What age constitutes "old"?

[Koga No Goshi]

Just curious how people perceive "getting old." I don't mean "when are you elderly?" I mean "when can you not rightly call someone young anymore?"

[Hosakawa Tito]

Feeling old is a state of mind. Or as my favorite Great Uncle said to me, "If you can figure out how to age without getting old, do it."

[Koga No Goshi]

Feeling old is a state of mind. Or as my favorite Great Uncle said to me, "If you can figure out how to age without getting old, do it."

See, in my "head", 30 has always been that cut off of, okay, young time is over. I don't even know why, really. My coworkers laugh at me over it, since I am the youngest in the office by 14 years.

[CountArach]

You are asking two questions, you know that right? First you ask "What age constitutes 'old'?" and then your poll asks "When does being young end?". It ignores the middle ground. So which one do you want me to answer?

[Ja'chyra]

Totally depends on what you are at the time.

I'm 33 and don't think I'm young anymore but I also don't think of myself as old. But then if you happen to be 6 then someone who is 16 is going to be old.

[Martok]

You are asking two questions, you know that right? First you ask "What age constitutes 'old'?" and then your poll asks "When does being young end?". It ignores the middle ground. So which one do you want me to answer?

^^^ What he said.


I'm not really sure when being "young" ends. I myself am 31 (going on 32 come December) -- but only rarely do I act like it, and I certainly don't feel like it. I suppose once I hit 40 I'll maybe have to admit I've entered middle age, but who knows?

For someone to be "old", I used to think that one would have to be *at least* 60 to qualify. However, my own father is now 60 himself, and I definitely don't think of him as being old -- aside from being diagnosed with Type II diabetes last year, he's in as good a shape as he's ever been, and he still has pretty much the same lifestyle as he did 25 years ago. So I guess I don't really have a strict cut-off line there, either.

Not that it really matters to me anyway. As Hosa put it, age is more a state of mind than anything else. You're really only as young/old as you feel.

[Kekvit Irae]

30. I'm two years away.

[InsaneApache]

I thought that 30 was more of a watershed than 40 TBH. Funny, I used to worry about getting older when I was in my twenties more than I do now. I'm about 16 months from hitting the big 50 and I never give my age a thought these days.

In fact t'other day I was talking with an old schoolfriend of mine and I made a comment like "I went to bed last night and I was 28, I woke up this morning and I was 48, where the hell did the last 20 years go!"

I'm still 17 in my head, though another thing I've noticed was that when I was 17 I knew everything, then when I got to my twenties I realised that they was a few things I didn't know about. In my thirties I discovered a few more, same for my forties. At this rate I'll be pig ignorant when I'm eighty.

[pevergreen]

My dads hitting low fifties and he isnt old, I'm going to have to say 60+. As for being young ending, around 38.

[Big_John]

'young' is always about 10 years ago.

[drone]

See, in my "head", 30 has always been that cut off of, okay, young time is over. I don't even know why, really. My coworkers laugh at me over it, since I am the youngest in the office by 14 years.

30 comes from Logan's Run.

Physically, the real number is like 35, you just don't recover like you once did after that. Mentally, old age happens when you let it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That, and marriage.

[Vladimir]

It's relative to the individual making the assessment.