Without wishing to turn this into another Coronation Street thread, I was thinking about the mix of ages in the current soap, and I think it's quite good, ranging from kids, young adults, the middle-aged and up to some right oldies.
But what you said about the times changing is true: if an old woman tried to tell a teenage girl to stop getting plastered every night and sleeping with anything in trousers, she would be given pretty short shrift. The old have lost their power to terrorize the young. The current interfering nosey old woman is Norris, who is just a figure of fun, and certainly doesn't terrify anyone.