Psychology says people raised in the 60s and 70s developed 8 mental strengths that recent studies show are now becoming rare.

Heads bent over phones. Earbuds in. No one talking. In the back, a man in his seventies stirred his coffee with slow, unhurried motions, watching the room like a quiet anthropologist. When the Wi‑Fi went down for ten minutes, half the place panicked. He just chuckled, pulled a folded crossword from his jacket, and carried on.

I caught myself staring at him-not with nostalgia, more with curiosity. How do you stay that calm when everything around you is wired for speed, outrage, and constant distraction? He looked like someone who’d lived through strikes, blackouts, three-day workweeks, and four different music revolutions. And then it hit me: maybe people who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s were trained by life itself to be mentally tougher in ways we’re quietly losing now.

Psychology is starting to back that up.

8 mental strengths from the ’60s–’70s generation that are fading fast

Ask psychologists who study generations, and you hear the same thing: people raised in the ’60s and ’70s developed a kind of “analog resilience” that’s getting rare in our tap-and-swipe lives. Many of them learned to wait, improvise, and cope with uncertainty without instantly reaching for a solution in their pocket. That creates a thicker mental skin.

Growing up with rotary phones, delayed letters, and TV stations that signed off at night meant more room for boredom-and more room for self-soothing. When you couldn’t text a friend in a crisis, you had to sit with your feelings a little longer. That’s not romanticizing the past. It’s a different kind of nervous system training.

Studies on “distress tolerance” show older cohorts often score higher on handling frustration and ambiguity-not because they’re “better people,” but because their environment forced those muscles to grow.

Take patience. In clinical psychology, it’s linked to impulse control and long-term thinking. People raised in the ’60s and ’70s waited weeks for film to be developed, stood in line for concert tickets, and saved for months to buy a stereo. Waiting wasn’t an app feature. It was life. Today, friction is treated like a bug to be fixed.

In a 2023 study on tech and attention from the University of Vienna, adults over 60 reported lower anxiety when their phones were taken away compared to younger groups. They didn’t enjoy it, but their stress rose more slowly and dropped more quickly. Their brains remember a world without constant connection. That memory is a shield.

Then there’s “cognitive flexibility”-the ability to adapt when plans blow up. People who were kids or teens in the ’60s–’70s lived through oil crises, political assassinations, social upheaval, and sudden layoffs. They experienced uncertainty as a series of seasons, not a one-time shock. That makes them oddly steady in today’s nonstop churn.

Psychologists also notice a leaner relationship to comfort in that generation. Many knew cold houses in winter, manual labor, limited choices. Research on “hedonic adaptation” suggests that when comfort isn’t constant, gratitude has an easier path in the brain. You compare life to the worst you’ve seen, not to a curated feed.

There’s also the social side. Neighborhoods were more mixed. You shared buses, parks, and public spaces with people you didn’t choose. That accidental diversity trained curiosity, tolerance, and thicker skin around differences. Online, we can swipe away discomfort in a second. Offline, back then, you had to work it out at the bus stop.

We’re not talking about a golden age. Trauma, violence, and injustice were absolutely there. Yet psychology keeps pointing to a paradox: going through hard but survivable conditions often creates “post-traumatic growth.” The ’60s–’70s generation didn’t have safer childhoods. They had rougher ones. And out of that roughness, a set of mental strengths emerged-almost by accident.

How to borrow these 8 rare strengths in a hyper-digital world

If you didn’t grow up then, you can still train the same muscles. Not by pretending it’s 1973, but by redesigning small daily moments. Psychologists talk about “intentional micro-friction”-tiny doses of challenge that are safe yet slightly uncomfortable. That might mean walking somewhere without headphones, cooking without a recipe, or leaving your phone at home for one short errand.

To rebuild patience, try one analog ritual: a physical book every night, a weekly puzzle, handwritten notes. No multitasking, no second screen. Your attention span stretches in the quiet. For adaptability, you can deliberately change simple routines. Take a different route, switch the order of your morning, travel light, and accept minor inconveniences. Over time, your nervous system learns that surprise does not equal danger.

Even resilience can be nudged. Psychologists recommend “planned exposure” to mild stress: cold showers, brief social discomforts, small public speaking moments. When your body experiences controllable stress, it rehearses coping. Later, bigger storms feel less like the end of the world and more like rough weather to ride out.

Where it often goes wrong is the all-or-nothing mindset. We binge self-improvement, then crash. One week it’s sunrise runs, journaling, meditation, a digital detox. The next week, nothing. Let’s be honest: nobody really does that every day. The ’60s–’70s generation didn’t have that performance pressure. Their mental strength grew from repetition, not intensity.

If you’re trying to build similar grit, start almost embarrassingly small. Ten minutes without checking your phone. One social invitation you’d normally dodge-accepted and survived. A short conversation with an older neighbor instead of a scroll. You don’t need a 30-day challenge. You need tiny, almost boring experiments in discomfort that you can repeat.

On a human level, self-compassion matters. Psychologists are blunt about it: beating yourself up for being “weaker than older generations” just adds another burden. The goal isn’t to become your parents or your grandparents. It’s to borrow what worked for them and remix it into a life that fits now.

“Resilience isn’t stoicism,” explains clinical psychologist Dr. Emily Holmes. “It’s the ability to feel everything, then still move in a direction that matters to you.”

That direction can be surprisingly simple. Maybe it’s learning to sit through a quiet evening without needing a second screen. Maybe it’s finally having a difficult conversation without texting your way out of it. Those are small actions on the outside, big rewrites on the inside. Your nervous system notices every time you choose presence over escape.

To make this concrete, many therapists suggest choosing one “retro habit” for a month:

• Walk somewhere daily without your phone-just your thoughts.
• Call one person a week instead of messaging.
• Fix something broken before buying a new one.
• Limit online news to one set time a day.
• Spend an afternoon with someone over 65 and really listen.

None of this looks dramatic from the outside. Yet stacked over weeks, it quietly rebuilds the eight rare strengths: patience, adaptability, social courage, frustration tolerance, gratitude for small things, resourcefulness, emotional endurance, and a stubborn kind of hope.

Why this older mindset might be the upgrade we secretly need

There’s a quiet irony here. We treat the ’60s–’70s generation as “behind” on tech, yet in many psychology labs they’re seen as ahead on mental stability. They know how to live without instant answers, likes, and approval. That gives them a strange advantage in a world that always wants more from our attention and our nerves.

On a crowded train, scroll through the faces. Notice how many look slightly clenched-jaw tight, thumb twitching. That tension isn’t laziness or weakness. It’s a nervous system overloaded by constant input. The older man reading a newspaper, the woman calmly staring out the window-they’re not better. They’re just running different internal software.

We can install some of it, line by line, in our own lives. Not by copying their politics or their music, but by copying the way they allowed slowness, dealt with boredom, and treated hardship as something to meet, not instantly mute. Psychology suggests this “older” way of being could be the most radical upgrade we have left.

Key Point	Detail	Why It Matters to You
Patience as a trained muscle	’60s–’70s childhoods involved waiting, saving, and delayed gratification	Offers a blueprint to rebuild focus and reduce anxiety
Discomfort tolerance	Fewer instant comforts meant regular exposure to mild stress	Helps you stay calm when life doesn’t go to plan
Analog connection	Face-to-face conversation and community ties were the default	Shows how deeper relationships can buffer mental overload

FAQ

• Did people who grew up in the ’60s–’70s really have stronger minds? Not automatically. What studies suggest is that many were regularly exposed to conditions that build resilience: uncertainty, boredom, fewer instant comforts, and more in-person contact. That tends to make certain mental strengths more common.
  
• Does that mean younger generations are “weaker”? No. Younger people face different stressors: climate anxiety, economic pressure, 24/7 comparison, and online harassment. The skill set is different. The point is to learn from each other, not rank generations.
  
• Can you develop these 8 strengths later in life? Yes. The brain stays adaptable. By choosing small, consistent challenges-digital breaks, real conversations, analog tasks-you can grow patience, adaptability, and emotional endurance at any age.
  
• What’s one simple habit to start with this week? Pick one daily activity and do it without a phone: your commute, lunch, or a short walk. Notice the urge to reach for your screen, and breathe through it. That tiny moment is mental strength training.
  
• How do I involve older relatives in this? Ask them about their teen years or early work life. Listen for how they handled boredom, fear, or setbacks. You’ll often hear practical strategies you can borrow-and you give them the quiet gift of being heard.