8 complaints boomers make that are really just nostalgia for simpler times

My dad called me last week to complain about his new phone.

Not that it was broken. Not that it was defective. Just that it was different from his old one. The icons moved. The settings changed. Everything he knew how to do required learning again.

"Why do they have to keep changing things?" he asked. And I heard it. That note of genuine frustration mixed with something deeper. Exhaustion. A longing for things to just stay put for once.

He wasn't really mad about the phone. He was tired of the world shifting underneath him.

Psychologists call it rosy retrospection, the tendency to remember the past as better than it actually was. It's a comfort response, a way to find meaning when the present feels chaotic and the future uncertain.

Boomers aren't uniquely nostalgic. Every generation romanticizes their youth. But boomers are particularly vocal about it, and their complaints often mask a deeper longing for a world that felt more manageable, more predictable, more simple.

1) "Everything costs too much now"

Walk into any grocery store with someone over sixty and you'll hear it. The price scanner beeps, they look at the screen, they shake their head.

"Six dollars for a muffin? That's ridiculous."

They're not wrong. Things do cost more. But the complaint isn't really about the muffin.

It's about remembering when a dollar meant something. When you could fill a cart for twenty bucks. When prices were stable and predictable and you knew what things were supposed to cost.

My grandmother saved aluminum foil. She washed and reused ziplock bags. Not because she was cheap, but because she grew up during times when you didn't waste anything. That scarcity mindset never left.

So when prices jump, it's not just an inconvenience. It's a reminder that the world they understood no longer exists. The complaint is really asking: am I still going to be okay?

2) "Nobody has manners anymore"

This one comes up constantly. Kids on phones at dinner. People not holding doors. Nobody saying please or thank you. The general erosion of basic courtesy.

But what boomers are really mourning is a social contract that made sense to them.

They grew up in a world with clearer rules. You stood when someone entered the room. You wrote thank-you notes. You called people by their title until invited to use their first name. These weren't arbitrary rules. They were signals that communicated respect, consideration, attention.

Modern social norms look different. We text instead of call. We're informal with everyone. We value authenticity over formality. None of this is inherently worse. It's just different.

When boomers complain about manners, they're really saying: I understood the old rules. These new ones don't make sense to me. And I'm tired of feeling like I don't know how to behave in my own world.

3) "Technology is ruining everything"

Kids on phones. Social media destroying real connection. The internet making people stupid. Everyone staring at screens instead of talking to each other.

I get it. I'm forty-four and I already feel the pull of nostalgia for pre-smartphone life. I remember when we just made plans and showed up. No group texts. No real-time location sharing. Just trust that people would be where they said they'd be.

But the boomer complaint about technology isn't really about the technology. It's about competence and dignity.

My dad spent his career being good at things. Then his job went digital and suddenly he was the guy who needed help with basic tasks. That's humbling. It's hard to feel competent when the tools you rely on update themselves into strangers.

When boomers rail against technology, what they're often expressing is: I used to understand how things worked. Now I feel lost. And nobody wants to feel incompetent in their sixties.

4) "Back in my day, people worked harder"

This is the big one. The complaint that makes younger generations see red.

Boomers love to talk about their work ethic. Sixty-hour weeks. Thirty years at the same company. No complaining, just getting it done. And implicitly or explicitly, they compare that to younger workers who want work-life balance, mental health days, and flexible schedules.

But strip away the judgment and what you're left with is a generation trying to make sense of their sacrifices.

They did work hard. They did stay at jobs they hated. They did push through exhaustion and stress because that's what you were supposed to do. And now they're watching younger people refuse to make those same sacrifices and still succeed.

That's disorienting. It makes you question whether all that sacrifice was necessary. Whether you could have had a different life if you'd known it was an option.

The complaint about work ethic is really about meaning. It's asking: was the way I lived my life the right way? Or did I miss out on something important?

5) "You can't get good customer service anymore"

Automated phone trees. Chatbots that don't understand your question. Service workers who seem distracted or undertrained. The impossibility of reaching an actual human who can solve your problem.

This complaint drives me nuts too, so I'm sympathetic. But for boomers, it represents something larger than just inconvenience.

They remember when businesses had relationships with customers. When the bank teller knew your name. When you bought your car from someone who lived in your town. When commerce involved human connection, not algorithms.

Efficiency replaced relationship. Scale replaced local. And something was lost in that transaction, even if we gained convenience.

When boomers complain about customer service, they're mourning the loss of being known. Of mattering as a person, not just a transaction ID.

6) "Everything moves too fast now"

Same-day delivery. Twenty-four-hour news cycles. Expectations of instant responses to emails and texts. The relentless pace of modern life.

My mom said this to me recently: "I feel like I'm always behind. Like I can never catch up."

She's retired. She has more free time than she's had in decades. But the world moves at a speed that exhausts her.

This isn't about age making you slow. It's about the fundamental pace of society accelerating beyond what feels human.

Boomers grew up when things took time. You waited for photos to be developed. You planned trips without real-time updates. You wrote letters and waited weeks for responses. That slower pace wasn't frustrating. It was just how life worked.

The complaint about speed is really a complaint about never being able to rest. About the exhaustion of keeping up with a world that won't slow down.

7) "Kids today are too sensitive"

Trigger warnings. Microaggressions. The need to watch what you say. Young people getting offended by jokes that used to be normal.

This one creates real friction between generations because it sounds like boomers are dismissing legitimate concerns about respect and inclusion.

But often, what's underneath is fear and confusion.

Boomers grew up when norms shifted much more slowly. Words that were acceptable for decades became offensive seemingly overnight. Behaviors that were standard became problematic. And nobody handed out a updated rulebook.

It's genuinely disorienting to feel like you're walking through a social minefield where the rules keep changing and the punishment for getting it wrong is public shaming.

When boomers complain about sensitivity, they're often really saying: I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing. I don't understand all these new rules. And I'm tired of feeling like I'm constantly messing up.

8) "Music was better back then"

The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. Motown. Real instruments. Lyrics that meant something. Music you could actually hear the words to.

As someone who spent years as an indie music blogger, I can confirm that every generation thinks their music was superior. It's almost funny how predictable it is.

But for boomers specifically, music nostalgia carries extra weight because music was so central to their identity.

The soundtrack of the sixties and seventies wasn't just entertainment. It was revolution. It was meaning. It was the voice of their generation demanding change. Music mattered in a way that felt profound.

When boomers say music was better, they're not really making an objective claim about quality. They're saying: I miss when music made me feel something. When it connected me to something larger than myself. When the world felt full of possibility.

They're mourning their youth. Not the music.

The bottom line

I'm not telling you to stop being annoyed by boomer complaints. Some of them are genuinely tone-deaf, especially when they ignore how much harder certain things have become for younger generations.

But underneath most boomer nostalgia is something more human than generational warfare.

It's the experience of watching your world become unrecognizable. Of feeling increasingly irrelevant in a culture that moves past you. Of trying to hold onto meaning when the frameworks that gave your life structure keep dissolving.

That's not unique to boomers. Millennials will feel this way about Gen Alpha. Gen Z will complain about whatever comes next. It's the universal experience of aging in a world that won't stop changing.

The difference is that boomers grew up in an unusually stable period and came of age during massive social change they largely drove. They had agency. They shaped culture. And now they're on the other side of that dynamic, watching younger generations reshape things again without their input.

That loss of relevance is hard. The nostalgia for simpler times is really nostalgia for when they felt competent, connected, and in control.

Next time your boomer relative starts complaining about prices or phones or kids these days, try to hear what's underneath. It's not always judgment. Sometimes it's just exhaustion. Sometimes it's grief.

And maybe, just maybe, we can respond with a little more patience. Not because they're right about everything. But because we'll all be there eventually, complaining about whatever the youth have changed, longing for a world that made more sense to us.

The cycle continues. The only question is whether we handle it with grace or resentment.