Why Fighting Ageism Could Help You Live Longer
The cost of a negative mindset
“Ageism can change how we view ourselves,” according to the World Health Organization’s global report on the subject — and new research suggests that fighting this bias doesn’t just make for a fairer world, it can help people feel younger and live longer.
Anyone can experience ageism at any age — Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, are often dismissed as “lazy” by older generations — but most research has focused on older adults, who bear the brunt of it. In the UK, one in three people report experiencing age-based prejudice or discrimination, while a US study found 93% of 2,000 adults aged 50 to 80 had faced some form of everyday ageism, most commonly internalised bias followed by exposure to ageist messaging.
“The interesting part of this whole phenomenon is the person who is ageist is going to be aged at some point in time,” says Parminder Raina, scientific director at the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging in Canada. With one in six people worldwide expected to be 60 or older by 2030, he argues: “Ageism is a very personal issue. But people don’t recognise it as a personal issue.” Negative views are often absorbed from parents and the media as early as age three, researchers say, shaping how people experience their own ageing decades later. Raina points to the popular phrase “grey tsunami” as an example of damaging framing: “Tsunami is a very destructive force. Ageing is not a destructive force. It is actually a remarkable achievement of the modern public health system.”
Internalised stereotypes can become self-fulfilling, a pattern researchers call stereotype embodiment theory — older adults may avoid new opportunities despite being capable, eroding confidence over time. Hannah Swift, reader in social and organisational psychology at the University of Kent, says “stereotype threat” compounds the problem: being reminded of one’s age before a task can worsen performance “because of the anxiety that’s induced”. Raina pushes back on the idea that older people are inherently frail: most “live independently, function, and contribute to their local communities”, even though some do face genuine health challenges.
The payoff for shifting these attitudes can be substantial. Becca Levy, a Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist and author of Breaking the Age Code, found people with positive beliefs about ageing lived on average seven and a half years longer than those with negative ones — “a substantial advantage” she says has been “replicated in a number of different countries” — and showed fewer Alzheimer’s-linked biomarkers and less shrinkage in the memory-related hippocampus.
Culture plays a role too. Jacynth Bassett, founder of the UK campaign group Ageism is Never in Style, ran the I Look My Age campaign, which drew more than 45 million views globally in 2023, pushing brands toward genuine age diversity rather than token grey-haired models. Other cultures take a different approach entirely: many Asian societies observe “filial piety” toward elders, and Japan marks Respect for the Aged Day every September, an official holiday since 1966.
Levy’s own prescription is her “ABC Method”: building Awareness of existing age beliefs, assigning Blame correctly — to ageism rather than ageing itself — and Challenging stereotypes, such as the myth that cognitive decline is inevitable, noting that learning new skills like photography can actually sharpen memory in later life. As Raina puts it, ageism is one of the few prejudices likely to touch nearly everyone eventually — which is exactly why tackling it, researchers argue, benefits us all.
Source: BBC News