Hello and welcome my name is Katie RR I'm a user experienced researcher on a team called products for all here at Google whose mission is to make Google and Google products inclusive and accessible for everyone and part of my work and my team's work has included helping teams across Google be more age inclusive so that everyone regardless of age can have a great user experience and so I am thrilled to welcome Ashton Apple White today who has a mission that deeply resonates with me and I am so very excited to hear more about the author
of this chair rocks a Manifesto against agism Ashton Appo is a leading spokesperson for the emerging movement to raise awareness on agism and how to dismantle it a co-founder of old school anti-ageism Clearing House she's been recognized by the New York Times the New Yorker National public radio and others as an expert on aism Ashton has written For Harpers and the guardian and the New York Times she has a Blog over at this chair rocks and is the voice of yo is this agist she's speak she's spoken widely at venues all across the world and
so I'm very excited to have her here today to talk with us first we're going to hear from Ashton who will share her thoughts and perspectives on ages aging agism and how to build a more age inclusive world and then we're going to have have a short moderated chat since I Personally selfishly have lots of questions for her and then we'll do a live Q&A at the end so if you're tuning in on the audience please add any questions that you have to the right side of your screen so that we can get to them
at the end and without further Ado please welcome Ashton Apple White hi everyone thank you for coming to this I am excited to be speaking to you all um and let's start where it hurts uh with word old how does that Word make you feel I used to feel the same way my darkest fear was ending up in some Grim institutional hallway and then I learned that the when I first learned it the percentage of Americans over 65 in nursing homes was four and a half percent now it's under 2% and it's dropping what else
was I worried about dementia but if you take out that percentage of people um living in nursing homes over age 65 90% of the Remainder can think just fine Alzheimer's is a terrible disease but it's not typical of aging and in fact dementia rates are falling substantially there are more cases because there's more older people as a percentage of the population and age is the biggest risk factor but the likelihood of anyone listening to me right now getting dementia has gotten lower and lower and people are being diagnosed at later ages the real epidemic is
anxiety over memory Loss and I'll talk about why that about why that anxiety is bad for us another assumption was that old people were depressed because they were old and they were going to die soon and then I learned that people are happiest at the beginnings and the ends of their lives so all of you at midlife if things look Grim they get better it's called the ushaped happiness curve and it's been borne out by dozens of studies in the US and around the world and you don't have To be a Buddhist or a billionaire
that curve is a function of the way aging itself affects the brain so I started feeling a whole lot better about getting older and I started obsessing about why so few people know these things because it's it's data right at the top of the internet the reason is agism discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age is a narrow dictionary definition we experience it anytime someone assumes that we are too old Air Quotes around that because there's really no such thing too old for something instead of finding out who we are and what we're good
at and what we want to do or Too Young agism Cuts both ways and younger people experience a lot of it too as any of you had to who had to work hard to get your you know your foot in the door in the job market agism is any judgment about a person or a group of people based on how old we think they Are prejudice is not about biology it's it's about power all forms of prejudice agism sexism racism ableism are socially constructed ideas which is a fancy way of saying we make them up
and we can unmake them and these ideas change over time and they serve a social and economic purpose Prejudice is not about who we are it's about how we see ourselves how others perceive us and about how people in power assign meaning to those perceptions right and how the Society ranks Us in hierarchies of value stereotyping underlies all Prejudice the assumption that all members of a group are the same and of course stereotypes are always m a mistake but they are especially false I guess or inaccurate when it comes to age because the longer we
live the more different from one another we become and yet the a common assumption is like everyone in a senior living joint is the same age which would be old when they Can span four decades now would you ever think that way about a group of people from age 10 to age 50 they are in fact more developmentally alike right same about the people listening to me right now the median age of a Google employee is 30 and y'all are far more like one another physically socially and developmentally Than People between age 40 and 80
the longer we live the less that number that age that everyone always wants to know the less that Number says about us Prejudice serves a really useful purpose especially under capitalism it pits us against each other pitting young against old like pitting work a low-wage workers against each other or stay-at-home moms against the interests of mothers in the paid Workforce is a Tim honored tactic used to divide people who might otherwise join forces and change things divide and conquer this us or them logic always pops up around Healthc care rationing listen for it why should
we spend money on older people when we could spend it on kids it's not ethical or legal to allocate Resources by race or by sex and weighing the needs of the old against the young is equally unacceptable period and it also doesn't make sense to think in Old versus young ways out in the real world families are made up of all ages so are communities places that are good toow old in which means they have social services and Public transport and benches and Parks they're good for everyone they're all age friendly right it's not just
good for sad old people we are all agist no one is born biased but attitudes start to form in early childhood around the same time that attitudes about race and gender start to form and in this culture negative messages about late life come at us from the media popular culture the Radio Magazine Billboards at every turn Starting with Disney movies right wrinkles are ugly old people are incompetent it's sad to be old and we olders can be the most agest of all because we've had a lifetime of absorbing these messages and unless we stop to
challenge them they become part of our identity identity that's internalized uh bias right it's the same as true of internalized racism or internalized homophobia I had to acknowledge my own Prejudices and stop colluding like just to take a a random example senior moment quips I finally stopped making them when I remembered that in high school I lost things all the time and I didn't blame it on you know I didn't call it a junior moment young people forget things all the time too so what was the hardest Prejudice to let go of the one against
myself my future older self all Prejudice relies on what sociologists call othering Seeing a group of people as other than ourselves whether it's other nationality other religion other sports team the weird thing about agism because older people do bear the brunt of it most of the stigma is about the older end of the spectrum that other is us our own older selves agism is prejudice against our own future selves which of course makes no sense but no Prejudice makes sense and agism feeds on denial our reluctance to acknowledge that we are aging that we Might
even be old right certainly older and it is denial when we try to pass for younger or believe in what Anti-aging products promise or get offended when someone politely offers us a seat on the bus and this age denial not only blinds us to our own bias right we're busy keeping up the walls between our present self and our older self it perpetuates it in a thousand ways aging is not the problem the problem is dis discrimination just like it's not being Women that makes life harder for women it's sexism it's not loving a man
that makes life harder for gay guys it's homophobia and it is not the passage of time that makes getting older especially in this culture so much harder than it has to be it is agism now I don't know if you've reached the stage where labels might be hard to read or you need a handrail I am certainly there or I can't open the damn jar and we to think like it's my fault I Should be stronger I should be fitter I should be better prepared maybe even I should have stayed home we tend to blame
ourselves instead of blaming the agism and ableism that makes these natural changes in our bodies shameful and the Discrimination that makes these barriers acceptable when we dye our hair just to cover the gray or leave early accomplishments off our resumés or lie about our age on a dating site we reinforce age shame these are really Successful strategies I completely understand why so many people engage in them especially women I'll get to that and so no judgment right they are useful in this world but these strategies aren't good for us because they're rooted in shame about
something that shouldn't be shameful and from a structural point of view they give a pass to the Discrimination that makes those behaviors useful and for people who face other layers of discrimination Like queer people people of color the costs of these barriers are even higher aging is not a problem to be fixed or a disease to be cured it is the one natural lifelong powerful process that unites every person on Earth you can't make money off satisfaction but shame and fear create markets and capitalism always needs new markets right who says wrinkles are ugly the
multi-billion dollar piece of the skinc care the anti-aging piece of the skincare massive Beauty industry and who says per menopause or low tea or mild cognitive impairment or medical problems the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry and what a market right because sooner or later everyone's going to come down with some piece piece of this the more clearly we see these forces at work the easier it is to Envision alternative more positive and more accurate narratives and the longer we wait the more damage they do to ourselves Individually and to our place in the world couple of
examples y'all are at work agism Cuts work lives short longer lives require working longer and saving more and yet even in the face of a global labor shortage four out of five American workers say they have seen or been the experienced age discrimination or witnessed it right and age bias makes it harder for young people to get started as I mentioned but older people bear the Brunt especially in Tech y all know how ages Tech is um AG I mean I think Tech and advertising W take the cake it takes us olders longer to find
jobs if we're laid off and if we're out of a job more than six months which is often the kiss of death for job Seekers It's much harder to um to land a job at all often I can't tell you the stories I hear about people who send out hundreds of resumés finally get an interview and it's over the minute they walk in the Door or turn on their camera white men faced all these barriers they're higher for white women and even harder to submount for everyone else the personal and economic consequences are devastating and
I know I know I'm going to get some questions from Katie about technology and olders so I'll I'll I'll wait for the Q&A but it's really important to keep in mind that not a single stereotype about older workers is legit there's no basis and it's Important for older people to keep a a open mind about younger people your boss may be young enough to be your grandchild but that doesn't mean she has nothing to teach you right we need to be open-minded shout out here for the gregers Google employees over age 40 in the ERG
who are doing this work in your company and to you Katie you all know that diverse workplaces aren't just better places to work they work better they result in higher creativity hires More satisfied clients and just like race and gender age is a Criterion for diversity right obviously so one thing you can do is in conversations around University if age isn't part of the conversation ask why not if everyone's I mean I don't know about you I notice now when everyone in the room is male when everyone in the room is white if everyone's the
same age ask why you know or suggest that you mix it up ages of harms our health agism in Medicine I just read a shocking thing about how many in um emergency rooms across the country there's very few people who know how to treat kids that's agism too because kids don't vote and kids don't spend money but most of the bias is directed against older people who often don't get as much treatment often no treatment at all doctors tend to spend more time with younger patients even though they have fewer health concerns and you know
why Should we accept a different standard of care for older people that is institutional agism at work and internalized agism matters to a lot there's studies coming out all the time adding to this fascinating body of evidence that connects attitudes towards aging to to how our minds and bodies function at the cellular level people with more positive feelings about aging that's usually how the media puts it but it's not that we shouldn't we you know We we need to not gloss over the scary stuff which is real what that really means is a more accurate
attitude towards aging people who know some of the things I've just told you those people walk faster heal quicker live longer that's why the World Health organization not the world old people organization launched a global campaign to combat agism in the second year of the pandemic they were a little busy that first year because they understood That the biggest obstacle to extending Health span the number of years were all in relatively good health along with lifespan was age bias between our ears and in the world part of the health consequences are the effects of agism
on cognition people who associate old age with growth and purpose I love this study are less likely to develop dementia even if they have the gene that predisposes them to the disease most of the research comes out of Yale done by a Wonderful scholar named Becca Levy and her latest published finding is a remarkable positive more accurate Age beliefs don't just help prevent mild cognitive decline they can actually reverse it Becca is a very careful scientist she would not use the word reverse unless unless it was backed by science they can reverse these these more
accurate Age beliefs can reverse cognitive decline and improve memory lots of factors shape the way we Age including class geography the turnings of the global economy most of these things we can't control what's one thing we can control our attitudes these accurate more accurate and positive understanding of Aging the thinking goes help keep us healthy by buffering stress and Prejudice the effects of living in an agous world and when we equate aging with disease and decrepitude on the other hand that makes us more vulnerable to exactly what we Fear it's probably not news to any
of you listening that agism disproportionately affects women we experience the double whammy of agism and sexism so we experience aging differently there's a double standard at work here Shocker the notion that aging enhances men up to a point and devalues women and we women reinforce this double standard when we compete to stay young right the you know which is impossible and expensive when we do that we Reinforce agism sexism lism the idea that appearance is the most important thing about us and patriarchy you don't need a PhD in women's studies to figure out that this
is not good for us it pits us against each other right it sets us up to fail you can't stay young and it affects our income and our health and well-being women are more likely to end up poor in late life because we earn less than men we're penalized for time we spent out of the paid Workforce Typically doing unpaid caregiving and we live longer and the effects add up over time and are further compounded as always by race and class which is why the poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick everywhere in
the world are old women of color agism segregates us discrimination of any sort sanctions segregation and isolation and the biggest threat to a good old age is not it's it's not uh good health it's not running out of Money it's isolation the most important thing you can have is a solid social network feeling alienated from older people like me and apprehensive at becoming like us is not natural it's not inevitable age segregation impoverishes us all because it cuts us off for most of humanity literally especially in the US where very few people have significantly older
or younger friends and the opposite is of course true that age diversity enriches us just like if We have friends of different races and friends from different places it enriches Us in countless intuitively and strategically obvious ways so at this point in history we have an extraordinary opportunity for those of us with with access to healthcare and education which I think means a you know huge um majority of people who are lucky enough to work at Google for the first time in human history four even five living Generations are becoming Commonplace the in the Paleolithic
Era our homonym ancestors evolved to live long enough to have a third living generation and that's when art happened that's when civilization happened so we are in evolutionarily New Territory right which is incred rly exciting and the roles and institutions around us were created when lives were shorter and they have yet to catch up this is new so this gives us a critical window of opportunity to shape a world that Supports people of all ages across the lifespan right it's not just about helping old people to take advantage of this longevity dividend right that the
human and social capital of millions more healthy well-educated adults than every before in human history we need to quit the hand ringing that always crops up around anything to do with oldness challenge the agest and ablest assumptions that underly that hand ringing and think about how to create Envision and create which so many are you are doing that you know in the arena of technology and social relations what do we want an age integrated Society to look like right because that's the one we all want to live long enough to inhabit it's going to take
all hands- on deck and all ages so how do we get there couple of suggestions tap into what we know aging enriches us growing older isn't just different from what we've been brainwashed to believe it's way Better it's not that the losses aren't real they are real we need to acknowledge them but aging also brings authenticity and confidence and perspective especially for women right we care less about what people think which is really liberating we our priorities are clearer we get better at not sweating the small stuff it's easier to manage emotions we want less
that's why very few people actually want to go back to their youth anyone want to go Back to their teenage years you know most older people don't want to go back to their middle-age years either right because we know no matter how apprehensive we may be that our years are what make us us secondly learn to look more generously at each other and at ourselves entire Industries are built on convincing people that my 71-year-old face and body are hideous that old equals ugly especially for Women system designed to exploit our insecurities only works if we
agree to it though this is not easy but it is doable instead of muttering what the hell happened at the face in the mirror how about taking a minute for the olders listening to me to think about all the things that did happen and how remarkable some of them were let's not dude ourselves this is the work of a lifetime we need to embark on it with others and with all ages but None of this stigma is natural and none of it is fixed we can take a page from the body acceptance Movement we can
insist at any age on being seen and valued as our full Rich lumpy wrinkly complicated selves and take that change out into the world and when you walk out with that kind of self-awareness people feel it really important one ask for help ask for help when you need it and we all need it all the time in India where most Old people live with their families there is nothing demeaning about receiving care and support of all kinds including with toileting imagine that the perms terms and the the power relations they're going to shift sometimes in
unwelcome ways the gift is to learn to give and receive with Grace I love this quote from a Dutch uh gerontologist named Yan bars aut omy requires collaborators no one is independent ever I'd like to take the word independent out of the whole dialogue around aging we are social creatures all of life is interdependence and these are two way mutually gratifying transactions no one likes to ask for help but people love to give help so what's that disparity about so let's acknowledge the need that we're you know that we're going to need Helping Hands from
birth to death and re for them gratefully and without shame really important make friends of All ages as I mentioned like the most important component of a good old age and I was so startled to learn this I mean I didn't know anything 20 years ago I thought it must be health and then wealth it's having a good solid social network and that is one reason it is so essential to make friends of all ages and hang on to them seek them out making a significantly older or younger friend is is an anti- agist act
think of something you like to do concert going Playing poker pickle ball whatever you know reading reading group and find a mixed age group to do it with or or create a group and be intentional about people who are different from you in age and ideally other things as well don't stay home just because you'll stick out that's how desegregation happens people with a most at stake older people in you know in a in a youth youth oriented Society we Step Up we step out we stop conforming and open-minded people Welcome us an incremental social
change takes place and younger people benefit too because otherwise each generation has to figure out on its own how dumb and destructive it is to fear growing older and how much of our youth we squander on worrying about it and last but not least join forces dismantling agism is going to take nothing less than a mass movement like the 20th century women's movement that Catal ize this massive shift in voice and visibility For women around the world we have made real progress and we've gotten a lot of pushback on rights for queer and trans people
too but the push back is a sign we're getting somewhere because no one gives up power without a struggle culture change is slow but it is real compare I don't know how I could report to a woman 20 years ago to how could I report to someone younger today right this these changes happen check out the old school anti-age Clearing House which KD referenced old school.in it's a Resource Bank of hundreds of free vetted resources talks workshops podcasts everything's free except the books I created that it because with two colleagues because movements need tools and
ways to come together and share what we know a global movement to and agism is underway and what's my evidence well when we created launched old school in 2018 there was no campaign section and now it's one of the fast Fest growing With 35 campaigns and Counting designed not to help old people you know stay healthy or you know eat better but about what agism is how it works and how we can undo it it happens to be a busy week in ag land because October first was the un's International Day of older persons that's
a thing and helpage international which is this wonderful Global organization just launched uh on Saturday a campaign called old or not over which depicts people all around the World World from Austria to Zimbabwe is their tagline emphasis on Zimbabwe and the majority World which is fantastic because the face of the movement is typically a face like mine an older white woman and that has to change everyone is aging everyone has a voice deserves a voice in how we challenge it you have two days to suit up for agism awareness day on October 7th which started
in Australia a couple of years ago and is now observed around the world The movement is happening a really important thing about dismantling agism and that social movement is that it means supporting every struggle for equal rights we can't get rid of agism without addressing ableism in particular right stigma around ability disability because so much of our fear about aging is apprehension about how our minds and bodies might change that's not agism that's ableism plenty of younger people Are disabled plenty of older people are not so we have to address ableism and racism and sexism
and all the rest because these are systems of Oppression that feed on on and depend each other right that's the idea behind the theory of intersectionality developed by Kimberly khaw and other black feminists age Equity requires gender Equity because aging is harder for women age Equity requires disability Equity because fears of incapacity feed stigma And age shame and age equity requir racial Equity because racism denies multitudes the chance to age at all in the words of poet and activist Audrey Lord there's no such thing as a single issue struggle because we don't lead single isue
lives and I know I don't know about you that can feel overwhelming like the idea of these layers of Oppression but here's a different way to think about it that different forms of activism compound and Reinforce each other too when we confront any practice any any prejudice any kind of bias we chip away at the fear and ignorance that underly them all aging is the one Human Experience agism the one form of bias everyone encounters and when we make the world a better place to grow old in we make it a better place in which
to be from somewhere else to have a disability to be queer non-white non-rich right if you are if you are working to be anti-racist you Are making the world a better place for older people who are not white and so on and when we show up at all ages for whatever cause we believe in whatever matters save the whales the clinic the Democracy we not only make that effort more effective for obvious reasons we dismantle agism in the process longed is longevity is here to stay a movement to end agism is underway I'm in it
and I hope you will join me in it there are lots of ways to do so so Katie back to You amazing thank you so much that is um such an important topic your passion so clearly comes through on this um I have gosh so many notes uh from all the things you just said I have some questions that I want to dive into for a little bit but I want to remind the audience that if you have any questions at all please put them in the live chat on the right side of your screen
so that we can get to them at the end um I'm really curious say things you don't Agree with or don't believe no I think a lot of this is things that I have been saying for the last several years across all of Google and uh outside of it to say hey we need to do this especially this concept of building for older adults makes things better for everyone not just older adults exactly yes when we make things better for every group and this is the same for disability inclusion when we build for people with
disabilities Everybody has better experiences when it's Universal it loses its stigma the stigma shouldn't be there but it's one way to undo the stigma yeah absolutely and it's it's such an interesting concept to think about stigma when we hear people talk about their older adult loved ones there's this concept that they are not interested in certain things like technology they don't have the ability to learn anymore in the same way that they used to and these are all Really big myths that we need to bust right we we do yeah I mean it depends on
the person you know some of the most tech averse people I know are younger people you know one of the most technically Adept people I know is my partner who's 77 you know it depends on the person and it depends on what you you know we all if we need to make a living have a skill to you know to to pay the rent to support our kids we learn that thing I'm not prly Technophilic to say the least but you know I'm reasonably Adept at social media because I need to for my work we
learn what we need to learn yeah absolutely which is a really interesting point that you brought up before where we have this assumption that everybody over 65 is one big group but they the truth is that everybody has a lifetime of learning and liking different things and exploring different paths and we're actually wildly different humans at that Point we actually get more different from each other over time yeah absolutely so kind of reiterate for me again what are the dangers of labeling people as just all one category at that age and just saying you're over
65 year and older adult that's all we need to know well it's the same you know it's analogous to to uh you know grouping people by race or saying all you know all career people want this thing it's it's always wrong in in um one way it Turns up a lot I'm on I have many uh little Crusades one of which is to get people to use the word generation L it's really common but the minute we hear the word generation there's no scientific basis for Generation except in the sense that my parents were one
generation and my children are another other than that there's no basis it's like a bunch of people born sort of around the same time but sometimes that's four years and sometimes that's 14 and the minute we Hear generation and and label a generation all all these assumptions which are inherently ages because the IDE is that millions of people around the same age are the same um is patently impossible and it it covers over the way more important role that other factors class in particular ethnicity gender all play in shaping who we are whether that person
likes that idea or is good at that thing or wants to do that thing has much more to do with these other aspects Of our identity we're not aware of that one reason that seems counterintuitive is because we spend so much time in same age silos the more time you spend with career people the harder it is to be homophobic the more you realize like I love some of them and some of them are jerks right it doesn't have to do with who they sleep with and so on yeah that's that's fascinating I've actually never
thought about the word generation in that context before and kind of the Ways that it could be harmful I think that one of the things that I notice when I talk to different teams about age inclusion is this concept that if we're building for older adults that means we're building for Baby Boomers or we are building for a specific generation and it's been a lot of reframing to talk about how if you build for older adults now you're going to also build for your future self and I think you started to touch on that concept
of what are those Internalized biases that we have and how do we deal with that and set ourselves up for success in the future well you know to to educate yourself about age and aging um you know there's my book follow me on social media there's you know look at old school old school. info doz hundreds of resources of all different kinds you know it's it's free and that is is the most important thing we can do I mean when you say you're designing for old people who does that Even mean first of all where
does age begin in Tech as you all know it starts at about 28 I mean you know it's this starts young right so is old people Everyone from 30 to 90 how could you possibly imagine that a single set of text backs or a single color or a single size or shape or user what's the word user um requirements um could possibly could possibly fit that market which again you know is more heterogeneous over time in the most important thing You can do is of course involve older people on the team there is a you
know there's an assumption and this is tricky that designing for older people means designing things that are easy to use um that it you know but guess what all this stuff should be easy to use good things should be welld designed because as you pointed out something with a good UI that has a font that is either readable or easily enlargeable and so on is easy For everyone to use it is by definition inclusive right and you know but it is true that our senses function less well I wear hearing aids I used to be
blind as a b but now that I've had double cataract surgery my vision is better than it ever was but you know it is true that we do need to think about products that take those things into consideration but plenty of older people are not disabled can see and hear just fine so don't when you make a product That is easy to use for someone who has visual or auditory difficulties you are making it easier for everyone to use there's no I mean I know it's harder and I know it's more expensive but it is
important to do in a world of longer lives it's important to do because it's ethical and it's important to do because you're all are Google yes absolutely oh my gosh I'm just going to replay that clip over and over to everybody that I talk to at uh Google from now on that's just I mean absolutely that resonates so much I think that there's this assumption that growing older implies disability and yes our bodies change you know I don't ever want to say oh no no no but they're not equivalent yes and we age at different
rates some person you know cognitive decline is you know it's severe cognitive decline is relatively rare you know I couldn't I mean I had trouble understanding apps when I you know when They first invented the app I figure out the ones I need to it's not because of age yeah absolutely and you know I go around saying the same example of as a millennial Tik Tok wasn't made for me I have I cannot I've never successfully made a video on Tik Tok because I the UI is confusing it wasn't aimed at my gener generation and
so we continue to get stuck in the cycle where we're thinking about what's the hot new Young group and we start ignoring everybody above a Certain age yeah which is which is huge you know group of of humanity that I live in New York and um they just the um Department of Aging just initiated an anti-aging agism curriculum in 10 Brookland high schools and the Wall Street Journal wrote a story about it and they interviewed one of the a 14-year-old who was in the program and she said you know my my kid sister and her
friends are listening to songs that I don't know and it makes me feel so old So it's really important to let go of the idea that there is an age or a stage where X happens or why stops happening because it's not true and it's different for each of us and things keep shifting you know the rate of technical change is accelerating you know so fast we are all adapting to stuff all the time yes yes absolutely technology moov so fast and I think we have this conception because of all the things that you just
mentioned that like okay if we say we need to Create a world for older people or we need to create technology for older people what we can do is like take the take a product as is and just strip away literally everything and that way when we think about like you know our grandma who couldn't turn on the TV we think the solution is to make it so easy that anybody can do it and give her two buttons and that's it and loudly when you explain it to her I mean that's that's a Trope so
easy grandma could do It which is so insulting I know it's so offensive to literally so many people that want to participate in the world and in technology as to get treated like that is that older person you know a woman in rural Rwanda with um you know just a flip phone and maybe spotty internet service is that person a a health technician in you know in Zurich I mean they may be the same age but they have different needs yes absolutely it's such a diverse Group yeah absolutely oh my gosh so one of the
things that you talked about was we talked about like generation in the language and one of the interesting things that I heard you say is the word olders as a substitute for saying older adults which I also had never heard before um and you had a really lovely anecdote about senior moments and stop using that language and I think language is such an important piece of not only how we communicate but how we frame our Own thoughts and and create these biases and um there's even ones that are not necessarily just anti-aging like over the
hill or senior moments but there's also ones that are so Pro youth like young at heart that has so many implications and so talk to me more about why that's harmful and and what do we do about this this concept of language um well you know language shapes culture culture shapes language again a plug for old school old school. Info I don't make any money off it but if it's searchable by topic and if you enter language you will see lots of examples of um you know of of of pro-aging or really age neutral language
I don't want a world where older people are put on pedestals right I want a world where age is neutral because every human being you know deserves respect uh it's a good rule of thumb to you know and this has to do with with gender and um you know people's um official titles Ask people what they want to be called and use that I invented olders and youngers because I when I was writing my book I literally got tired of typing older people or older adults and older adults is just clunky and I started using
olders and youngers and I I will tell you when I know I have a couple of friends on the call who are listening that people who know me well have started to use them because it's always because it emphasizes that we age in Relation to others we're everyone's on this you know terrified when does Old begin and am I on the wrong side of the Velvet Rope at which point you know everything goes to hell there's no Velvet Rope there's no point you know I might lose a facility that I don't miss I serve sucks
I never played tennis you know I have arthritis in my shoulder it would be terrible if tennis was really important to me right it depends so if you just talk about older and younger People it's always accurate and it's inclusive instead of saying um you know that generation this generation or people over 65 or people over 40 I mean age demarcations are useful but unless they have to do with you know the fire department um you know PE with jobs that require strenuous physical activity which we lose capacity for that that is you know we
we we do slow our bodies work less well that is universal um you know but other than that thanks to Technology most jobs don't require Str uous physical effort look at what the person you know person has and try not to make age a Criterion for it or a disqualifier yeah I love that I think there's so many ways in which as a society we can better support those changes without stigmatizing and without othering and without saying this is a deficit but just acknowledging that this is something that happens to people and how do we
better support it so that we All can participate the ways we want we can build ages different you know than other forms of aism is different from other forms of prejudice again every person's experience is unique but we can apply what we've learned which I think is a lot about um challenging racism in the workplace challenging gender bias in the workplace I'm often think of an experiment that a Orchestra in Europe perform um performed because they were mostly wait for it older white guys and They wanted to diversify so they had people um audition behind
a curtain and then they put a carpet underneath it so they couldn't hear people's footfalls and because it didn't work when they just like wanted to do it because once we have so so as a thought experiment think about what that curtain and that carpet might be like especially y'all in HR because HR is The Gatekeepers for this and there are multiple studies that show that people in HR acknowledge that Older Workers are every bit as satisfactory as younger ones and y'all still don't want to hire us so what is the curtain and the carpet
that you could put or or teach yourself or employ that would keep those biases from slotting into place because we're all aist we're all racist we're all ableist we're all biased in ways that we have to become aware of and work against yes I loveed that story um about the the orchestra where they put the curtain Down and then to just further explain a little bit they were still hiring a disproportionate amount of men and when they put the carpet down they started having better gender equality because realized it was the high heels clicking on
the floor that we were they were subconsciously paying attention to and saying okay we can tell you know who this person is and it's going to impact our our heart is unconscious you know and a lot of you Know people say you oh hello young lady you know well maybe they meant it as a compliment but didn't feel like a compliment you know yeah absolutely and when we challenge that gently you know and a really good like allpurpose response to an agis comment is what do you mean by that yes tell me more neutral tone
and but you know some some older women like to be called young lady that's their truth yeah yeah I think it's a really It's such an interesting intersection of all of these different isms and so I'm so glad you dove into that because I think about things like um there's the I think it's L'Oreal one of the hair dye companies has the like keep the gray movement and on its surface it feels so like o yes this is good this is is empowering and then you look at it and it's nothing but women that are
saying hey you're a woman okay we guess it's okay for you to be gray now um but they Don't have those same type of things aimed at Men And so there's this really interesting intersection that happens when you start to really dive into trying to sell you stuff yes yes absolutely so I have one last question for you before we jump into the audience questions so audience remember to type some of your questions in we'll get to in just a second but Ashton I want to jump back and go a little bit higher level from
you and tell me more about What your path was that got you here into this uh fight against agism oh you didn't prepare me for that one um well I I have never ever uh had a conventional career I never imagined being a public speaker I never dreamt of being a writer I think writing is really hard and not fun but I write because I have something that seems important and I got on the path because I decided I couldn't stay in my marriage and I learned and again a fact that's floating at the top
of the Internet that two-thirds of divorces in the US were initiated by women and I was astonished I figured it was like 98% men dumping their sad used up you know wives like me for fertile trophy versions and I became sort of obsessed with why so few women knew that why our view of late life was so Grim when the reality around us was so manifestly different and we don't know it because we live in a sex agist patriarchy and it was very parallel and of course I ended up Drawing on all the things I
had learned about structural bias and the way Prejudice works and the way capitalism works and patriarchy works when 20 20 years later 15 years like oh crap I'm getting old like this is this is happening to me it's hard to imagine getting old we age slowly and I think that's human you know I don't think that's biased but I it's the same thing why am I so afraid and I started looking into it interviewing older people and Realized in a matter of months the the the the data points that I started this talk out with
and it was the same thing why don't we know this when the fear is so bad for us you know psychologically socially and the cost I didn't even get into the cost for the US economy and the global economy it's really bad for us and the information is available so um you know I get a be in my Bonnet and then um I'm off up here no that's good I think that passion is is so clearly Obvious within you but I think it's so valuable right I think all of these different myths that we've talked
about are just so Salient within our culture and our society and I think something you said at the very beginning really resonated with me if we have this perception that like younger years are better and we hype we say things like college is the best years of your life and I distinctly remember being in college going oh if this is it I don't Know about the rest of life and I was hearing last night some was saying a younger person that a friend of hers is in her 20s and she's just like she's depressed and
and her vision is that it's just going to get worse because I mean remember all sorts of of power structures benefit from us staying stuck in this way of thinking just like they benefit from racial Prejudice and gender Prejudice age bias in the workforce enables employers and I'm I'm not saying This to piss off the higher ups of Google but it enables workers at both ends of the age Spectrum to be taken advantage of for example so always zoom out you know who's who's there's a great quote from a scholar named Amos Wilson if you
want to understand any problem in America don't look at who suffers from it look at who profits from it yes absolutely I love it and so in order to do that we have to recognize and acknowledge and have these types of Conversations and so I'm so thrilled that you here today uh and let's jump over to the uh comments from the live audience do you have questions all right from jores what do you suggest for people to prepare for a vibrant life after retirement uh well I think it is completely individual you know a lot
of people um can't afford to retire a lot of people don't want to retire uh a lot of people love being retired I continue To work but I am in control of my work schedule and the jobs that I want to take I don't have you know I I don't have to go get a job as a greeter at Walmart to pay my rent so um I do think um I I do think that I I think that American the American Workforce needs more on ramps and on off-ramps and on again ramps so that if
you want to take some time off to to have a sabatical to take care of someone to have a baby to look after our Grandchild that we can transition out and back in again if we want and so that older people are not you know shown the door but have you know kick out the door but have time to pass on what we know and to Mentor younger people and by speaking of mentorships like younger people have a lot teach older people too it's not a you know Wise old person that's another aist stereotype lots
of older people don't seem to have learned much along the way um but I digress so So I think it depends on what what that person's I what they can afford and hopefully catalyzing enough social change and economic priorities so that older people across the socioeconomic Spectrum have the support to um choose how they wish to retire um you know I I imagine that I would just sit in a porch swing and and read novels all day it would probably drive me nuts um but uh think about it you know think about it in advance
and think about um what the Habit physical or mental or social conditions are that will help you um be able to keep doing the things you want to do versions of them at least um for as long as possible yeah I love that I think that we really emphasize like you said paternity or maternity leave and we think about these kind of concrete stages of people's life but we stop thinking about those different type of stages as people get older and what are the ways that we can recognize it not Because maternity or paternity leave
you're just hanging out taking a break but how can we figure out how to recognize those different milestones and allow people to EB and flow within them that's a great point I love it a next question from joris again would it help to popularize a name for a third phrase in life that comes after the work children centered uh phase to encourage people to be better prepared uh thank you for that question Joris I'm I'm going to push back against the idea that there are fixed phases in life read today that 10% of kids young
children in America are being raised by their grandchildren so those older people are still in the child centered phase uh I think you know everywhere in the world people are living longer and we have a bit of we're still stuck a little bit in this idea of first you you know you have childhood and you go to school and then you get married and have Children and um succeed in your career and save enough for retirement good luck with that in today's economy um and then you retire and I think um for better and for
worse because there's a lot of can be a lot of stress involved in a society without a lot of Social and economic support um you know we we we move in and out we're going to move in and out of work people don't have the same job from from you know their whole careers anymore there's Freedom in that and there's vulnerability in that so anytime you label a period of life as you link a stage of life to a chronological age it's problematic because there are people younger than that who don't do that thing there
are people older than that who do do that thing and there and and people may or may not want to be in that group so I think it's important to avoid thinking in terms of stages you know there are people talk about Elderhood people talk about the third age the problem with the third age is then you're like all worried about the it still assumes there's a four you know as a time of of growth and you're going to do classes and learn and volunteer and give back and maybe start a company which is fantastic
and you may or you may not you may want to or you may not not want to you may have the option or you may not but then it suggested there's a for fourth age where Everything falls apart and you just you know totter around and get sick and die that could happen we could get you know chronic seriously ill at 20 you know at and so on out they're not linked ever to fix chronological ages or stages yeah absolutely I feel like I have heard that a lot lately around that concept of if you
wait until you're retired because then all of a sudden you'll have all this money and all this free time and All this you know desire to finally do the thing that you care about like that's the the route to go and just kind of how wrong that is and how we think about aging and how we think about who we are as people along the Aging life cycle is just kind of you know a little bit different than we've been thinking about it for the last decades your your uh term of you know aging life
cycle I just want to mention one thing I think we we tend to think of Aging as Something sad and and sort of sorry that old people do and we are aging from the minute we are born aging is living and to live is to age right it's it's how we move through life it's why this subject if you had told me you know 15 years ago I'd be fascinated with aging I would have said o why do I want to think about something sort of bad and depressing and it's anything but it touches on
every domain of study and every aspect of Being Human it's fascinating yeah Awesome I'm so glad that you shifted your framing from sad and depressing so that I sound like I'm selling something I'm not I promise no that's awesome though I love this I love people who are passionate about this I think it's such an important topic and I see that we have a one more question that popped through from Sasha what cities or countries do you think are doing an especially good job Job of being olders friendly and how good work on olders see
it rolls off the tongue it's much nicer than friendly olders and youngers make it Google take it take it on um you know there the probably the best example is Singapore because it's tiny it's homogeneous and it's Rich um there are different uh so you know population aging um is happening everywhere the forces that are driving age segregation are Industrialization urbanization so everywhere you have people um you know for example older people being left in the countryside as younger people move to cities for jobs that Fosters isolation discrimination blah blah blah all the things I've
already said so but within any country you can find communities that are age integrated from which we can learn there's all all kinds of interesting experiments Happening Now of students um college students living In um senior residences on condition that they like talk to the old people every so often on intergenerational initiatives for for dinners and and work and mentoring opportunities so I think it's less I mean I think according to the um the H page index I think Afghanistan has the worst quality of life for older people and Switzerland the youngest the the best
but that's more because of overall um economic conditions and I'm sure health care and War um rather than any attribute of the country or or the um culture yeah yeah wow that's fascinating Ashton this has been absolutely delightful I've loved hearing your perspective I think this is such an important topic that we need to figure out how do we combat agism it's so valuable like we said not only for older adults but also for everybody if we start to shift our mindset and our framing around this and so thank you so much for joining us
I know I can see so Many comments in the thread right now saying how much they absolutely adore not only you but your hat collection in the back that I think we all have enjoyed seeing as well but thank you so much for joining us at toxic Google yourp good I'm glad uh your perspective was really insightful though so thank you so much for joining us my pleasure thanks for having me thanks everyone in the audience for watching and we'll see you next time at talks at Google [Music]
