Do you think I will stop caring about ageism once I am older?

If it’s something you’re truly passionate about then you will always care about it. Truthfully, there is age-related bigotry against every age. I’m in my thirties and people younger than me say that I’m too old now. People older than me say the opposite.

From what I’ve seen you’re a caring person so chances are good you will likely always care if someone else is being unfairly judged because of something they cannot change.

I have never cared about that on any level at all.

It never was a concern of mine.If you’re lucky,you’ll forget about it ;))

Age to me means nothing. People are people. It’s what’s in their heart that matters. I have friends of all ages. I adapt to whatever age they are & treat them accordingly. Everyone deserves respect & friendship. I venture to say that the older you get, it’ll mean less & less to you. I hope so, anyway.

I don’t want it to mean less and less to me, that’s the thing. It’s not the same as age itself meaning less to me. Age already doesn’t mean that much to me. But ageism on the other hand is different. It’s not a good thing and I do what I can to combat it. I don’t simply want to ignore the problem.

Ageism is a bigger deal than people think. When I was younger I didn’t really have friends my age since I found them immature, but when I tried to befriend older people I found I would have to lie about my age in order for them to take me seriously.
Now, I care more about the opposite problem. My mother is 62 and getting her PhD. She has very few friends because the majority of her classmates are in their 20s and don’t treat her as an equal. I find this very unfair, since in spite of her age my mother is a very useful person (not to mention ridiculously smart—anyone in their right mind would want her as a study buddy!)

Now that I’m in college I find myself making assumptions about teenagers because of their age, but mainly because I remember how immature they tend to be. That’s not to say I don’t make friends with younger people anymore; just not the immature ones. But immaturity really has nothing to do with physical age, in my opinion.

It seems like you really care about this issue. While your views may change over time, your overall passion probably won’t disappear. Just make sure you don’t contradict your own beliefs; it’s surprisingly easy to do with something like this.

Like what you said on your profile “I may be small, but I have a big heart”. So I highly doubt you will ever stop caring.

It ain’t over till it is over.

Not only will you stop caring about it, you’ll start being guilty of it. You’ll start looking at teenagers half your age and making assumptions about them based on their age, telling yourself that they’re so much more disrespectful and rude than you were at their age.

Sad, but more than likely true.

I agree with @MrItty, but I think you’ll start caring about it again once you hit your 50–60s+. Just try to stay mindful of the facts and maybe you won’t have perpetuate ageism.

@MrItty

Likely, but not guaranteed. My parents aren’t like that and they’re in their 50s. I would hope that being raised by people like that might help me not become like that. Either way, I’ll have this question to look back on.

As your body falls apart, it gets worse.

@DominicX Agreed. Likely. The simple fact is that if everyone remembered what it was like to be prejudiced against due to young age, once they were no longer young, then the prejudice would have died off after a single generation. That simply doesn’t happen.

What happens as you get older is that ageism reverses. When you are young, you tend to discount what older people say and do, because they are so out of touch, but when you are old, you realize that is actually the young who are out of touch.

@yarnlady, I think what you said is true but sad. I’m old now, but I was not brought up that way. In my 20s, I worked in a nursing home and loved it. I never want my parents to die. Where will all that wisdom go, in addition to all of that love? I remember my Mom saying that she would like to be my age but not without her experiences. I believe it now.

We’re becoming a society of older people. I think the young ones will be hit hard.

My daughter’s heartthrob treated me like I was a buddy. I took her aside and said that will not happen again. She talked to him about it and said he was raised as an adult from when he was a little kid. I believe that. She knows he will not be welcome in my home if he ever does that again (and it wasn’t anything bad—just the respect). He is a wonderful person but he has to say Ms. and Ma’am.

You are so young and pure, this is not a topic to be discussed in a public arena.

You know I was kidding, hope all is well love yah!

I think that there are a lot of people who think a lot of their own experience, whatever age they are. Its when they don’t consider that other people may have more/better experience/knowledge than they do that they get judged. I think that this is one of the failings of both the young and old that gets them judged. There are older people who think that someone younger than them cannot possibly know anything, no matter what experience there is that they don’t know about. There are a lot of young people that think that the experience of other people doesn’t apply to them and that they can do better, even without a bit of experience of doing the thing they think they can do better.

If people on either end didn’t act like such know-it-alls, they wouldn’t be as judged. As it is, those people who think their experience/knowledge, however limited it is, trumps everyone else ruin the chances of other people of their age being taken seriously. Just as how if there are 19 kids behaving badly and one behaving well, the one gets lumped in with the rest. Its life. It sucks, but its not going to change.