“Kids these days!”

Chances are you’ve heard it, maybe even said it. It's usually followed by a few other classics:

It’s a greatest hits album of generational gripes: timeless, catchy, and wildly off-key.

The reality? Every generation has been embarrassingly prone to assume the worst about the youngest generation. We hurl accusations, lob sweeping assumptions, and somehow forget that similar complaints were once aimed at us. These laments have echoed through the centuries, from the fall of Rome to the rise of TikTok.

But why? Why do we keep hitting repeat on this cycle of generational judgment?

Psychologists John Protzko (Central Connecticut State University) and Jonathan Schooler (UC Santa Barbara) recently dug into this pattern and unearthed two psychological assumptions that fuel it:

If you're highly

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