The Impacts of Ageism

Ageism: it’s getting old.

Since our entire Verse platform is built on stone-cold owning our second half, it should come as no surprise that when it comes to ageism, we’re decidedly anti. But while the individual injury ageism inflicts—a biased comment here, a missed opportunity there—is easy to see, we wondered: How does the aggregate impact of ageism hold us all back? After all, we are clearly bullish on the opportunities before us if Gen Xers and our forebears are empowered to fully do our thing. To help us analyze ageism with a bit more rigor, we called in Moira O’Neil, PhD, SVP of research interpretation at the FrameWorks Institute, whose specialty—you guessed it—is the framing of important social issues like this one.

Traps & tropes.

We get talking about aging wrong in a lot of ways, Moira says, which fosters both misunderstanding and obstacles to productive practices and policies. “I think one of the most egregious practices is the constant use of martial metaphors. Aging is a universal part of human development, yet it is something we are constantly told we need to ‘fight, battle, wage war against’—especially people who identify as women.”

The folly of a bad frame.

The negative impacts of these frames are vast. “It’s everything from the systematic exclusion of older people in so many parts of our social life, to the psychological burden many experience when their appearance changes as they age.”

COVID: a conversation starter.

Unfortunately, Moira notes that COVID—and, particularly when we began to quarantine—laid bare some of the most overt and ugly forms of ageism. “Politicians called on grandparents to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the economy and their grandchildren’s future. Standards of medical care developed during this period were incredibly ageist. However, it also opened space for activists and advocates to encourage much broader popular discussions about ageism. When we initially researched public perceptions of ageism and aging in 2015, the term ‘ageism’ was not something people were very familiar with. Now, there are several anti-ageism campaigns across the country.”

Finding better words.

“Our research found that the term ‘older people’ encouraged more productive thinking about this demographic group. I think we should also avoid comparing demographic change to an older population to natural disasters like the ‘silver tsunami’ or the ‘demographic cliff.’ As I noted before, if we could rid ourselves of all war metaphors when talking about aging that would be a huge advance. Lots of advocates are pushing for companies to stop using the term ‘anti-aging’ on their products—which would also be an amazing language shift.

Want a deeper dive? Find FrameWorks’ full stream of aging research—and words that work—here.