Young people are more likely to set goals related to gaining wealth, status or other benefits. Older people are more likely to focus on the good life, good relationships and similar issues, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky found.
This doesn’t mean that some are stupid and will find the right values when they wise up. We who are older and more oriented toward well-being are simply at a different stage in life – biologically and socially. Those fanciful stories of someone on their deathbed regretting having given too much time to work and too little time to relationships, those are as silly as someone in old age regretting ever being young.
It also implies that the greater political conformity of young people is primarily due to the fact that they are at a different stage in life.