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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| Am I old? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Am I old? You asked Google – here’s the answer |
| (3 months later) | |
| Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries | |
| Wed 1 Nov 2017 08.00 GMT | |
| Last modified on Tue 21 Nov 2017 11.07 GMT | |
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| Tell me, where is old age bred, in the heart or in the head? Does it stalk through pubes like a whitening strike or close your eyes by 10 at night? Is it engender’d in a home, a child, a job, bad teeth, or does it close upon your shoulders like sweet relief? | Tell me, where is old age bred, in the heart or in the head? Does it stalk through pubes like a whitening strike or close your eyes by 10 at night? Is it engender’d in a home, a child, a job, bad teeth, or does it close upon your shoulders like sweet relief? |
| As a 32-year-old, expecting a baby in two weeks, I am straddling a great chasm age-wise (not an easy thing to do at the best of times, less so when your swollen belly makes you look like you’ve swallowed a hoover). Am I old? But am I really? I’m creating a new generation, becoming a parent, launching myself into the grownup cosmos of thermometers, nappy rash cream, savings accounts and physical weakness. Yet, simultaneously, I cannot drive, loathe spreadsheets, don’t own a house, am addicted to my phone and still consider a big bag of crisps the only conceivable “starter” to a meal. | As a 32-year-old, expecting a baby in two weeks, I am straddling a great chasm age-wise (not an easy thing to do at the best of times, less so when your swollen belly makes you look like you’ve swallowed a hoover). Am I old? But am I really? I’m creating a new generation, becoming a parent, launching myself into the grownup cosmos of thermometers, nappy rash cream, savings accounts and physical weakness. Yet, simultaneously, I cannot drive, loathe spreadsheets, don’t own a house, am addicted to my phone and still consider a big bag of crisps the only conceivable “starter” to a meal. |
| Once, you could plot your life, your age, your decrepitude by railcards. First, you were a Young Person. From 16 to 25 only, of course, after which, n’uh uh, sorry, that particular sliver of youth has left the station. Then, if you were lucky, you moved into the cosy co-habitation of a Two Together railcard, earning a third off by dint of enough 30-something commitment to a partner, housemate or friend to manage a couple of journeys a year. Until, finally, you roll inexorably, decaffeinatedly, trolley-wieldingly and blankly into the land of the Senior Railcard. | Once, you could plot your life, your age, your decrepitude by railcards. First, you were a Young Person. From 16 to 25 only, of course, after which, n’uh uh, sorry, that particular sliver of youth has left the station. Then, if you were lucky, you moved into the cosy co-habitation of a Two Together railcard, earning a third off by dint of enough 30-something commitment to a partner, housemate or friend to manage a couple of journeys a year. Until, finally, you roll inexorably, decaffeinatedly, trolley-wieldingly and blankly into the land of the Senior Railcard. |
| Here, all was tissue-thin and papery to touch, with the over-60s’ right to two-thirds total-price joy. But, if the predictions about the new November budget are to be believed (though, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t trust Philip Hammond as far as I could slide him) then the new “Millennial Railcard” is about to change all that. Suddenly, the window of juvenilia will widen by an elbow, allowing those aged between 26 and 30 to reap all the rewards of a Young Person’s railcard without any of the bore of full-time education, one-night stands or poor hair choices. | Here, all was tissue-thin and papery to touch, with the over-60s’ right to two-thirds total-price joy. But, if the predictions about the new November budget are to be believed (though, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t trust Philip Hammond as far as I could slide him) then the new “Millennial Railcard” is about to change all that. Suddenly, the window of juvenilia will widen by an elbow, allowing those aged between 26 and 30 to reap all the rewards of a Young Person’s railcard without any of the bore of full-time education, one-night stands or poor hair choices. |
| Although precise definitions differ, broadly speaking millennials are those people born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. They are so called because they turned 18 in or after 2000. They are also collectively known as Generation Y | Although precise definitions differ, broadly speaking millennials are those people born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. They are so called because they turned 18 in or after 2000. They are also collectively known as Generation Y |
| While not actually eligible for this potential new railcard (by a mere two years) I, too, am a millennial. I am part of that generation often deemed too young, too poor and too irresponsible to function as anything other than an eternal teenager. The older generation bewail my taste for strong antipodean coffee over weak tea and a malted milk biscuit, tut at my inability to keep a job “for life” (without apparently noticing that their own salary directly affects the opportunities in the job market) and tilt their head in sympathy as I explain that I can’t really afford to live in the city that offers me most work. The jobs market, housing market and online market for shoddy secondhand nostalgia have trapped us in a near-permanent state of adolescence, pricked out in flatmates, drunk online shopping, packet sandwiches, record players, flings, unusable qualifications and fear for the future. | While not actually eligible for this potential new railcard (by a mere two years) I, too, am a millennial. I am part of that generation often deemed too young, too poor and too irresponsible to function as anything other than an eternal teenager. The older generation bewail my taste for strong antipodean coffee over weak tea and a malted milk biscuit, tut at my inability to keep a job “for life” (without apparently noticing that their own salary directly affects the opportunities in the job market) and tilt their head in sympathy as I explain that I can’t really afford to live in the city that offers me most work. The jobs market, housing market and online market for shoddy secondhand nostalgia have trapped us in a near-permanent state of adolescence, pricked out in flatmates, drunk online shopping, packet sandwiches, record players, flings, unusable qualifications and fear for the future. |
| We know that to be young is, in most economically developing countries, a luxury afforded to a very few. We know that, in that regard, we are lucky beyond shame. Few of us are working full time at 12, pregnant at 13, married before we’ve stopped growing and caring for parents before we’re even adults. But some, of course, are doing some of that. Following a survey in 2010, the BBC estimated that there are 700,000 young carers in the UK, while young adult carers aged between 16 and 18 years are twice as likely to be not in education, employment, or training (NEET). As government austerity clamps across our necks, the chance of being young is fading away like water on hot concrete. Without the safety net of social care, we all grow too old, too quickly. | We know that to be young is, in most economically developing countries, a luxury afforded to a very few. We know that, in that regard, we are lucky beyond shame. Few of us are working full time at 12, pregnant at 13, married before we’ve stopped growing and caring for parents before we’re even adults. But some, of course, are doing some of that. Following a survey in 2010, the BBC estimated that there are 700,000 young carers in the UK, while young adult carers aged between 16 and 18 years are twice as likely to be not in education, employment, or training (NEET). As government austerity clamps across our necks, the chance of being young is fading away like water on hot concrete. Without the safety net of social care, we all grow too old, too quickly. |
| So, we ask the internet, am I old? Am I thickening in years only, or in wisdom too? Am I growing, or simply spreading? I, for one, listen to The Archers (old) but still can’t drive (young); I make noises when I stand up too quickly (old) but cannot buy a house (young); I use out-of-date slang (my 13-year-old sister asked me what a “cuss” was the other day) but am fairly fluent in meme culture. When someone added me to a WhatsApp group called “Mums” I thought my mother had simply missed out the apostrophe of her latest round robin. But no. That is me. Or nearly. I am very soon to be somebody’s mother and so, in some significant but still intangible way, will never again be young. | So, we ask the internet, am I old? Am I thickening in years only, or in wisdom too? Am I growing, or simply spreading? I, for one, listen to The Archers (old) but still can’t drive (young); I make noises when I stand up too quickly (old) but cannot buy a house (young); I use out-of-date slang (my 13-year-old sister asked me what a “cuss” was the other day) but am fairly fluent in meme culture. When someone added me to a WhatsApp group called “Mums” I thought my mother had simply missed out the apostrophe of her latest round robin. But no. That is me. Or nearly. I am very soon to be somebody’s mother and so, in some significant but still intangible way, will never again be young. |
| As the babies, the drugs, the break-ups, the bad teeth, the ISAs, the expensive sportswear, the all-nighters, the infirm parents, the emojis, the trainers, the mortgages and the chin hairs all roll in simultaneously, are my generation ever going to get old, or – hold on to your hip bones, lads – are we there already? | As the babies, the drugs, the break-ups, the bad teeth, the ISAs, the expensive sportswear, the all-nighters, the infirm parents, the emojis, the trainers, the mortgages and the chin hairs all roll in simultaneously, are my generation ever going to get old, or – hold on to your hip bones, lads – are we there already? |
| • Nell Frizzell is a freelance journalist | • Nell Frizzell is a freelance journalist |
| Ageing | |
| The autocomplete questions | |
| Young people | |
| Older people | |
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