There is a conversational shorthand floating around social feeds and dinner tables that older generations were tougher in ways younger people are not. That shorthand is part nostalgia part cultural narrative and part empirical observation. Psychologists say people born in the 1960s and 1970s developed emotional strengths that are rare today and the claim is worth untangling without the usual moralising. This piece does not seek to crown a winner in the generational Olympics. Rather it asks what specific emotional habits and social circumstances shaped a cohort in a particular historical window and how those traits look to a world rearranged by screens and different anxieties.
What people mean when they say emotional strength
Talk of emotional strength typically bundles several things together. There is the capacity to tolerate boredom. There is the readiness to withstand public failure without immediate rescue. There is a pragmatic approach to relationships that prioritises repair over theatrical expression. There is a kind of adaptive patience, the slow burn rather than the rapid flare. Psychologists who study life course and development do not reduce all of this to a single trait, but they do point to shared formative conditions that make certain responses more likely.
How the 1960s and 1970s childhood was organized
Children born into the 1960s and 1970s were the first to straddle postwar stability and the emergence of modern consumer culture. They experienced increasing affluence without the hypercurated parenting scripts that followed in the 1990s and 2000s. Many had greater unsupervised time. Many learned social repair face to face rather than through mediated channels. These are not universal truths but tendencies in western contexts that mattered.
Why environment sculpts emotional wiring
Human behaviour responds to affordances. If your childhood provides repeated opportunities to solve disputes without an adult stepping in, your default repertoire will include negotiation and repair. If your world allowed for repeated low stakes failure you learn to fail and try again. I do not romanticise hardship. I only insist on clarity: there is a difference between deprivation and developmental opportunity.
We have over protected children in the real world and under protected them online. Jonathan Haidt Professor of Ethical Leadership New York University Stern School of Business.
The quote above by Jonathan Haidt clarifies a central mechanism. When external constraints loosen and private digital spaces harden into unavoidable social arenas, the exercises that build emotional bandwidth shrink. The children who had to wander local streets or resolve playground rows accrued real practice at self regulation in a way many young people today do not.
Not all toughness is the same
There is a crucial distinction between brittle toughness and durable emotional strength. Brittle toughness looks like stoic silence that masks unprocessed trauma. Durable strength is messy. It includes vulnerability, a capacity to seek help, and an ability to sit with discomfort without immediately delegating it to an app or an expert. When I say people born in the 1960s and 1970s developed emotional strengths that are rare today I mean this durable variety more often surfaces in that cohort.
Social rituals that taught regulation
Rites and routines matter. Family structures then were different. Community anchors such as local sports clubs neighbourhood pubs and schools had less online competition for attention and so were places to practise social norms. Adolescents learned to read faces listen for understatement and repair slights without an algorithmic jury. Those microtrials of social life accrete into something resembling emotional competence.
Technology rewired expectations
The arrival of always on communication altered the parameters of feedback. Instant feedback breeds short term reward seeking. When validation can arrive in a notification the muscle of delayed gratification atrophies. Young people today can be extraordinarily competent at navigating online reputational economies while lacking a steadier kind of interpersonal resilience. That is not a moral indictment just an observation about mismatch.
Why this matters now
We face social and political problems that require steadier interpersonal skills. Negotiations across difference cannot rely solely on performative courage. They require the less glamorous capacities of listening endurance and the ability to tolerate ambiguity. If a significant part of public life is conducted in formats that reward instant closure then the fare for civic competence changes. I believe this matters for democracy community life and everyday caregiving.
Generational differences are gradients not walls
Do not make the mistake of caricature. Millions born in the 1980s 1990s and later show remarkable resilience too. Likewise not everyone from the 1960s and 1970s cluster displays emotional strength. The point is statistical and historical not a moral ranking. Observing tendencies gives us opportunities to borrow habits and redesign environments that cultivate those habits today.
Practical lessons without platitudes
There is a temptation to turn generational observation into a how to manual. I refuse that flattening. Still some low drama practices from earlier decades seem worth thinking about. Allowing unscripted time encouraging repetitive face to face conflict resolution and normalising small failures are ingredients rather than cures. The hardest part is cultural: we must tolerate a degree of messiness to let people practice repair. Quick fixes do not train patience.
A note on privilege and inequity
Conversations about emotional strengths often flatten socioeconomic realities. The luxury to roam unsupervised for hours was and is shaped by class gender and geography. Many who experienced hardening circumstances did so under the pressures of scarcity not developmental choice. I mention this because the argument about lost strengths should not be used to blame suffering or excuse structural neglect.
Closing thoughts that do not tie everything neatly
I believe the phrase psychologists say people born in the 1960s and 1970s developed emotional strengths that are rare today captures something useful. It is a prompt. It asks us to notice how changing material conditions mould minds. It does not give us a single solution. It does not absolve younger generations of responsibility. It simply suggests some emotional habits are more practice dependent than talent based and those practices have become scarce.
What remains unresolved is whether we will choose to build institutions that give younger people the same kinds of practice or accept a permanent trade off between digital competency and certain deep social capacities. That choice will reveal more about our priorities than any generational contest ever could.
Summary table
| Observation | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Unsupervised social time | Gave repeated opportunities for low stakes conflict resolution. |
| Less screen mediated feedback | Encouraged delayed gratification and face to face repair. |
| Community anchors | Provided normative practice spaces for emotional labour. |
| Different parenting norms | Allowed more tolerance for failure and self sufficiency. |
FAQ
Are psychologists united in this view?
No they are not monolithic. Many researchers highlight the harms young people face today including real rises in anxiety and depression while others warn against romanticising past decades. The claim that people born in the 1960s and 1970s developed emotional strengths that are rare today is supported by scholars who focus on developmental opportunities and cultural scaffolding. It is one interpretation among several and useful as a heuristic rather than an iron law.
Does technology make younger people weaker?
Technology changes the skillset. It cultivates new competencies while allowing others to atrophy. Younger people may be unparalleled at managing dispersed social networks and digital labour but have fewer spaces to practise slow repair and tolerating unstructured boredom. That is a trade off not a moral verdict.
Can these strengths be taught now?
Yes but not through apps alone. Teaching requires embedding practices into daily life. Schools local clubs workplaces and families can intentionally create situations where delayed feedback is the default where small failures are normalised and where face to face negotiation is privileged. It is less efficient and more rebellious in a culture used to instant optimisation but not impossible.
Is this just nostalgia?
Partly. Nostalgia often simplifies complex realities. Yet nostalgia can also point to lost practices worth reclaiming. The useful move is to separate sentimental longing from practical extraction. We can borrow the practices that worked without trying to recreate a past that never existed uniformly.
What should policy makers notice?
Policy makers should notice that social design influences emotional development. Investing in communal places reducing incessant mediated feedback in schools and supporting programs that allow adolescents unscripted responsibility create conditions where particular emotional skills can develop at scale. These are design choices not inevitabilities.
