Ageism: We’ve Met the Enemy (And It’s Us)

Ageism is so ingrained in our culture that we often don’t even notice it. And when older people buy into false stereotypes, the outcomes are detrimental.

When it comes to older people, what stereotypes come immediately to mind?

Frail, weak, slow, clumsy, clueless, confused, forgetful, helpless, unhealthy, unattractive, uncool, and bad at driving.

Whoops, my bad … These are traits I observed in people of all ages while waiting on a flight at the airport (the bad drivers were seen on the way there). Truth is, very few people live up to our media and marketing-induced notions of young, cool, and attractive – even the young themselves.

But one thing everyone seems to agree on is that it’s better to be young than old. Most older adults will tell you it’s the exact opposite, but you likely won’t know it until you’re lucky enough to get there yourself.

It’s like the joke about the older fish who asks a couple of younger fish, “How’s the water?” One young fish looks at the other and says, “What’s water?” We’ve all been swimming in ageist beliefs our entire lives to such a degree that we don’t even realize it or question it.

Ageism is defined as discrimination against older people because of negative and inaccurate stereotypes — and it’s so ingrained in our culture that we often don’t even notice.

It’s remarkable when you think about it. A large percentage of the population wouldn’t dare make a racist or sexist joke, but casual ageist comments rarely raise an eyebrow. People of all ages – including older adults themselves – show bias against older people, which is odd given that everyone lucky enough to live a long life will join this cohort eventually.

As we’ll return to over and over, it’s advertising and commercial interests that create many of the things we accept as “the way it is,” such as the superiority of youth and how you should spend your days after age 65. What’s hard to believe is that those commercial interests are still perpetuating the same myths about older people despite knowing for decades that the massive demographic and economic shift we’re in was coming.

Results of two new surveys of individuals 55 years old and over show that ageism persists in advertising, in spite of consumers in this group representing a large and attractive market. Data from the surveys show that three specific stereotypes of older consumers stand out: a lack of ability to use technology, physical weakness, and mental inferiority. These stereotypes are actually myths.

Ageism is a massive drain on economic prosperity and a blight on society. On the flip side, dispelling ageist stereotypes as marketers and entrepreneurs can be amazingly profitable while also creating a more harmonious intergenerational environment for everyone.

People are People

In short, older people are people, too – they come in multiple varieties, just like people of all ages. And yet somehow, after the age of 50, people are just thought of as old.

It’s completely illogical. Over 40% of Americans are obese, but that doesn’t stop Lululemon from generating $2.8 billion in revenue in the 4th quarter of 2022 from those who are not. Brands and entrepreneurs naturally carve out profitable market segments from the general population, and that should be even more true when people pass into the “older person” stages of life.

This kind of illogical marketing negligence is an opportunity for you. Not only are most stereotypes about older people myths, the truth is that the later years of life really are a “golden” period – but that doesn’t mean it’s time to be put out to pasture.

Here are some counterintuitive facts about getting older:

• After age 50, people tend to become happier and enjoy more life satisfaction than at any other time since childhood. And this happiness increases as you get even older, into your 70s and beyond.

• Older adults generally enjoy better mental health and higher levels of emotional regulation. Research also shows that older people have the wisdom and experience to handle stress better than younger people.

• Only 2.5% of Americans over 65 reside in a nursing home, and three-quarters of people 85+ live their lives without personal assistance.

All of this is true despite the fact that today’s older people have been swimming against the tide of ageist beliefs their entire lives. It doesn't have to be this way – ageism is both a modern phenomenon and cultural one. As author Ashton Applewhite points out, in most prehistoric and agrarian societies, older people were held in high esteem, while Japanese culture currently treats its elders this way.

That said, it’s a problem when older people buy into ageist beliefs they may have carried with them for decades. And make no mistake, what people believe very much determines how vibrant and active their later years are.

Don’t Stop Believing

Human beings are essentially bundles of beliefs that make us who we are and dictate how we behave. And what we believe has very significant consequences for how reality unfolds for us.

For example, the difference between an empowering growth mindset and a crippling fixed mindset is the simple belief that you are capable of change. Then there’s the Galatea effect (or a self-fulfilling prophecy), where when you believe in your ability to achieve a goal, you are more likely to achieve it. And there are, of course, many astounding examples of the placebo effect, which can result in measurable physiological changes even though no active agent is administered.

The same is true for what we believe about aging:

People who take in more negative age beliefs tend to show worse physical, cognitive, and mental health. But the good news is that those who are exposed to or develop more positive age beliefs tend to show benefits in physical, cognitive, and mental health.

In 2002, psychologist Becca Levy published a longevity study that followed residents ages 50+ in a small Ohio town for over two decades. Incredibly, she found the median survival was seven and a half years longer for people with the most positive views about aging than those with the most negative beliefs.

"We take our beliefs from culture and start absorbing these beliefs as young as 3 years old. Our beliefs on older people can come from social media, advertising, the antiaging industry, movies or books. It can differ quite a bit between cultures," Levy said. 

Another interesting aspect of getting older is the phenomenon of subjective age. In short, most older people think of themselves as younger than their chronological age, which can be a telling sign of both their health and attitudes toward aging. 

Interestingly, this disparity between how many birthdays one has had and how old one thinks of themselves is increasing with today’s middle-aged(+) adults. This is good news because feeling younger than you are means you have better physical and cognitive health, higher well-being, greater stress resilience, and lower mortality hazards.

No one seems to know for sure why the experience of subjective age happens. Could it be that arriving at a certain age is nowhere near as bad as you imagined it would be when you were younger, and therefore you don’t “feel” that age? That’s a perfectly logical outcome when you’ve been raised to think that being young is ideal while being older is something to dread.

Even while maintaining positive attitudes towards aging, older people still can succumb to false stereotypes about themselves. Take memory, for example. Getting older, on average, leads to a subtle decline in memory, but nowhere near the stereotypical levels ascribed to “forgetful” older people.

The fact older people tended to blame every memory failure they experienced on their age was a symptom of the ageism their semantic memory was feeding them, which in turn perpetuated the stereotype.

In other words, jokes about having a “senior moment” are potentially more harmful than we may think. Everyone forgets things, but only older people blame it on their advancing age.

As with extending healthspan, education is the key to changing perspectives about aging. Negating ageist stereotypes comes down to affirming for older people what they’ve come to suspect – getting older isn’t as bad as they thought, and in fact, it can be incredibly satisfying.

This is why we’re playing the long game over at Further. With an audience of people entering their 50s, we can instill positive attitudes about aging by simply sharing the facts that contradict many ageist stereotypes. With the right frame of mind about getting older, our audience can shift their focus to becoming who they want to be during their next stages of life with our help.

Your Mission: Reframe the Experience of Getting Older

Marketers and entrepreneurs are in the business of belief. You can’t force people to accept what they don’t want to, but you can activate belief for those who are open to it.

Often this comes down to strategic word choice. Again, so much of the language we use is steeped in casual ageism that we don’t even register it. So step one is to take the time to think carefully about the words we use when communicating with and about older adults.

For example, let’s take something as innocuous as the word “aging” itself. Specifically, aging does not mean “old” or older.

You’re aging the moment you’re born until the day you die. And you should be happily aging since that means you’re still alive.

So, when I hear things like “aging in place,” I find it a bit strange. The phrase means choosing to live in your existing home with family, friends, and neighbors instead of moving to a retirement community or some form of long-term residential care.

Shouldn’t it be “living in place?” The context seems to suggest that when you’re older, you’re done living; you just have the problem of “aging” that needs to be dealt with.

This level of semantic concern may seem trivial compared with the harsher aspects of ageism. But the language we use is essentially the whole point when we’re promoting favorable change for older people.

Researchers, activists, psychologists, and governments are working to reframe attitudes toward aging. These are welcome allies in the fight against ageism. Still, I will continue to maintain that marketplace messaging is the most powerful way to reframe the perception of older people, for people of all ages.

As an example of the marketing power of the right words, let me tell you the second fish story of this article. Back in 1977, American seafood merchant Lee Lantz found a delectable new fish in a Chilean port to market back home. One clear problem Lantz realized right away was what it was called – the Patagonian toothfish.

That moniker obviously wasn’t going to fly in the marketplace. So Lantz renamed it the Chilean Sea Bass, and demand grew so high in the States that overfishing nearly caused it to go extinct. Sometimes marketing works too well.

This is what’s needed in the context of the longevity economy, and it’s what marketers do well. Naming, reframing, and positioning are our tools of the trade, and given the massive economic opportunity the longevity realm represents, there’s plenty of motivation to do our best work.

In this case, the motivation can and should go beyond profit. Those who truly advocate for the psychological and physical well-being of older people will become legitimate leaders in the anti-ageism movement while concurrently growing successful companies.