Hasn't happened yet

Translation: you'll become more conservative when you have children and own a home

Millennials: 😆
Zoomers: 😂
Alpha: 🤣
Whateverthefuckcomesnext: 💀

I have heard this my entire life and now that I recently have kids and a home, I find it to be an insane take. If anything, the greater my knowledge of the world becomes the MORE liberal I am. I'm significantly more aware of rigged systems and injustice as I age.

In order to be conservative you have to be afraid, irrationally. Afraid your guns will be taken, afraid the gays are going to out-breed you (not even kidding, they really "think" that), afraid what you want won't be what everyone does, afraid other people are smarter or more capable, afraid that when you die you won't get magicked somewhere to live forever. Basically afraid of everything whether it makes any sense or not. And afraid someone else will find out how afraid you are all the time.

They're pathetic and not fit to walk a dog much less run anything.

My old man has told me this my whole life and I always tell him no, because I'm not a cunt. 42yo so far and still going strong.

I was actually more right wing as a kid. Now that I've learned some things about the world that's when I became a left leaning liberal.

Boomers got more conservative as they grew older because they've been eating shovels of propaganda since reagan and never learned how to fact check like younger generations

I remember a high school friend's father saying something to me like, "You'll get more conservative when you start paying taxes." This was around 1993-1994 or so.

I'm 45 now, modestly wealthy, and pay plenty of taxes. I can't envision ever voting for a Republican for any public office ever again...and the current circus of bullshit around TFG just seals that deal for me.

The older I get, the more liberal I get.

The older I get the more injustice I see the angrier I get. The only difference between now and my twenties is I know who to direct my rage at and it burns hotter then ever.

GenXer. I've gotten more progressive. I used to consider myself a moderate dem back in the 90s. On the other hand, the 90s moderate dem is now considered a commie woke libtard, so shrug? Shocking that I want justice for all, fair wages, end systemic racism, end homophobia, etc. So librul! I'm destroying Western society! Oh wait, I'm a POC immigrant woman, course I'm destroying America!

Been forever since I've got to bust this one out

But also, obligatory Plane Picture

I hate it when boomers, specifically, say this. My grandfather, who is Silent Generation, will tell you that he’s gotten more liberal as he’s gotten older. Whenever I hear a boomer say this, it’s used as a shaming, like “you don’t understand now but you will when you’re older”. Turns out I haven’t gotten more conservative. I listened to minority populations and then came out and it’s turned me more leftist.

I've gained empathy as I've gotten older. The literal opposite of conservatives

Young people tend to be more persuadable before 30, and tend to bake in their political views around that age. So big events in one's 20's tend to lead to lasting partisan affiliations for life after that.

FDR's presidency won over a lot of people to the Democrats in the 30's and 40's. Eisenhower's presidency shifted people over to Republicans in the 50's. Nixon pushed people away from Republicans. But by the 70's Democrats were losing a lot of voters, and then Reagan won a bunch of people over to the GOP. Then 9/11 won people over to Republicans, while the Iraq war pushed them away.

But each of these things had an outsized effect on those under 30. So Boomers who remember getting fed up with Democrats in the 70s and crossing over for Reagan (and then voting Republican in every election since) just thought it was the effect of age, rather than the effect of that particular political moment in 1980.

And even though this data and the analysis is mainly for Americans, it's probably reflective of how people shape their own political beliefs everywhere.

That might have been true decades ago, but now people have:

• Greater access to knowledge, and are forced to think more critically about what they consume.
• More extreme views, which picks off the weak.
• Most importantly, older people had stuff. They owned houses, had stable, life-long careers, and had settled down before they hit their thirties.

People in their mid to late thirties nowadays might have a fancier job title, but many of them are still struggling like they were before. It's hard to be protectionist when you have nothing but your life to protect...

Eat the rich at any age

The older phrase used to be "You become more right wing when you get older", whereas it's quite likely it was missing the specific cause, which was "You become more right wing when you stop learning". [Edit] Typo

My afternoons at 18: sips tea reading Noam Chomsky’s Failed State

My afternoons at 30: sips vodka reading Unabomber’s Manifesto

social democrat me in my early 20s

communist me in my early 40s

Subtext here is that white boomers became more conservative because the civil rights movement made them miss Jim Crow

41, stable finances, kid, decent job, and still BETTER DEAD THAN RED!

And just to be 100% clear, since I know that phrase meant something completely different 50 years ago, Republicans can get ass-fucked with a spoon

You become conservative when you lose ability to adapt and learn, thereby yearning for the days when you were you were younger and, as you mostly falsely remember, "times were simpler", which is a delusion caused by the different lifestyle and world perception you used to have. Now you're just older and scared because you forgot to keep up with the times.

51, still not a conservative

The older I get, the more socialist I become.

Again, this is not a boomer issue. I was told the same thing by Silents. I've only moved left-er.

"people get more selfish and small minded as they age, that's just a fact!"

That's only if your wealth increases with age. If you had nothing in your 20s and still have nothing in your 30s and 40s, you'd stay mad

My friends who have kids now did become more conservative. But most of them are very religious and grew up going to church every Sunday. So... I think they might have had a certain influence.

People become more conservative once they actually accumulate wealth that they can use, and don't want policies passed that will reduce that wealth.

Millennials and younger generations have not the opportunity to generate the same amount of wealth by their 30's or even their 40's as Boomers had.

Therefore leftism and liberalism will be more predominant in these younger generations.

First there would need to be something worth conserving.

I'm still trying to get my own studio apartment

I'm 43. I keep moving further left.

Permanently Deleted

If YoU aRe NoT a LiBeRaL wHeN yOu ArE 30 yOu HaVe No HeArT, aNd If YoU aRe NoT a CoNsErVaTiVe WhEn YoU aRe 40 YoU hAvE nO bRaIn

When are going to start referring to the by their proper name? The Worst Generation.

If you're not an Anarchist in your 20's you have no heart.

If you're not a Tankie in your 30's you have no brain.

They still think people become more conservative due to age and not socio-economic conditions.

And in my 40s I've started organizing.

Thats actually opposite for me. I remember being more conservative in my 20. I remember watching people like Amazing atheist, armored sceptic, shoe on head and some others that I dont remember. Now in my 30, I have actually softened up a lot and got more liberal views now.

Some do and some can see the issues of the current economic systems.

Hello fellow 38yo non-conservative person!

If anything, that “oh this is an inevitability” line of thinking just made me want to submit less.

Photo is replaceable by mine, hunched over the laptop when the Internet is down. Text in the Photo the same.

It's all nice and all, but where does the picture comes from?

I don't think I have seen this but the reason we see this effect is murder. The richer you are the older you you manage to live. Either you are too poor and misadventures get your. Or the things that you have progressive beliefs about will get you oppressed and maybe murdered by society. I don't think it is intended. It could easily be so however, it is just a slow oppression and crushing of everyone in society.

40 and still not anywhere close.

There are more than enough conservatives with bizzare esoteric tendencies.

I guess I became a less radical socialist... I guess they were kind of right?

Anyway what's the image from?
It looks like a music video I want to see!

Long form discussion of the issue by people on the field https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-are-millennials-getting-more-conservative/

It's because they had upward social mobility no matter what. You had a job for life that supported a whole family. People could still afford homes. It never felt like they were being exploited by capital - but they were.

Mmmm, really? Now explain trap music to me... 😇

I don't believe this is going to be the case currently... the trend towards conservative was a fiscal phenomenon, as young kids who didn't have a lot of money and wanted a welfare state grew up and became financially independent, they wanted to keep what they were working to get. This would cause a self centric migration from trending democrat to trending republican.

That isn't how the partisan tribes currently work... They've become more of a "morality" enterprise, on both sides.

The choice is now if you think it's appropriate to ban huck finn and Tom Sawyer for the n word, or ban homosexual references. It's a question of do we spend taxes on blacks and the poor, or do we spend it on cluster bombs for Ukraine.

I don't think people will evolve from one side to the other the way boomers did. I think they're evolving farther from center, on both sides.

I don't like book bans period. I don't like the budget growing exponentially period. I don't like that 99% of the population increasingly wants the other half to be completely discounted... I'm essentially evolving towards not liking anybody at all.

I don't think "liberals" are going to become more "conservative" as they age, because that scale is divorced from party politics. Liberal is no longer a democrat trait, and conservative isn't purely republican. Both have adopted the entire con/lib scale in their own way. Democrats have conservative values, republicans have liberal values (the latter to a far greater degree, but I don't think it matters tbh). Just depends on what issue you're talking about.

Bohemian Grove it is, then.

OK, teenager.

I have become more conservative in my 30s.

Part of that is because it's difficult to keep getting worked up about social movements. About 20 years ago I was a vehement proponent of gay rights. Now my gay friends are married and I find myself indifferent to whatever new cause kids these days are talking about. I mean, I don't oppose it but I don't feel like it's my fight. (The big exception here is abortion, which will apparently be a fight forever.)

But the major cause of my conservatism is the realization that the first world in 2023 is the best place and time to ever live for almost everyone and that all this great stuff is built on a fragile foundation.

I used to focus on everything wrong with society and so I thought I saw the need for sudden, major change. Since then I've broadened my perspective so that I can see how much our society does do well, how much worse things can be, and how easy it is to make things much worse when trying to make them better. IMO the 20th century is proof that revolutionary change is generally a terrible idea even if the status quo is already awful - in that context, only a lunatic would want revolutionary change in a society that is already the richest and most free that has ever existed.

So now I call myself a lowercase-c conservative. I don't vote Republican because they're willing to break the system rather than concede anything to the other guys, and breaking the system is exactly what I want to avoid. I end up voting for moderate Democrats.

(I used to live somewhere where libertarians could get elected to local and state offices and that made things more interesting, but I'm in a solid-blue area now so the Democratic primaries are the only elections that matter.)

Kinda true though, I'm conservative on my terms.

In my 30s now. Def more conservative. Paying more than $10k in property taxes that go towards schools where the children that I don’t have go to.