You’re not old—but your Spotify playlists, browser tabs, and texting style might disagree.
Geriatric millennial sounds like an insult, but it’s really just a time-stamped badge of honor for those born between the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. You’re the only generation that can remember both dial-up and DSL, burned CDs and Spotify wrapped, chain emails and Slack threads—and somehow, you’re fluent in all of it.
You’re not a digital native or a complete analog relic. You live in the weird space between. And the signs? They show up in the funniest, most subtle ways.
1. You still type “lol” but actually mean it.
You never made the full switch to crying-laugh emojis or ironic “lmaos.” When you text “lol,” you mean it—softly amused, not rolling on the floor. It’s not a placeholder. It’s a vibe. You may toss in the occasional emoji, but your punctuation still comes correct. Periods, commas, proper spacing—none of that chaotic Gen Z stream-of-consciousness. Your messages feel like an actual conversation, not performance art. It’s low-key polite and unintentionally endearing. And honestly, in a world of constant overstimulation, your texts are practically soothing. Just don’t ask you to switch to voice notes.
2. You still think Facebook is useful—for certain things.
You don’t scroll your feed like it’s 2010, but you’re not ready to delete the app either. Marketplace is too good. Local events, friend updates, and neighborhood drama? Still relevant. You’re not posting selfies or tagging friends in memes, but you’ve got a weird loyalty to the platform—probably because it’s where your wedding photos and early parenting rants still live. You keep it around like an old friend you’ve grown apart from but can’t quite ghost. You don’t love Facebook, but you respect it. Like a grumpy uncle who still remembers your birthday.
3. You’ve got strong opinions about cordless phones.
Not smartphones—cordless landlines. You remember the freedom of walking around the house with a chunky plastic handset, the click of the base station, the thrill of eavesdropping on a sibling’s call. You probably had your first breakup over one. Cordless phones were a rite of passage, and now you get strangely nostalgic seeing them in thrift stores or old sitcoms. You don’t miss them, exactly. You just remember what it felt like to pace your bedroom while someone yelled, “I need the phone!” It was its own era—and you were absolutely there for it.
4. You still save files like someone might ask for them in 10 years.
Cloud storage? Great. But you still back up things on an external drive “just in case.” You have folders labeled “Taxes_2014” and “Resume_FINALFINAL.docx” buried somewhere on a laptop you haven’t powered up in years. You don’t trust autofill passwords or one-click syncing. You still save important emails as PDFs. There’s a tiny archivist inside you, whispering, “Better keep that.” Millennials born in the early ’80s grew up with floppy disks, then CDs, then USB drives—and the trauma of corrupted files never really left. Redundancy is not paranoia. It’s muscle memory.
5. You feel weird watching TikToks on full volume.
There’s something that feels deeply wrong about having a video autoplay with sound on, especially in public. You instinctively reach for the volume or pop in headphones—even if no one’s around. Millennials on the older end came of age in the “keep it discreet” era. Sound off was respectful. Loud autoplay was for boomers on Facebook. So TikTok? It’s a challenge. You might scroll, sure—but the second it screams at you? Nope. That phone goes silent like it’s a matter of national security. You can watch—but you must not disturb the peace.
6. You never fully trusted “the cloud.”
You understand what it is. You use it. But deep down, you don’t believe your stuff is safe up there. You still screenshot confirmations and email things to yourself. Google Drive is helpful, but not sacred. You back up your phone manually, just in case some invisible glitch eats your photo album. Geriatric millennials lived through the death of Zip disks, LimeWire crashes, and inexplicable hard drive failures. Trust in digital permanence? That ship sailed when you lost your MySpace playlist. The cloud is convenient—but you’re not betting your memories on it.
7. You’ve got real-life friends you met on AOL.
Or LiveJournal. Or early Reddit. And you still talk to them. Some of your most enduring relationships started in chat rooms with dial-up screeches and screen names like “Sk8erBoi82.” Back then, meeting people online was weird—and now it’s normal. But you were part of the beta test generation. You knew how to code your MySpace layout before HTML was cool. You weren’t online for clout—you were there to talk. It makes you better at spotting fake internet people now. You’re not impressed by curated feeds. You remember when authenticity meant no filters, no likes, just weird honesty.
8. You still check your email like it’s a job.
Even if it’s the weekend. Even if you don’t have a job. Email etiquette is ingrained. You flag things for later, archive obsessively, and still feel a little thrill at “inbox zero.” You don’t ignore messages for days, and you definitely don’t just leave people on read. Texts might be casual, but email? That’s official business. You still write full greetings and signoffs, even if it’s to a coworker you saw five minutes ago. It’s not performative—it’s just how you were trained. And honestly, you still think email feels more grown-up than DMs.
9. You prefer memes that actually take effort to read.
You love a good meme—but not one that’s just a blurry reaction pic with 15 layers of irony. You appreciate clever captions, nostalgia bait, and jokes that call back to AIM away messages or bad ‘90s commercials. You still share memes that are basically miniature essays with punchlines. Gen Z memes often leave you confused or mildly irritated—not because you don’t get it, but because you do and it feels pointless. You want memes that deliver payoff. Something with a little thought. A little punch. And maybe a callback to “Salute Your Shorts.”
10. You still think of YouTube as a place to learn stuff.
It’s not a personality platform to you—it’s a tutorial library. Geriatric millennials go to YouTube to fix sinks, cook dinner, or understand how Roth IRAs work. You probably have playlists for yoga, budgeting, or obscure music videos you haven’t seen since middle school. Shorts are cute, but they’re not the main course. YouTube is the encyclopedia you always wanted, and you treat it with reverence. If someone sends you a link, you don’t assume it’s content for the algorithm—you assume it’s actually useful. Because that’s what YouTube is for. To you, anyway.