Hi, it's Alex!
Today I want to talk about age segregation
in our society.
The segregation of people into different groups
that are more or less the same age or close
to each other in age
is really pervasive in our society.
And I don't think I really questioned it when
I was growing up
because it was the norm virtually everywhere.
Like, from when I was really young, I was
put into preschool,
and I was in a preschool class, and then I
went into kingergarten,
and then I went through K-12 education
essentially being tracked with people
of very close age ranges, like maybe at most
a year apart from me.
And then there was a little bit of mixing
up in high school, not much.
And then after that I went to college,
and in college again there was a little bit
of mixing,
but for the most part, like when you take
classes,
you're probably going to be in a lot of classes
your freshman year with other freshmen.
And even the dorms can be somewhat age segregated.
At some colleges they are completely age segregated, at least for freshmen,
like at University of Delaware, all the dorms
for freshmen
are all-freshmen dorms.
I went to Oberlin college, and it wasn't like
that.
And I think that one of the things that got
me thinking
about age segregation
was seeing those two different college and
university environments
and seeing that the one environment segregated
ages
a little bit more than the other one did.
And I think that that got me thinking a little
bit more critically
about age segregation
and then I started looking at the rest of
society
and I started to see it like pretty much everywhere.
Like a lot of the time, when people get out
of college,
they move to an area that has a lot of "young
professionals",
I hear that word thrown around a lot, like
areas in cities, they tend to be in these
urban environments
and they tend to have like a certain type
of atmosphere.
And then when people get older and they start
"settling down",
"settling down" is one of those terms, I don't
like that term,
and they go to raise a family,
then they move into a different sort of environment,
like typically a more suburban environment
where there are these homes,
like houses that are built around the nuclear
family unit.
And then when people retire, I'm seeing, like
not only are there retirement homes,
but I'm seeing these other things cropping
up nowadays,
like "older adult" communities like for people
in their 50's,
before they go into a retirement community.
So it seems like this age segregation is very
pervasive,
it happens at all levels of our society,
from when you're really young to when you're
really old,
and it seems like it's becoming a little bit
more pervasive too.
And I really don't like it.
Like when I think about it,
when I think about how I would ideally like
society to be structured,
I think that it would involve a lot more mixing
of the ages
than we currently have.
Like, when I think about when I was growing
up,
I used to play with kids in the neighborhood,
and there weren't really a lot of kids in
my grade
in the immediate surrounding.
So I would play with a lot of kids
who were one or two years older or younger
than me,
or sometimes three, four, five years older
or younger than me.
I'd meet peoples' brothers and sisters,
and I'd interact in this environment
where there were a lot of different ages.
Like when I was a kid, I interacted with college
students a lot
because my mom was a college professor
and there would be students around in her
workplace,
there would be students sometimes even in
our house.
And like I would have babysitters who were
like a good bit older than me,
so outside of the school atmosphere
I was interacting with people of diverse ages.
And I actually think I learned a lot from
these people.
Like I learned a lot of things by example.
And I remember older kids kind of taking me
and giving me guidance and telling me things.
And I remember this happening in college too.
Like I got to college,
and a lot of the students who had been there
longer,
they would be like: "Oh hey," like:
"I really recommend this professor,"
"like if you want to take a class in this
department,"
"this professor is great."
"This particular professor, well they're good,"
"but they have this quirk,"
"and you should know that before getting involved
with them."
People would say things like that.
And I found that kind of advice really helpful.
And that's just an example of the type of
knowledge that gets passed down
when you interact with people who are a little
bit older than you.
I also have noticed ways in which I've been
able to help people
who are a lot older than me.
And one of them is with technology.
Like it seems like, when I was growing up,
technology just came much more naturally to
me
than it did to older adults.
And people would frequently come to me,
and they would be like: "Hey, can you fix
this?"
"Can you show me how to do this?"
And now that I'm a little bit older,
I'm doing the same thing with younger people.
Like one of my friends for example, I saw
her on Tumblr,
and I took her aside and I was like:
"What is Tumblr?" and she explained Tumblr
to me.
I didn't get Tumblr, until she explained it
to me,
and I'm very grateful that she did,
because Tumblr is this whole world that has
opened up,
and I think I've learned a lot culturally
from getting into it,
but it took a while to get into,
it took someone explaining it to me,
like showing me how to understand it, how
to connect with it,
how to fit into the community and the culture
there.
That's just an example of the types of things
that we gain as a society
when we mix ages, when we have friendships
that go across ages.
So I just want to throw out this idea.
I want you to start thinking about this.
I bet it's likely that you will go through
a similar process to what I did,
like when I started thinking about age segregation,
I started feeling pretty disturbed,
because I saw it pretty much everywhere in
our society
and I saw how rigid and how pervasive it was.
And I don't think that's very good.
I think that it's probably holding our society
back a lot,
like when I look at how a lot of older adults
struggle so much with technology,
and then I look at how there are a lot of
workplaces that I've been in,
where there are very few young people in them,
it's just like a much older workforce in their
40's and 50's for the most part
and there are very few people in their 20's
and 30's,
it seems pretty obvious to me
that there are going to be some problems with
things like technology
and things like culturally relating to the
younger people
if there are no younger people in that group.
So I think that there are a lot of costs and
harm
associated with this age segregation
when it is as extreme and pervasive as it
is in our society.
So I hope you can start thinking about it
and start looking at it
and start brainstorming ways that we can make
our society
more integrated by age.
I would love to talk about this more,
and also I'd love to hear from you
if you have anything to add, please comment.
And as always, I love when people share my
videos,
and I love when people subscribe to my channel.
Thank you!
