chalked full of fascinating tidbits. Give it a watch below.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
It might be worth noting that, in addition to healthier lifestyle options, younger generations have more access to anti-aging procedures than ever before. "Tweakments," like fillers and botox, are less expensive and more readily available than ever—not to mention every anti-aging cream, serum, and cleanser known to man. And many millennials and Gen Zers take advantage of that, whether prompted by selfie anxiety, a growing obsession with youth, or some other motivation.
Plus, millennial and Gen Z fashion often honors their inner child. Nostalgic cartoon tees, colorful prints, cutesy accessories, etc. Granted, under the retrospective aging theory, even those styles could one day look dated, but they are so youthful that it's hard to imagine that being the case. That said, can't wait to see bunch of geezers sporting those broccoli haircuts.
This article originally appeared three years ago.
Millennials, are you victims of "gramnesia"?
It’s funny how once a sort of abstract experience gets a name attached to it, it suddenly becomes much easier to understand and relate to. The Internet—and primarily TikTok—has been great for that. Sure, things get out of hand quite easily (like the overuse of “therapy speak”), but there has also been quite a lot of validation and meaningful conversations that have spawned from these overnight buzzwords.
Case and point: “Gramnesia.”
“Gramnesia,” which combines the words “grandparent” and “amnesia,” has been popping up on Reddit discussions for a while now, though the coiner of the term seems unknown. But only recently has it been really gaining traction.
Back in June of 2024, Maryland-based therapist and mom Allie McQuaid, really brought “gramnesia” to the forefront of the conversation when she made an Instagram video all about it.
“I just heard this term called ‘gramnesia’ when grandparents forget what it’s really like having young kids and I can’t stop thinking about how accurate it is,” she said in the clip.
In her caption, McQuaid shared how so many of her clients would get “slammed” by their parents about how different (i.e. “easier”) raising kids was for them whenever they brought their own children around.
These hyperbolic memories are, as McQuaid put it, so “ridiculous” that they've clearly “forgot[ten] what it was really like in those early years of parenthood.”
Some examples of “gramnesia” statements could be:
“You never had tantrums when you were a kid”
“I potty trained you before you were one”
“You were always happy to eat whatever we fed you.”
“You were spanked and turned out fine!”
Clearly, McQuaid’s video struck a chord, because it wasn’t long before people begin chiming in with their own stories of gramnesia:
“My MIL, over the years, loved to act like her children were perfect growing up. I love to tell the stories of her son (my hubby) getting into all kinds of trouble as a kid - oh the shock.”
“*Baby makes any kind of noise* Grandma: "Oh they must be teething!" Me : "Umm she's 4 months old, She isn't teething yet - just has feelings and is you know - A BABY" grandma: ‘well my kids had all their teeth by 4 months’ 😐🤨”
“5 months old and not sleeping through the night? Did you try rice cereal? Baby not walking ? Rice cereal. Baby not in college yet? Have you tried rice cereal?”
“Ugh my dad literally just said this to me last week… ‘I don’t remember you guys having this many tantrums’… 🙄 right after my boys were upset.”
These moments may be harder to remember. Image via Canva
McQuaid posited some theories as to why gramnesia exists in the first place.
One is that it could simply be the natural tendency to have a cognitive bias which puts past experiences in a more positive light than they actually were, aka having “euphoric recall.” As she told Huffpost, we tend to have a “foggier memory of how things truly were” as we get older, “especially if the experience we had was particularly difficult or even traumatic.”
Plus, the first few years of parenthood are often such a blur anyway. McQuaid herself admitted that ”I even have a hard time remembering the first year of motherhood, and that was only four years ago.”
In addition, McQuaid theorized that gramnesia exists because previous generations “were not given space to express emotions or indicate that they were struggling to adjust to motherhood.” Honestly, a sound hypothesis.
And for the frustrated folks itching to confront their boomer parents about this, McQuaid suggests picking your battles.
“Check your capacity if you have the space or energy to even consider bringing up your frustration with your parents,” she told Huffpost. “You are likely in the throes of parenting right now, and maybe all you can do is smile and nod after hearing for the 100th time how ‘you were never like this.’”
However, if you are determined to bring it up and set the record straight, McQuaid suggests to actually keep it centered around you and how the situation makes you feel, rather than combating their memories. So, instead of saying, “That’s NOT how it happened!” try something like, “When you said that I never did X when I was Y’s age, it makes me question how well I’m doing as a parent.” Probably easier said than done, to be sure.
And while this sore spot might never come to a full resolution for a lot of millennial parents, at least take some solace in knowing that you’re not crazy, nor are you alone.
You'll probably forget the stress of these days too. Image via Canva.
This article originally appeared last year.
A before and after view of the experiment
In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea. In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.
One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.
16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.
Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.
The first deposit of orange peels in 1996.Photo by Dan Janzen.
"It's a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it," Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.
When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was "like night and day."
The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R).Photo by Leland Werden.
"It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems," he explains.
The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.
Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.
The results, published in the journal "Restoration Ecology," highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area's turnaround.
According to the Princeton School of International Public Affairs, the experiment resulted in a "176 percent increase in aboveground biomass — or the wood in the trees — within the 3-hectare area (7 acres) studied."
The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.
Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot.Photo by Tim Treuer.
In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.
"You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem," says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. "That thing was massive."
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.
In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.
Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.
In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.
Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.
The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998.Photo by Dan Janzen.
"We don't want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it's scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential," Treuer says.
The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.
Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.
Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.
In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper's senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area's transformation became truly clear.
The sign after clearing away the vines.Photo by Tim Treuer.
"It's a big honking sign," Choi emphasizes.
19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.
This article originally appeared eight years ago.