More people using sunscreen and lotion on the regular prevents skin damage. More people are eating healthy, working less physically demanding jobs. Also there’s a pretty huge bias with seeing pictures of older people and seeing them as older than they actually look. It has to do with seeing older styles of clothing and how people tend to keep their core styles longer. This makes people in the present see past photos as “older people” regardless of how young the faces look.
Also the microplastics are preserving us from the inside out. We’re all deli-wrapped now.
People also smoke way less now. See the skin of someone at 30 who started smoking at 15, to see someone who looks like 40.
And everything around us smokes less too.
In 1950 cars had basically no emission standards, factories didn’t either, and a LOT of people heated their homes with coal or wood.
Specifically, top panel man is smoking, bottom panel isn’t. That’s why they look like that. Mystery solved.
It’s very much the smoking. That V Sauce video about it being clothing wasn’t convincing. Comparing just faces negates that possible perception issue. And when constrained to only faces people in the past still look older.
Hair styles also make a difference. And it’s all of the things, individually, that add up.
I believe it. I was buying smokes without an ID by the time I was 17.
Each cell wrapped for our protection.
Also smoking was banned indoors
Can’t destroy my body and skin if I don’t go outside.
Tanning beds also used to be a HUGE thing. The people that really frequently went to get a tan have much more leathery skin.
HRT really is incredible.
Okay but it actually is. I look younger at 29 and on my 3rd year of HRT than I did when I was 24.
yeah i’m in my 30s and i get routinely carded at events and people place me in my late 20s still.
a lot of it is genes, but i also: have a good skin care routine, use sunscreen every day, rarely drink alcohol, and use nicotine rarely. those are big factors that shouldn’t be discounted.
Does nicotine specifically cause skin damage? Obviously smoking tobacco does, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily the nicotine component that causes the skin damage. There’s thousands of chemicals in tobacco beyond nicotine and I haven’t yet seen a study that shows that nicotine in isolation impacts skin condition.
inhaling carcinogenic smoke to get nicotine would age you more, but nicotine itself also has adverse effects by constricting blood vessels, which would affect how much oxygen and nutrients are able to reach the dermal layer. this would also affect hair follicles.
here’s some decent sources for more reading:
E-cigarettes containing nicotine cause blood clotting and make small blood vessels less adaptable
NIH-funded studies show damaging effects of vaping, smoking on blood vessels
it’s certainly possible that the ecigarettes used in the testing here may have altered the results, but it’s not looking pretty.
Thanks four the sources. So there’s evidence that nicotine impacts blood vessels, but not yet that that impacts skin condition? That makes sense, nicotine use in isolation hasn’t been around all that long yet. As I mentioned, that specific link doesn’t appear to have been studied yet to the best of my knowledge, but I don’t have access to journalistic databases that I used to.
well, not quite, but you have the gist.
nicotine patches and gum have been around for quite awhile, and the blood vessel constriction is a fact, and therefore, it will affect skin/hair health.
it’s just to what degree. clearly, it’s more with analog cigarettes where you’re sucking on literal smoke.
You using good ole sunscreen (chemical) or the newfangled stuff (physical)? Sad to hear the former carries risks.
But the physical can’t be convenient… sigh, convenience :)
i use both, but i never really think about it unless my skin suddenly dislikes it and revolts.
so, yea, convenience wins.
I think you mean mineral
Physical sunscreens, more commonly known as mineral sunscreens, work by creating a physical barrier on the skin that shields it from the sun’s rays.
That’s what I hear!
It’s funny to me that this works for both types of HRT; I’m a trans guy in my mid 30s and still occasionally get carded when I buy alcohol. I was hoping HRT would make me look my age, but 15ish years on and it hasn’t happened yet. And might not ever, because my dad looked decades younger than he was up until his death. Good problems to have, I guess?
29 pre-hrt here. I hope it will be as magic as you say.
Gotta relive all the years I missed to dysphora; looking a bit youmger couldn’t hurt -
It’s great, because a lot of other trans people are also reliving their younger years that they missed out on lol, so you have a lot of opportunities for fun stuff with other trans people!
Yeah I sometimes feel like a teenager. Except I also have adult money and my own apartment.
Sunscreen probably has something to do with it.
And cigarettes. Plus personal grooming and style.
No doubt on smoking. Plus people didn’t even care about second hand smoke around kids until after the 80s.
I’d thought millennials drank less too but all the numbers are saying that’s wrong.
Alcoholism is huge now, so much so, they reclassified that shit from alcoholic to social drinker.
I’m a social drinker, I have to drink to be around people, and I’m constantly around people.
- Smoking
- Smoking
- Smoking
There are already a lot of good answers but I want to highlight this. Chronic tobacco smoke causes increased aging due to multiple mechanisms. Moreover, environmental tobacco exposure from second hand and third hand smoke prior to the 1990s was MASSIVE. So even if you didn’t smoke you got insane daily exposures to the same chemicals.
This is also why gen z is looking so old vape.
Nah, stop equating vaping to smoking, it’s a bad-faith argument compared to something we know it’s extremely toxic for a fact.
Studies on vaping have been Inconsistent at best, popcorn lung was related to a flavoring that isn’t used at all now and was only limitedly used before.
So like I get the easy joke, but it is misinformation at this point
Edit: okay, guys stop assuming I’m talking about nicotine. I’m just talking about vaping (vaporizer) vs smoking (combustion). I’m also 31 years old and have never smoked or vaped nicotine myself, it’s not a personal habit of mine.
Nicotine is a vasoconstrictor and reduces blood flow to the skin, likely reducing the availability of nutrients to keep your skin healthy.
Nicotine is nicotine.
Sorry about your habit. It’s a hard one to break (been there), but don’t ignore known science to justify it in your head just because there isn’t a full in depth study.
Um, I have never consumed nicotine knowingly in my life, so there isn’t a personal bias. As I said before this, I never mentioned nicotine that was the other guy.
When you say vaping, the default assumption is you’re talking about vaping nicotine. Of course nicotine free vapes cannot be equated to smoking lmao. That’s on you for not specifying.
Nicotine is nicotine, no matter what you want to believe.
I mean, I was just talking about vaping itself. Also nicotine isn’t a known carcinogen, it’s just a highly addictive chemical.
So yes, nicotine is still nicotine. But tabacco has a lot more in it than just that. So not sure what your point is?
Edit: typo
Slightly educated guess medical opinion here?
As far as risk is concerned:
Smoke>>>vape>nothing.
Vaping will definitely have adverse effects we start cataloging more in 10-30 years. My guess? Likely some form of lung disease (maybe more of a restrictive pattern due to the microparticles in vapes—I could see if being like silicosis or pneumoconioses) and some forms of cancer.
No… I hate to tell you this but you are completely wrong. I smoked since i was 18 and even grew up with parents that smoked. I eventually stopped daily smoking when i was 25 years old. I only smoke every once in a while when i get together with my friends. About 2-3 packs a year now if we have to put a number on it.
I am not even 40 yet and I TOTALLY HAVE HAIR, TRUE MAN I DO. I HAVE HAIR, AND LOTS OF IT. “I have the most hair anyone has ever seen” end sentence with index and thumbs together touch each hand in an ‘okay sign’ pointing at each other
I mean you basically don’t smoke then. Most of the effects of smoking are based on pack-years, which is the number of years you’ve smoked a pack per day. So two packs a day for 10 years? 20 pack years.
You have barely any pack years, and you stopped so young that the adverse effects are definitely reversed (10 years of cessation to reverse risk of lung CA/COPD).
Yeah, I am glad I essentially stopped. (In case you couldn’t tell I was joking with my tone)
Glad you are bringing up some of these points because most people don’t actually realize it ages you.
All real talk aside it’s now time to start rewatching Cowboy Bebop. Hahaa
Ha ha so true. I thought you were joking but you never know with the internet.
I don’t see any links to Vsauce’s video on this so I’m going to assume every response is wrong. TLDR: Styles become associated with eras and people in those eras become associated with our perception of that age bracket.
Also, because of increased healthy lifestyle awareness, we are actually ageing slower than we used to. The clue is in the cigarette the top cartoon smokes. Today we smoke less, we exercise more, we use more sunscreen and we eat healthier, all allowing our bodies to produce more firm collagen in less damaged skin cells.
This. Remember the cool kids from high school smoking, drinking, taking drugs? Yeah they look like 50 in their 30s now.
But what if you found out the opposite? I did it all but cigarettes in HS and college and I look 10 years younger than my middle age, it’s pretty sweet.
I’m also in the same boat as this, I think it really comes down to genetics plus health risk factors
It makes people feel better thinking the kids who did drugs and partied are disadvantaged.
yep! but the difference is only a couple of years in apparent age. so really, nope.
I saw something speculating that Americans still age faster than other countries due to all the hormones they consume in animal products.
I saw something speculating jews shot space lasers to start forest fires. Luckily, I understand speculation isn’t fact.
exercise more
X to doubt
Appropriate username.
Also with names. Like picture a Mildred or even a Vicky, and you probably conjure up a person of a certain demo
“Agnes” is one hundred percent a fossil you saw driving on the highway.
Smoking.
And alcohol.
And lead exposure.
And my axe.
Is my buddy, I bring him when I walk
Why is this?
Smoking.
And not using sun block when working outside all day.
I smoke and don’t use sun screen and am 40 and look like exhibit b. Why can’t I grow a fancy beard like jet and look like I’ve been around the block using just my face…
I smoke, just turned 39, and people still regularly guess I’m in my early 20’s. Frankly, I’m surprised we don’t look older considering how much stress can cause visible aging. Where are the 13 year olds that look 102?
Also being outside in the UV radiation of the sun ☀☢️
The micro plastics sustain me
I put that shit on everything!
I laughed way too hard at this. Thanks, I hate it.
I crave the certainty of PLASTIC
One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Plastic isn’t biodegradable… Even in death I suffocate turtles.
On Mondays we wear pink!
We’re a lot sadder now, so we don’t smile much. The lack of smiling saved us from face wrinkles which keeps us looking young.
It is because when you look back to old pictures of people from when they were younger, the people in it have clothing styles and hairstyles that we today associate with older people.
Look up a video on YouTube from VSauce called “Did people used to look older?”. They explain this phenomena well.
That argument isn’t convincing. Crop photos to compare people to negate the clothing perception. People in the past still look older after doing so.
It’s almost like you cropped out the other half of the argument
I’ve watched that video and seen it reposted dozens of times. Michael talks about doctors finding people are aging slower in the intro. Then goes down a completely different path to claim most of this is due to clothing and style perception. Veering off into some weird pseudoscience junk even.
What he could have done is check medical studies of twins that prove smokers age faster. Overlay smoking rates then and now. Come to the medically accepted reason for why this phenomenon exists.
If you’ve truly watched that video then it must be a long time ago and are remembering it wrong. Because it does say exactly what you’re saying early on in the video, explaining the studies that show how people are now younger from a medical point of view. You then clearly see that the age difference reported in the study from a medical point if view is not nearly wide enough to explain the magnitude of the difference of we perceive in real life.
This is why video then shifts away from the purely medical perspective towards the more subjective reasons that could affect how we perceive people’s age. Of course it’s not gonna be backed by medical research to support this because the other reasons for this phenomena has absolutely nothing to do with medical science. Medical science doesn’t give a shit about the evolution of fashion in haircuts, makeup and clothing. But that doesn’t mean that it cannot have an effect on people’s perceptions of other’s age. It is obvious in the examples provided in the video that this has a far greater effect on the perception of someone’s age than the medical explanation alone.
The meme itself is obviously about people’s perception of people’s age, which is affected by both medical and subjective factors like the evolution of fashion. Trying to pretend that only the medical factor counts is, essentially, ignoring the other half of the argument just to make yourself sound right.
Let’s play a game then. I know people right now today. Who dress and have facial hair nearly the same as Richard Dreyfuss in this image. They’re all late 30’s or early 40’s.
Go ahead and let me know how old you think he looks. And yes he was a smoker.
Ah yes. Cherry picking an example of recurring fashion. That definitely proves that fashion and style never changes or evolves ever. /s
These ladies are twins. One of them smoked. One did not.
Michael was so right though. It’s all just perception tricks.
Film of the era also made people look older. Old film is sensitive to UV light, which exaggerates/makes visible “flaws” in skin you wouldn’t see or notice otherwise.
Hey Michael
Vsauce here
Where are your fingers?
Clichael Clichael Michael Clichael
Because we were 6 in the 80s.
I have bad news. You’re in your 40s.
…I’m aware
It’s because of the WEF using hormones to turn the frogs gay, obviously.
But… I’m not a frog
…or are you?
For me it was the hormone therapy
Perspective. You were a kid in the 80s and they looked way old. Now you’re in your 40s and those little whippersnappers look like the babies they are.
Ignoring all of the improvements to health from the past 50 years, I see…
Lots of good answers here. Another minor one is Hollywood bias - older male actors got starring roles in romantic films. Random example, Cary Grant was 59 when he played the lead role in Charade opposite Audrey Hepburn who was 34.
Add to that the low quality of TV broadcasts, different styles of filing and lighting in movies, and less subtle use of makeup and people in film and TV from stuff from the 90s back have an other-world quality to them if you look back at that compared to the high definition world were in now. Even older magazines and pictures can be available at lower quality to us on the Internet than at the time, as we don’t get to see the true originals but lower quality scans on the Internet compared to modern digital photographic.
It’s amazing looking at old film from the 1800s that has been well kept or restored - not just people but the whole world actually looks real unlike what we’re used to.
We’re so used to looking at history in low definition or the artificiality of old fashioned TV/movie techniques and biases.
Plus everything has filters on it now. Movies, online and magazine pictures, even the selfies you take at home have heavy anti-aging filters. After looking at all your selfies, go look at an actual mirror and you’ll be surprised at how rapidly you aged.
