15 Laughable Things That Will Die Off With The Baby Boomers — How Many Are You Still Doing?
I grew up in a house where my dad recorded TV shows on VHS “just in case” and my mom kept a Rolodex next to a perfectly good smartphone.
As a Gen Xer sandwiched between two very different worlds, I’ve had a front-row seat to the habits, quirks, and cultural relics that Boomers (born roughly 1946 to 1964) carry like badges of honor.
Some of these things are charming. Some are maddening. All of them are almost certainly on their way out.
1. Printing Out MapQuest Directions (Or Any Directions, Really)
Before GPS lived in your pocket, you printed turn-by-turn directions from MapQuest and prayed you didn’t miss a turn on the highway.
(Going back even further, you used a paper map and relied on help for directions from gas station employees if you did get lost.)
Many Boomers still distrust the little blue dot on Google Maps and prefer a paper backup — or at minimum, writing directions on a sticky note.
The idea that a piece of paper is more reliable than a satellite-connected computer is a very specific kind of faith that younger generations simply do not share.
2. Calling Without Warning Instead & Calling Instead of Texting
Boomers will call you. They will not text first to ask if it’s okay to call. They will just call without warning.
This is considered perfectly normal in their world — and mildly alarming in everyone else’s who’s not of the boomer generation.
Research on generational communication preferences shows that younger adults overwhelmingly prefer texting, yet many Boomers still see a phone call as the respectful and direct choice.
The unannounced phone call will likely fade as the generation does.
3. Keeping a Physical Check Register
Boomers balance their checkbooks. With a pen. In a little register tucked inside the checkbook cover. It’s super vintage, and also quite charming to see.
They record every transaction by hand to make sure the bank hasn’t made a mistake, because back in their day, banks absolutely did make mistakes and you would not know until the statement came in the mail.
Online banking and instant transaction alerts have made this practice essentially obsolete, but try telling that to someone who once bounced a check because of a teller error in 1974.
4. Saying “Be Sure to Call When You Get Home”
This is one of those phrases that are pure Boomer gold!
Before cell phones, if your kid drove three hours to visit and then drove back, you had no way of knowing they made it safely unless they called the house phone when they arrived.
The habit stuck.
Boomers still say it even when the person they’re talking to has a phone in their hand, a car with emergency assist, and a GPS that broadcasts their location in real time.
It’s not annoying — it’s actually kind of sweet when you think about where it came from.
5. Watching the Evening News at a Specific Time
At 6:30 PM, the news was on. You watched it then, or you missed it forever.
Boomers grew up in an era when news had a schedule and you built your evening around it.
The idea of watching news “whenever” through streaming or social media feels chaotic to many in this generation, even as traditional TV viewership continues to decline among younger Americans.
The nightly ritual of sitting down with Tom Brokaw is essentially a generational memory at this point.
6. Keeping Every Plastic Bag From the Grocery Store
Under the sink. In a bigger plastic bag. Hundreds of them.
Boomers were raised during an era when wasting anything — especially something as useful as a plastic bag — felt genuinely irresponsible.
The result is a cabinet or drawer stuffed to capacity with crinkled grocery bags “just in case.”
Younger generations, raised with reusable tote bags and plastic bag bans, don’t have quite the same compulsion to hoard them by the dozens.
7. Writing Checks for Everything
Boomers write checks at the grocery store. At the doctor’s office. At the hardware store.
Sometimes to their adult children, who then have to figure out how to deposit a physical check in 2025.
Checks are not gone yet, but the Federal Reserve reports that check use has been declining for decades, with younger generations almost entirely replaced by Venmo, Zelle, and tap-to-pay.
The checkbook as a primary payment tool is on borrowed time.
8. Leaving Voicemails
Not just calling without warning — leaving a two-minute voicemail explaining why they called, what they need, and a callback number spoken slowly twice.
This is a skill Boomers honed when voicemail was genuinely useful and answering machines were a miracle of modern communication.
Younger people generally don’t check voicemail at all. Many have turned off voicemail entirely.
The voicemail, as a meaningful form of communication, is quietly dying. Someone should really let the boomers know.
9. Buying Extended Warranties on Everything
The toaster. The dishwasher. The electric can opener.
Boomers remember when appliances were built to last and when replacing them was a genuine financial hardship, so a warranty felt like smart insurance.
The extended warranty sales pitch still lands hard with this generation, even as most consumer advocates point out that the math rarely works in the buyer’s favor.
When this generation moves on, the extended warranty industry will likely lose its most enthusiastic customer base.
10. Reading the Newspaper (Paper Version, Cover to Cover)
Not skimming headlines on a phone — actually sitting down with a physical newspaper, starting at the front page, and reading it section by section.
The sports section got saved for last, like a reward.
Newspaper print circulation has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, and the daily ritual of reading a physical paper is now almost exclusively a Boomer behavior.
The smell of newsprint ink in the morning is, for many, a generational experience.
11. Tipping Exactly 15 Percent
Fifteen percent. Not eighteen. Not twenty. Not twenty-five. Fifteen percent ONLY.
Boomers learned the 15% tipping rule when it was the social standard and they have largely stuck to it, to the occasional frustration of service workers who have seen the cost of living go up considerably since 1985.
Tipping culture is already shifting, with younger diners often defaulting to 20% or more, so the era of the precise 15% tip is quietly on its way out.
12. Using “Reply All” Without a Second Thought
If a Boomer is on an email thread with forty people, every response goes to all forty.
They learned email in workplaces where Reply All was standard protocol, and the concept of “email etiquette” around mass replies never quite landed.
The result is inbox chaos that their colleagues have quietly accepted as part of working with the greatest generation of Reply All offenders the world has ever seen.
13. Keeping a Paper Address Book
Boomers have a little book, sometimes leather-bound, with everyone’s address and phone number written inside in ink.
When someone moves or changes their number, they cross out the old info and write the new one next to it.
This book is treated as irreplaceable, because to them it absolutely is — it represents decades of handwritten relationship maintenance that no cloud backup can really replicate.
14. Owning a Fax Machine
Somewhere in a Boomer’s home office, or in a small business owned by a Boomer, there is a fax machine (and probably other vintage in-home relics).
The fax machine wasn’t just for decoration. It is used. Regularly.
They refuse to die in large part because Boomers who run businesses, medical offices, and law firms grew up treating it as a secure and official form of document transmission.
Cybersecurity experts have noted that fax machines can actually introduce security vulnerabilities, but that hasn’t convinced the fax faithful to give them up just yet.
15. Saying “That’s Not How We Did It In My Day”
This one is more of a worldview than a habit, but it’s unmistakably Boomer.
The idea that the way things were done in the past is the correct baseline — that newer approaches need to justify themselves against the old ones — is a perspective shaped by growing up in a period of remarkable stability and economic growth.
It’s not entirely wrong. Experience is real and shapes our reality.
But as that lived experience exits the workforce and the culture, so too does the automatic deference to “how we did it” as its own argument.
And honestly? That might be the most significant shift of all.