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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Zoe Williams

Gen Z thinks old age begins at 53 – so I have only three months to go

A woman in a trouser suit roller-skating in an office corridor towards the camera
Must I avoid doing activities that might cause injury? Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images (Posed by model)

For boomers, old age begins at 75, according to a new survey, while gen X considers the start date of decrepitude to be 70, and millennials are a little stricter, at 63. These are all reasonable positions, and then you get to gen Z, who know nothing about anything: they say it’s 53.

By coincidence, I’d been thinking about this anyway at the weekend, after dancing so exuberantly I ripped my own clothes. I didn’t think that was ideal: it did raise concerns about what I must have looked like in the moment. But I figured as long as I stopped doing it before I got old, it was probably fine – and thought (being gen X) that gave me about 17 years. It turns out that as far as the youngsters are concerned, I have just over three months.

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