Woman reveals one way to identify millennials in their thirties to the dismay of many

A woman revealed the one way to identify millennials in their thirties on TikTok.

In a viral TikTok video, a woman named Paige Mills recently shared how she does it, with the clip having since received more than 15.5 million views.

Mills shared a recent experience in which a new friend asked her to guess her age.

“I became friends with a girl at the gym, and when I asked her how old she was, she asked me to guess,” she recalled in the video. “I had thought 25 or 26 this whole time and then I looked her up and down and I said 32. She said, ‘Yes, that’s correct. How did you know that? Most people guess a lot younger.’”

“And I said, ‘Because, baby, you have ankle socks on. The ankle socks will always give you away,’” she continued. “Next time you’re at the gym, take a look around. Everybody over 30 — ankle socks. Everybody under 30 — crew socks. The next time I saw her, she was wearing brand-new crew socks.”

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Mills noted that her video probably only went viral because it inspired so many people to comment on their sock preferences, sparking a heated debate on the platform. She added that people on the platform also enjoy hearing about other people’s niche observations, especially those made at the gym where you’re bound to encounter people of a variety of age groups.

“People either love to be self-deprecating (like me) and think it’s fun to be profiled,” she told the outlet. “Or they’re very maddened by being profiled and want to comment on it.”

“I wear crew socks,” she added.” I switched to crew after a lifetime of ankle socks around the time Covid hit. Trends take a while to grow on me; I am often very late to the party on these things.”

She noted that the Gen-Z preference for crew socks may have arisen from their love of vintage clothing, and she’s not the only one, with many in the comment section of her video writing that the younger generation may have gotten their sock inspiration from “old man fashion.”

“I agree that the younger generation is dressing like old people again. I think some of the comments were spot-on because elderly people also wear crew socks,” she joked. “So maybe the ankle sock window is smaller than I gave it credit for.”

Other people in the comment section sounded off with their sock preferences, with some telling Mills that she’d have to pry ankle socks from their “cold dead avocado toast hands.”

“Crew socks are old man socks,” one person commented. “I will never stop wearing ankle socks.”

“The way millennials used to roll crew socks down our feet to make them look like ankle socks,” another person added. “White crew socks were considered super lame when we were young.”

To which Mills jokingly replied, “I’ll never forget the pain.”

“The social stigma around crew socks growing up was so wild I still have a visceral reaction to them,” someone else commented.

Some noted that the trend may circle back within a few years, so they planned on holding onto their pairs for now.

“I’m old enough to know ankle socks are only a few [years] away from making a comeback,” one person said. “I think I’ll hold onto my ankle socks.