nothing to do with old and young....depends where you are from. In mainland China they use simplified whereas in Taiwan, HK etc. the tradtional characters are used. I advise you to ONLY learn the simlpified...to tell you the truth, after you learn them well enough, you can pretty much understand the tradtional ones anyway.

the simpled characters is evolved by the traditional characters,and they look are similiar,and we can know each other substantial,but our country popularize simpled characters.

I'm a Chinese student from Sichuan province.In fact ,we hardly use traditional Chinese . I'd better learn simplified chinese first. Then you can learn traditional Chinese if you need. After learn simplified chinese,learning traditional Chinese will be easier. Just try to find the formula.

I am from Beijing. I agree Richard, he is right. I suggest you learn simplified chinese, it is easier than traditional one. When you study well in simplified chinese characters, you will know traditional chinese characters as well. If you have any other problem in learning chinese, please contact me, I will be glade to help.

1.Traditional chinese characters are usually used only in history and ancient literature books in mainland,while they're in common use in HK,Macau and Taiwan.So if you have no interested in them,it's no need to learn traditional chinese. 2.Most young people can read traditional chinese but feel hard to write it.Some people,like me, use traditional chinese on the Internet as a kind of interest. 3.Which kind of gap?