Elder millennials think they're young—but these 10 behaviors reveal they're just boomers with WiFi

Somewhere between your last avocado toast and your first favorite podcast about productivity, something shifted. You still think of yourself as young—you have TikTok! You understand memes! You remember when the internet was new! But lately, you've noticed Gen Z looking at you the same way you used to look at people who printed out MapQuest directions. The truth is starting to dawn: you're not the young, disruptive generation anymore. You're the generation complaining about how loud restaurants have gotten.

This isn't about age—plenty of 40-year-olds are more culturally current than some 25-year-olds. It's about the subtle ways elder millennials have started channeling the exact energy they once mocked. The generational theory that seemed so clear when you were defining yourself against boomers gets messier when you realize you're now the one asking to speak to managers and wondering why everything has to be a video.

1. You've started sentences with "Back in my day, we had to..."

Remember rolling your eyes when older people talked about walking uphill both ways? Now you're the one explaining that you had to wait for photos to load pixel by pixel, that you couldn't use the internet and phone at the same time, that you had to actually buy entire albums. You've become a historian of minor inconveniences, convinced that struggling with dial-up built character in a way that 5G never could.

The irony is delicious: you're nostalgic for the very limitations you couldn't wait to escape. You tell younger people about burning CDs like you're describing hunting mammoth. The psychology of nostalgia suggests we romanticize struggle retroactively, but knowing this doesn't stop you from believing that having to wait three days for Netflix DVDs made movies mean more.

2. Your group texts have become tech support channels

Half your messages are now helping friends figure out why their smart TV won't connect, how to share their location, or what that weird notification means. You've appointed yourself the family IT department, the same role your parents used to assign you. Except now you're googling the answers just like they did—you just hide it better.

You've discovered that technical competence is relative. You can navigate Instagram but get confused by BeReal. You understand Facebook but TikTok's algorithm feels like dark magic. You're caught in the digital divide middle ground: too young to give up on technology, too old to intuitively understand every new platform.

3. You print things out "just in case"

Concert tickets. Boarding passes. Important emails. You tell yourself it's being prepared, but really it's the same impulse that made your parents keep filing cabinets full of bank statements. You don't trust the cloud completely. What if your phone dies? What if the internet stops working? What if you need to prove you had that reservation?

This paper trail anxiety is peak boomer energy wrapped in millennial rationalization. You use digital tools but need physical backup, creating elaborate systems that are neither fully analog nor digital. You've become the generation that screenshots everything and then prints the screenshots.

4. You've said "They don't make things like they used to"

Your 2008 laptop still works perfectly. Your iPhone from two years ago is "basically broken." You've started believing in planned obsolescence, quality decline, and the general deterioration of craftsmanship. You sound exactly like your dad talking about cars, except you're talking about apps that used to be simple and now require subscriptions.

This complaint transcends generations—every cohort eventually believes things were better made in their youth. But there's something particularly poignant about millennials, who fought for disruption and innovation, now longing for when Gmail was just email and you could buy software once instead of renting it forever.

5. You ask "Who is this?" when Gen Z mentions any celebrity

The names they drop sound made up. Apparently, there are entire celebrity ecosystems you've never encountered. You recognize maybe one person in any awards show lineup, and that person is probably there for lifetime achievement. You've started sentences with "Is that a real person or a stage name?" unironically.

You compensate by over-explaining your references. "You know, like in The Office—the American version, with Steve Carell?" You've become the person providing context for references that were universal five years ago. Your cultural knowledge has an expiration date, and you just discovered it.

6. You complain about how expensive everything has gotten

"Twenty dollars for a cocktail? I remember when..." You've become acutely aware of price inflation, particularly for things you remember being cheap. You can't order a burger without mentioning what burgers used to cost. You've started using phrases like "highway robbery" unironically.

The twist is that you're simultaneously the generation that normalized $7 lattes and $15 avocado toast. You'll pay for convenience and quality, but you need everyone to know you remember when things cost less. This price nostalgia is classic boomer behavior—you just do it while paying with Venmo.

7. You use Facebook unironically

Not just having an account—actually posting. Sharing articles. Commenting on things. Writing "Happy Birthday" on walls. You treat Facebook like a legitimate social platform while Gen Z treats it like a digital cemetery where millennials go to share minion memes with their aunts.

You defend this by saying it's where your "real friends" are, the same defense boomers used when you mocked them for not understanding Instagram. You've become the demographic Facebook desperately needs. You share news articles and genuinely think people read them.

8. You've started caring about your lawn/plants/sourdough starter

The same generation that mocked suburban lawn obsession now has strong opinions about soil pH. You've got apps for plant care. You name your houseplants. You talk about your weekend gardening like it's an accomplishment worth sharing at parties.

This domestic nesting behavior is exactly what you swore you'd never do. But here you are, excited about your new vacuum, comparing air fryer recipes, and feeling genuine joy about matching food storage containers. You've become house-proud in ways that would horrify your 25-year-old self.

9. You think music is too loud everywhere

Bars. Restaurants. Stores. Everything is mixed wrong and turned up too high. You've started choosing restaurants based on their "acoustic situation." You've actually said the phrase "Can they turn the music down?" to your friends, who nod in agreement because they're old now too.

You rationalize this as being about conversation, not age. But you've joined the eternal complaint of every generation: that public spaces cater to people younger than you. You just want to eat your overpriced burger in peace.

10. You've started ending texts with unnecessary punctuation

"Sounds good." "Thanks." "See you there." Every text ends with a period, which Gen Z reads as passive-aggressive. You use ellipses for pause... like this... thinking it sounds thoughtful when it actually sounds ominous. Your emoji use is earnest and literal—smiley faces mean happy, thumbs up means yes.

You've become the person whose texts require generational translation. You still use "lol" as actual punctuation. You type "haha" when something is funny. You've started texting exactly like your parents, just with better spelling.

Final thoughts

The beautiful irony is that elder millennials are experiencing exactly what every generation before them has: the slow slide from cultural relevance into comfortable obsolescence. You're not old, but you're not young either. You're in that strange middle space where you understand both TikTok and email etiquette, where you can navigate both analog and digital worlds, where you remember both before and after.

Maybe this is the real millennial achievement: becoming boomers while keeping the WiFi password. You've managed to age into the very behaviors you mocked while maintaining just enough technical competence to hide it. You're not your parents, but you're not not your parents either. You're something new: digitally literate fogeys, technologically capable curmudgeons, the first generation to complain about "kids these days" while still using the same apps they do—just wrong, apparently, and with too much punctuation. And honestly? It's kind of comfortable here.