Ageism

I am not sure if I am ageist all the time, but I know I have thought ageist thoughts without realizing I was doing so. For example, I have dreaded having to raise teenagers because of all the bad stereotypes related to that age period, and I have thought that most older people do not really know that much about computers (not like I know that much myself, but I sort of followed the crowd in thinking this way). At the time, I did not really know this was ageist thinking or that I was being ageist. I did not really think about it, but I guess I just thought that is way the world is/was. Reading the list of examples of ageism I have really realized how much ageism there is that I did not really think about. For example, cosmetics that advertize anti-aging, an absence of older people in advertisement, and seating older people in inactive parts of restaurants. I never really noticed that older people were not in advertisements, but now that I think about it I have only seem old people in advertisements for things that are specific for them like a specific devise designed for older people (for example, Life Alert).  

This “-ism” is probably avoided in our society because we do not want to deal with it. We are trying to avoid reasonability for it since we think older people are taken care of with social security when sometimes they are not. We do not want to think of those older people who do not have their pensions or who are living in poverty because those are not nice thoughts. One of the videos for today, Who Took Your Pension?, was very emotional because I really felt for those people who had worked for many years and put money into social security, but when the time came for them to collect that money back they could not do that. In the end, they would receive only about 1/5 of what they should have received based on their paychecks. Anther video, Once We Were Young, was also very emotional because it showed what older people have to go through when they do not get the correct support. I am really glad to know that there is an organization like Age Concern that helps older people manage in a world that is ageist.