Your hang up appears to be the "20 or 50 times" quote which I used as a figure of speach, similar to your harping on the drug scene.
You wont find me down the local rave popping pills etc either cos I have been there and done that in my youth.
As for the modern forms of communication etc I use them much the same as my kids do, or you do if it comes to it, as an engineer I use the modern technology every single day, and in some respects, strange though it may seem, I actually know more about some aspects of this technology than my kids do.
What I was trying to point out is that someone of 30 does not have the overall experience of a 60 year old no matter what you think, especially one who has children, and, like many older guys on this board, manage to keep up with the day to day problems of youth and also the other problems that age brings, like keeping the family finances together in the good and bad times and making sure we understand the problems of our children - not always easy I can assure you.
I was also pointing out to my kids that, although they all think they know everything, as I did at their age, in actual fact they dont come near it.
As an example, I find my kids seem to know very little of geography and history as the level of teaching now in some countries is, IMHO, well below par - we have a young 19 y/o girl in the office who, yesterday said "what does this 'superseded' mean" - when one of the guys told her to look it up she replied "cant be bothered, either tell me or dont".
This is not a rant about how much more I know about life than younger BM's but more pointing out the fact that the young generation doesn't know as much as they think they do. The reference to 'living to my age' had very little to do with the drug scene but more to do with the hectic, crouded life style we tend to live in now-a-days - yes my old Healey 3000 struggled to get to 120 mph which yours mums modern car could probably do with no problems but at 120 mph the Healey was like riding on a very old roller coaster ...5555, the modern cars are far more safe and far easier to drive I can tell you.
Again dont think this is in any way knocking the young cos remember - I was also young once myself.