I'm not quite approaching 50 yet, but I am getting there. What I can tell you is that the reason for some older folk's views on new trends is not that they're generally behind times, it's that with more life experience you have seen trends come and go, and you're actually in a slightly better position to judge the baloney factor of novel things.

That is not to say that this is _always_ the way things are, of course, because everybody is not the same. But that goes both ways: like you say, there are tons of people who "get" newer concerns likes the ones you mentioned.