Social
Ideas about social age differ from one society to another and, at least in modern societies, change over time. Societies such as Japan has traditionally revered elderly people, regarding them as a source of historical memory and wisdom. Societies such as the United States are more likely to dismiss them as nonproductive, dependent people both because they are less likely to have the high-tech skills so valued by young people and because of American culture's obsession with youthfulness.
In a country where the approximately seventy-five million once youthful baby boomers born in the decade after World War II are now turning sixty at the rate of one every seven seconds, a fortune is being spent on prescription drugs, plastic surgery, and home remedies that promise eternal youth. These include such things as tummy tucks, face lifts, anti-baldness pills and lotions, and pills that claim to increase memory and concentration.
In the United States today, doctors prescribe impotence drugs about seventeen million times a year, to roughly five million men. However, this is considerably lower than the nearly forty million prescriptions for osteoporosis medications and one hundred million for antidepressants prescribed each year. This fact underscores the importance of social, biological, and psychological influences on the aging process.
Role expectations are extremely important sources of one's personal identity. Some of the roles associated with aging in American society are positive:
- Supreme Court justice
- Senior advisor
- Doting grandparent
- Religious elder
- Wise spiritual teacher
Other roles may be damaging, leading to lowered self-esteem and isolation. Highly stigmatizing stereotypical roles for older people in American culture include:
- Grumpy old man (or woman)
- Old-fashioned senior citizen
- Spinster
- Mentally confused doddering old man
In fact, like all people, older adults do not simply passively play out assigned social roles, they actively shape and redefine them.
Social age consists of the norms, values, and roles that are culturally associated with a particular chronological age.
