Ageism

[Braixen]

Preamble:
We have all heard of racism and sexism (I believe!) but do we discuss ageism often enough? Do we think it's a concern?


Ageism (also spelled "agism") is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. This may be casual or systematic. The term was coined in 1971 by Robert Neil Butler to describe discrimination against seniors, and patterned on sexism and racism. Butler defined "ageism" as a combination of three connected elements. Among them were prejudicial attitudes towards older people, old age, and the aging process; discriminatory practices against older people; and institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about older people.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism

For most of us we experience ageism at a young age! Although we may not know it a lot of us had the odds/society stacked against us when we were teenagers/while we are teenagers. Society looks/looked at us as hormonal beings with a nasty side! And as such they may have treated us although we were overly emotional etc. Some of this may be warranted under some circumstances, but I am sure a lot of it was just stereotyping.

So....

Questions/Comments/Opinions

Have any of you experienced ageism?

Do any of you commit ageism? If you want to admit to it then go ahead, if you've changed and want to tell us how then that is great to hear as well ^_^

What can be done to reduce stigma with age and specific ages?

Do you think most ageism is justified? For example do you think it's almost certain that people's driving skills go down hill with age and we should be weary of all elderly drivers?

Do you have respect for specific people who are younger than you, or older than you?

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Have any of you experienced ageism?
No, I don't think so.

Do any of you commit ageism?
I admit I tend to be wary of teenagers. xD Especially teenage boys. Too many incidents on trains and things with them being a bother. They make me kind of nervous, especially when they're in groups. I know it's bad, but I can't help but assume they will probably be annoying. Also when seeing drivers on a Probationary license (here that means they have been driving for less than 4 years), I assume they are more likely to drive dangerously and show off. I guess that's not directly tied to age though, since older people can still be Probationary drivers.

What can be done to reduce stigma with age and specific ages?
I guess just trying to speak to people of different ages would help. The same with any kind of "ism" issue. If you start seeing people instead of age/race/gender/whatever you will probably realise that everyone is pretty much the same and has good and bad points.

Do you think most ageism is justified?
I wouldn't say most, but some is probably justified. I'm sure there have been studies that show that elderly people are less safe drivers. The same way that teenagers probably do the most risk taking behaviour. But people are individuals and stuff like personalities have little to do with age. There are biological generalisations that can be made, like teenagers' brains are still developing and therefore they are more likely to make poor decisions, or that reflexes degrade with age and therefore elder people are less able to react to things when driving and therefore more likely to be involved in accidents etc.

Do you have respect for specific people who are younger than you, or older than you?
I think I generally respect everyone regardless of age, until they give me a reason not to. Honestly, I forget a lot of people I interact with online are younger than me. xD

[Corey]

Do any of you commit ageism?
I admit I tend to be wary of teenagers. xD Especially teenage boys. Too many incidents on trains and things with them being a bother. They make me kind of nervous, especially when they're in groups. I know it's bad, but I can't help but assume they will probably be annoying.

I'm a teenage boy and even I'm wary of teenage boys. xD

But yeah, my answers are the same as Sarah's. I sometimes jokingly exaggerate people's age, though. Like when my teacher talks about her cell phone I say, "What? They had cellphones in 1201 BCE?"

[ray_quazaa]

Have any of you experienced ageism?

Yes. I think I have been discriminated against because of my age. IT's very interesting how we use "age" and "experience" as the same thing, when really they are very different. They correlate well, but it's the outliers which cause so much pain.


Do any of you commit ageism? If you want to admit to it then go ahead, if you've changed and want to tell us how then that is great to hear as well ^_^

In general, no. I think sterotyping is a form of categorization that we implicitly do. I do adjust my own language, topics, and ideas to different groups of people, and if that alone is agism (which I don't think is what you're trying to address), then I think we all have. We don't approach toddlers with Shakespeare and we don't assume legal adults haven't lived the last decade (Hey, did you know that America suffered a terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001?)

What can be done to reduce stigma with age and specific ages?

YOu heard it here second (first was at my uni.) Let me invite this theory. If what we experience (known as "your experiences") a collection of data points, and that there is only so much time to obtain data points, then how have people gotten "more intelligent" over the last... century? It's because we have been able to learn from experiences more efficiently than those in the past. For example, we need not go through the black death and reinvent Calculus. Rather, we learn from those, and skip some of the ... "ball the paper up and throw it in the trash" methods of learning.

TO the above on correlating age with experience... one can learn a lot from reading "The News." Yes, even in the age of Fox News and MSNBC, it's still possible to be more "learn-ed" than your peers by simply "reading hte newspaper" (or whatever you kids use now to learn). Sure, the science wasn't good, the statistics was horrid, but it was better than NOTHING AT ALL. (and now we have things like Crash Course on YouTube and all the educational things... I MET EMILY GRASSLIE on THe Brain Scoop. I have never been so worried in my life... X____X;;; Braixen; I tag you here... because.)

So what we know about who we are is not a function of age necessarily. Age perfectly correlates with the amount of potential learning minutes, but someone who reads Cosmo all their life will not have the same set of experiences that a same aged person reading The Economist. (Why am I here again?)

Do you think most ageism is justified? For example do you think it's almost certain that people's driving skills go down hill with age and we should be weary of all elderly drivers?

Ho ho ho... I'm not even gonna pretend to answer this question. Philosophy. But if categorization and probabilistic decision making is not allowed, then we're all screwed. We have to be X-ism or else we'll never last a day with all the information that bombards us. But what we do when we make a mistake... that's the question.


Do you have respect for specific people who are younger than you, or older than you?

Braixen and Pokemon Trainer Sarah. Because I want a brownie point with the brownie that I'm eating.