Ageism: the last acceptable prejudice

Published in

UX Collective

8 min readJan 29, 2023

Group of UX designers planning a project’s flow using postit notes on a wall. — *Typical UX Design Stock photo from Unsplash. Notice anybody missing?*

Bill Maher’s Real Time on HBO is an acquired taste. My beloved detests him and I love him, especially for his monologues at the end of the show. His monologue on April 23,2022 struck home because he talked about ageism.

He pointed out how disappointing Biden has been to comedians by not exactly being the doddering old fool they expected. Instead, at age 78, he has seriously proven the assumptions wrong. Then he got my full attention when he said:

“What a mind-blowing concept that must be to the younger generations for whom writing someone off simply for their age is the last acceptable prejudice. Oh yes, they hate every ism except ageism. It’s completely forbidden to tell any joke about race, gender, religion, weight — but age? Have at it”

As a 70-year-old who has spent well over 30 years teaching Digital Media, speaking at conferences around the world, and conducting seminars to audiences and classes composed solely of that “younger generation” I have been subjected to that “last acceptable practice.”

There isn’t much you can say or do about it because ageism is one of those things you know when you experience it. But try to prove it.

“Ageism is now thought to be the most common form of prejudice, and the issue is, we don’t even recognize how prevalent it is and how impactful it is,” said Donna Wilson, an Alberta nursing professor who studies aging. “A lot of societies are really youth-oriented now and don’t really respect or care about older people.”

I have a close group of friends who, for years, have been referring to me as “Old Man” and, for years, having been dropping Ageist tropes on me on Twitter and Facebook. Here’s the thing: They have my permission to do it because we also respect each other, our knowledge, and our competence in the industry. It is different for me elsewhere.

“Ageism is one of those things you know when you experience it but try to prove it.”

Until my retirement, it was not uncommon for me to walk into the first day of class for the first-year students or to walk on to a conference stage and instantly pick up on what they are thinking, “Oh great an old guy.” That all changes as I get into the subject and they become engaged in what I am teaching or talking about. They suddenly realize I do know what I am talking about and ageism converts to respect.

I may indeed be an “Old Guy” and written off by the younger generation but, don’t for a millisecond, assume I don’t know anything. You can tell me that if you have ever spent an hour carefully using the lasso tool in Photoshop v2 to make a selection, accidentally clicking the mouse and seeing that selection vanish. You can tell me that if you have had to use Debabelizer to ensure color images are consistent on Macs and PCs. In short, I really have seen it, done it, and been there so let’s stop with the “OK Boomer” stuff and start realizing your elders might actually know a thing or two.

The subtle spread of ageism

This “last acceptable prejudice” is starting to creep into advertising as companies realize the older generation may indeed be a huge market.

I have noticed a distinct increase in memory-improving products aimed at older adults. The testimonials are disturbing and personally offensive. In one testimonial, the subject says:

“I found myself having to push myself even harder. I had to be healthy in every way if I was going to be able to compete at that level. Memory became a factor. As everyone gets older, ‘Where did I put my keys?’ but I had to get help somewhere along the line to stay competitive.”

How does this combat that “last acceptable practice” when it subtly tells that “younger generation” that we are unable to compete or stay current in a rapidly changing industry because we forgot where we put our keys. Really?

In the Digital Design and UX space, I have been quite clear that if you can’t adapt to the pace of change, then get out. For me, it comes down to consciously deciding to stay current which is something I embrace.

Here’s the thing, I am not out to compete with the younger generation. Just because I am 70 years old doesn’t mean I drop my fascination with technology and wobble off into the sunset with a walker. What it means is I adapt what I have learned over the past 40 years and apply it to the new way of doing things. One of my common bits of advice is “Nothing has changed. It is just a different way of doing the same things.”

For example, UX Research is not exactly new. Do you think Ford would have developed the Mustang if Iacocca hadn’t done his research? The current fascination with UX Research is quite interesting. Yet the methodologies and roles of UX Research haven’t changed. UX Researchers are plying their trade using a different way of doing things. Instead of Mustangs, they are creating apps and websites.

Ageism and the UX process

What is most disturbing to me is how this “last prejudice” has seeped into the UX/UI Design process. This field has an intense UX Research phase and if you go poring through the examples you won’t see me represented.

But don’t take my word for it. In a paper entitled “Inclusion of Older Adults in the Research and Design of Digital Technology”the authors, wrote:

“The exclusion of older adults from the research and design of digital technology is often based on such negative stereotypes. In this opinion article, we argue that the inclusion rather than exclusion of older adults in the design process and research of digital technology is essential if technology is to fulfill the promise of improving well-being.”

I couldn’t agree more. As I research my courses for LinkedIn Learning, rarely, if ever, do I encounter an example of a persona that focuses on my generation. Even when poring through the stock image catalog searching for UX Design Team or something like that the results rarely contain someone like myself in the team but do contain members of the “younger generation” representing all genders and ethnicities. We are all but “invisible” which, again, subtly supports that “last acceptable prejudice”. Or is it subtle?

I rarely see the word “age” included in a company’s diversity statement. Why is that?

In their June 2020 paper “Ageism in the era of digital platforms” Andrea Rosales and Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain wrote: “Most studies on digital practices do not include older people, do not ensure that their samples include older people or include inaccurate open-ended categories (45+, 55+, or 65+) that lump together people at different life stages Thus, research projects that consider the older population are comparatively outnumbered by research on teenagers or the adult population and tend to focus on the younger old, because the older old is (considered) comparatively less accessible or not of interest to stakeholders outside the biomedical sphere . Consequently, we can safely assume that older Internet users are underrepresented in the data sets that inform algorithms on digital platforms.”

Even more overt examples litter the social media platforms. There are an increasing number of social media posts here and elsewhere where those in the 50 to 65-year-old cohort lament how difficult it is to find employment in the Digital and UX Field. They tell of being turned down because the company inferred they were looking for someone “a bit younger” or there wasn’t a fit with our “culture”. Though it is slowly disappearing, if the term “digital native” appears in a job ad don’t bother applying.

In fact, in reading through a huge number of UX job and recruiting postings I rarely see the word “age” included in a company’s diversity statement. Why is that?

Even having a position and being successful at it does not shelter one from the “last acceptable prejudice”. Social media is full of accounts of those who have been “downsized” only to subsequently discover they were replaced with people from “the younger generation”.

It can even be less subtle. I was once informed that I was not qualified to teach a UX Workflow class that I had developed and been teaching for four years. This struck me as rather odd seeing as how I had been successfully teaching variations of that course to a worldwide audience at LinkedinLearning for a lot more than four years.

Ageism is a plague that is hurting our industry. There is nothing more tragic than not regarding my gang as a resource and not taking advantage of our accumulated knowledge. Having said that, LinkedIn Learning realizes this and if you poke through the courses, you will see a large number of those leading the course are from my cohort and you will also discover they are a quite diverse group of very smart people drawing on their years of accumulated “been there, seen it, done that” knowledge.

You know there is a problem when it is difficult to locate personas that only contain stock images of people from that “younger generation”. When recruiting ads and companies show images of senior staff and they are all from that “younger generation”.

This subliminal support of the last acceptable prejudice is going to come back and bite you one day because, believe it or not, it will happen to you. As Bill Maher said right at the top of this piece: “ What a mind-blowing concept that must be to the younger generations for whom writing someone off simply for their age is the last acceptable prejudice.” That younger generation is right now in Primary and High School and if this “last acceptable prejudice” is still around and they “have it” … you’re next.

So here’s a question for you, where do we start. Feel free to post your experiences or solutions to ageism in the comments. I would love to hear from you.