They’re not pretending to be your friend, they’re trying to be your friend. They’re prolonging your interactions, sharing their thoughts and feelings with you. They want to spend this time not feeling lonely.
The extent to which this is age related is that they probably don’t have as much energy to split between their work life and their social life as you do. If that ever becomes a struggle for you, that cliche of old people playing a lot of card games and board games exists for a reason. Organizing regular games gives you people to hang out with without always having to figure out when and how.
As for the rest of it, the struggle with change and the arrogance, all I can say is to try to be humble but then that’s good advice at any age. It’ll even help you cope with annoying coworkers right now.
If so, they haven’t told me.