Everyday Ageism! Time to #retireageism

According to a new report published last week, which surveyed 4,000 UK adults and analysed thousands of tweets and blogposts in the UK one in 30 people admitted to regularly discriminating against anyone aged over 50 – and more than one in 10 admitted that they don’t even know if they were ageist or not.

More than a third of British people admit that they have discriminated against others because of their age, according to new research on everyday ageism, with those in their 30’s most guilty.

The Ageist Britain? Report published by the Sun Life Group aims to shine a light on the issue of casual ageism and the impact it has.

The report shows that people over 50 are  bombarded with phrases and behaviours which imply that life as an older person must be awful. Language is particularly revealing with “Old fart”, “little old lady”, “bitter old man” and “old hag” used frequently in conversation and on social media

Everyday ageism has an impact on mental health with growing awareness that this ageist societal narrative negatively impacts on our personal experiences of ageing and perhaps even our health and well being it can also hasten the onset of dementia and even shorten life expectancy.

The report also found that 40% of British people over 50 regularly experience ageism, with one in three commonly experiencing it at work, one in 10 on public transport, and one in seven while shopping.

As Shelley Hopkinson, public affairs manager at Independent Age said, “Part of the problem is that people often don’t even realise that the language they’re using can be ageist or cause offence”

So what should people in the UK do about this. Well the reports says a good bit more but when the public were asked the top 3 most popular ways people think we can combat ageism are:

• If more brands used different models of all ages for their advertising campaigns (37%)
• If the issues associated with ageism had the same level of attention as racism and sexism (33%)
• If people were more aware of the use of ageist language and avoided derogatory terms (33%)