It's not just that you need to get used to gestures, it's that they are not discoverable at all, and that they can be awkward to perform with mobility issues, old hands, short fingers, etc. It's easy to make the wrong gesture, eg. the phone detects a swipe down instead of left to right, more so if you are holding it in one hand, so it's finicky and frustrating to have to rely on it as the only way of doing a common action. Why is it so wrong to have a simple navigation bar, it doesn't take up any more space than the hideous notch at the top?

I could get used to touch gestures if they were more consistent and tolerant enough for wrong inputs. It may work in one app but not another. One app expects me to swipe from left to right to go back, another wants me to swipe from top to bottom for the same thing. It may mark an email as unread if I start the swipe a pixel too far away from the screen edge. On Android swipe gestures may vary even on different phones from the same brand. In iOS, tapping the top edge of the screen means scroll to the top. Except in the Photo app, where it means "scroll to the top of the current section, or almost the top, or do nothing and make the user guess if they just tapped the wrong way".

Meanwhile when there's an X button or arrow to the left I always know what it's going to do aside from one or two overly creative Android apps.

It's not just mental, as you age you lose moisture in your skin and with that accuracy with touch devices.

Android has an option to enable these buttons on a toolbar at the bottom, I always turn it on.

Why change what works fine? Maybe that's the definition of being too old, can't be bothered to change to new things.

I'm in that group.

It's not "getting used to", I feel like that gesture is less practical. It involves or using the "circle" to assist on how to use the gesture (creating a black void on the screen that you need to plan your use of the phone around) or having the swipe that 1) is not as reliable in my opinion and 2) can be triggered accidentally

For me is like claiming that touch screens on cars are the future and people are too old to get used to it.

I feel that some people are just forgetting what the reason it's easy for them is because they learned that "swipe based UI" ages ago.

When I get handed iPhone I have no clue on how to even open an additional tab in Safari and any finger gestures do not do the things what I expect nor there is a lick of indication on how to do something. It's all just a memorized magical incantations at this point. But hey you are familiar with them so it's easy to bash on everyone who is not in yours eco-system.