Posted 0 minutes agoSubscribe to BuzzFeed Daily NewsletterCaret DownHere's Why Gen Z Is So, So Disapproving Of Couples With Age DifferencesIs an 18-year-old dating a 25-year-old problematic? Some Gen Zers think so.by Brittany WongHuffPost WriterFacebookPinterestLink Is a five-year age gap in a relationship a little untoward? What about a three-year gap? Ippei Naoi / Getty Images On social media, Gen Zers - at least those who are chronically online - are constantly debating the ethics of age gaps. Even if some relationships are perfectly legal, that doesn't necessarily make them ethical, many say.

It's little wonder then that age-disparate relationships are cause for so much conversation: Having grown up alongside the #MeToo movement, Generation Z is well versed in unbalanced power dynamics and the language of consent. And lately, there's been plenty of celebrity pairings to interrogate.

There's the obviously icky examples, like the recent, short-lived romance between Aoki Lee Simmons - Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons' 21-year-old daughter - and restaurateur Vittorio Assaf, 65. Earlier this month, viral photos showed the pair flouncing around on vacation in St. Barts. Olivia Wong / WireImage Yes, they're both consenting adults, but it was still unseemly, critics said. If anything, the argument that they're both of age is "something groomers cling to," as one young woman on Threads put it. "Adulthood was meant to signify voting/draft age," she wrote. "But everyone knows your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed at this age." (This difference between so-called brain age and chronological age - you might be 21 but your brain is undeveloped! - often gets brought up in these kinds of conversations.) There are gender-swapped examples too, like actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson and filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson, a now-married couple who met while working on a 2009 John Lennon biopic called Nowhere Boy. At the time, he was in his late teens and she was a mother of two in her early 40s. Cindy Ord / Getty Images "I didn't relate to anyone my age," the actor told The Telegraph in 2019, reflecting on when they first met. "I just feel that we're on the same wavelength."Some fans aren't convinced. "We def aren't talking about male grooming victims enough and this is literally proof," one person wrote in a highly shared TikTok video about their coupling.

Then there's the less expected critiques: Is four years too much of an age gap? "At 25, I wouldn't even date a 21 year old," reads one tweet with around 80,000 likes. unclelondonn__ / Via x.com What about 10 years? Fans of Billie Eilish were up in arms in 2022 when the then-20-year-old singer revealed that she was dating fellow musician Jesse Rutherford, who was in his early 30s. One viral tweet about the 10-year age gap reads: "jesse rutherford was alive during george h w bush's presidency . billie eilish cannot legally drink."Long-established relationships aren't safe, either. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively's 11-year gap has been scrutinized. And recently, Beyhive members have begun debating whether Beyoncé was "groomed" because she was 19 when she started dating Jay-Z, who was in his early 30s. LISA O'CONNOR / AFP via Getty Images Non-celebrity couples are getting called out, too. "I was 19. My now husband was 27. My now 13yo child calls him my 'predator,'" one woman wrote on Threads alongside laughing emoji, probably only half-joking. Why Gen Z Seems To Have Such An Aversion To Age GapsIs Gen Z just more prudish on this subject than prior generations? Not necessarily, said Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and the host of the Sex and Psychology Podcast. He's been studying age-gap relationships for roughly 20 years and said the stigma around age-disparate relationships is long-standing.

In 2008 - when terms like "cradle robber" and "cougar" were bandied around a lot more than they are now - Lehmiller co-authored a study that found age-discrepant couples reported experiencing significantly more social disapproval than people in gay or interracial couples. Zinkevych / Getty Images/iStockphoto So the discomfort around these types of relationships isn't anything new. What is new, according to Lehmiller, is how comfortable Gen Z feels about publicly and vocally disapproving of these relationships - even on people's personal Instagram pages. (Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson recently spoke out against the "bizarre" online judgment they've received. Eilish and Rutherford brushed off the criticism from overly concerned fans by dressing up as a baby and an old man one Halloween.)"To some in Gen Z, age-gap relationships read as being inherently exploitative because they perceive age discrepancies as necessarily creating a power imbalance that favors the older partner," Lehmiller told HuffPost.

What's also changed is which parties tend to receive the brunt of the judgment. In the past, people were often scornful of both the younger and older partners in these relationship