The most important thing one can do to avoid looking old is to avoid the sun. Sun makes skin wrinkly: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trucker-accumulates-skin-damage.... Folks today generally spend less time in the sun than they did a few decades ago. The smoking also probably played a part in people making look old long ago.
I wonder whether the more physical lifestyles (farming, more manual labor, more physical housework) increasing testosterone levels played a part too in making folks look older/bigger.
This comment didn't deserve all these downvotes, the majority of human beings on the planet likely do not need sunscreen and benefit from more sun exposure.
As if it is only black or white... if you get sunburn its definitely worse than the benefits from sunexposure, and Vitamin D also builds fine without sunburning exposure times and with sunscreen, and then it is also about when/which sun..
Anyway, downvotes most likely were for how strangely arguments were lined up by GP..
1. there is a large healthy range between unhealthy lack of enough sun and unhealthy sun exposure (and you can shift that with sunscreen).
2. Lack of sun has not much to do with obesity.
Saying between the lines that suncreen is unhealthy and makes you fat.. yeah I know he didn't say, but..
Sunscreens are a recent development in human history. Yes we do have worse ozone layer and more UV gets to us but we also eat like shit. Antioxidants are the original sunscreen and protector from sunburns and skin cancer. If you don't have sunscreen or allergic to it then make sure you consume antioxidants in form of fruits/vegetables/supplements and hydrate with water regularly when you go out.
People are a lot better about sunscreen too (and it's a lot more available). As a kid in the 80s we'd run around without even a thought to sun exposure, or go to the pool for hours, and come back red as lobsters; nobody thought anything of it.
Clearly my mom was in tune to updated health advice. We had to wear sunscreen and seatbelts in the 80s and weren't allowed to play football (due to head-injury concerns) in the 90s. If it were just fad following, I assume there would be things that people think are silly now that we were forced to do for safety, but nothing's coming to mind...
I keep noticing this, and then keep reminding myself that it's cliche for seniors like me to see adults as kids. But then I watch, say, an episode of Dragnet, and the feeling comes back. Jack Webb was 35 in 1955, in that show's prime. He looks normal for the times, but so much older, or perhaps mature is a better word, than a modern 35 year old. Multiply this observation by a large number of cases.
You could test the theory with photos of class graduations and reunions for various years, with faces extracted, normalized and pasted into a standard setting. I'd bet it's real.
I’ve always thought there’s a psychological effect as well. Baseball players who were old when I was a kid look (way) older than same-aged players today. Like 20 years different, and it can’t be the sun and smoking. I’ve always felt I just knew what they looked like. And what was older then is now “damn near college” for me now. But typing this, maybe it’s just the presence or absence of crows feet at the eyes? The hands certainly show peoples age (still).
This is a prime use case for DL models I'd think. Train them in age prediction now and then set it on older photos. There would be issues certainly but it seems pretty doable.
I can tell you this - most of my peers from HS that went on to work in physically demanding (often outdoors) jobs look around 10 years older than the average, while the ones that got cushy / low-stress indoors jobs still could go for late 20s / early 30s (I'm in my mid 30s).
My bet is on environment, stress, and genetics.
But those that by far aged the most, were the girls that would spend their teens and probably entire 20s in the tanning bed. Probably guys, too, but we didn't really have many dudes that focused on that.
I'm surprised no one has brought up smoking and drinking yet, as per capita more people were heavier drinkers and everyone smoked. Also, you don't have to go back very far in history and more people were working industrial jobs that were physically hard. Even those people you would have seen on TV in the 70s (for example) would have been more statically likely to have had a childhood on the farm than anyone you see in the public eye today. As a kid I was always outside playing, even in winter. Today kids spend far less time outside plus we are more aware of the need to protect our skin.
As far as my own experiences go, it mostly comes down to fat. That slight (or less slight, for many) fattiness in the face evokes a sense of softness that we seem to interpret as younger. If this is offset by decent skincare and less sun wrinkles, it makes people seem a little younger than their sharp-featured peers. When you add in some of the cultural aspects of overall appearance and behavior, it gets even stranger: have you ever noticed how someone who usually wears t-shirts and jeans/shorts tends to look awkward in even a well-fitted suit? The way we carry ourselves sends a huge amount of signal about confidence which also tends to come from life experience (inb4 "source?", I'm not going to provide sources, look it up yourselves if you dare).
I wonder whether the more physical lifestyles (farming, more manual labor, more physical housework) increasing testosterone levels played a part too in making folks look older/bigger.