People have been complaining about generations other than their own for as long as there have been people. There's the famous quote attributed to Plato about disrespectful young people who'd rather party than work -- Plato died 347 years before the birth of Christ. Obviously, sneering at Gen Z isn't new.
Because I have way too much time on my hands (the joys of retirement), I wandered around the Intertubes looking for good quotes, memes, pithy insights on this particular topic: old people sneering at young people; young people sneering back. Why do people do it? According to psychologists, it's totally common for geezers to have unrealistic memories of their misspent youth. The grass was greener, society was mellower, school was fine, and their friends were fun. They usually don't remember classmates dying from measles or polio, but their memories of Crusader Rabbit (and his friend Rags the Tiger) are crystal clear. In their septuagenarian minds, everyone had lifestyles like on The Donna Reed Show or Leave it to Beaver.
I do recall a kid about the same age as me suffering horribly from whooping cough when I was about 8 years old, but other than odd bits like that my own childhood and adolescent memories don't include much bad stuff, unless a giraffe snatching a hat off my mother's head when we went to a circus counts. My mom was upset about that hat. It might have been the last time she wore one so obviously it was traumatic for her.
As for looking at it from the other direction, to anyone in their teens or early twenties now the folks who have survived past 30 might as well have one foot in the grave. Old people (and the cutoff for "old" is set rather low from the perspective of someone who passed that cutoff quite a few years ago) are technological dummies who need their grandkids help in turning on their phones.
I'm not real big on including videos in posts, but this one does seem appropriate.
