Father highlights major generational divide in eye-opening clip: 'This is how you know you're getting old'
If you were asked to mimic answering a phone call, what exactly would you do with your hand?
That’s the question one father has presented to social media — and the mixed responses are highlighting a clear generational divide.
Daniel Alvarado, a New York City-based aircraft engineer and father of two, shared a clip of himself on TikTok asking both his wife and their two children, Daniella and Kamilo, to “pretend they’re talking on the phone” using a hand gesture.
While Alvarado’s wife holds up her hand in the classic thumb-and-pinky-out, three-center-fingers-down phone to mimic the silhouette of a landline telephone, both of the couple’s kids hold their palms flat to their faces, mimicking the shape of a smartphone.
“This is how you know you’re getting old,” Alvarado says in his video, which has since been viewed over 2 million times. “This is for my ’70s, ’80s and ’90s babies.”
TikTokers across multiple generations were quick to comment on the video to express exactly where they stood on the phone-miming spectrum.
“I’m born in 1998 which is that awkward year where I do these old hand gestures but never actually used the object itself,” wrote one user. “We’re the middle child.”
“I never thought of it that way. My kids asked me why I made a circle to get the car next to me to put down their window,” said another, presenting a similar comparison between automatic and manual car windows.
“I realized my son doesn’t know why I say ‘hang up the phone,'” shared a third.
“I don’t like this, nope not one bit,” simply put another user.
Last month, two teenagers sparked a similar generational debate online after admitting to their lack of 2000s pop music knowledge in a now-viral TikTok video.
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