I do not know where the tipping point was when the social and cultural climate turned cold on the elderly. Did GenX do this? Did the internet? The open disdain with which the visible public regards senior Americans is a national tragedy that needs immediate attention and remediation.
During the same decades that saw inspiring progress with social inclusion and normalization of the previously socially exiled, the treatment and disparaging rhetoric surrounding our more experienced citizens divulges a group think burdened with distrust and a perception of worthlessness. This attitude manifests in the deplorable ubiquity of locking our predecessors into extended care and group living facilities that feel uncomfortably like jails. Parallel to these attitudes and practices, travels virtually unnoticed, rampant digital marginalization and surveillance leaving a sizable subset of our population isolated and without dignity[1].
I want to believe that this is mostly just an awareness issue, and as soon as we can safely and reliably bring care for our aging parents affordably into the home, and a few key influential social figures bring attention to this unfortunate social imbalance, the remediation will self-execute.
I am not influential, socially or otherwise, but maybe I can do some small part to help bring competent and empathy-aware AI-driven and robot-facilitated home healthcare into common use. I believe that artificial intelligence, awareness, and robotic assistance will bring the social attitude toward the elderly in this country back to the place of respect that it deserves, and in doing so bring wisdom and empathy back into our lives and homes.
RReferences
- Berridge, C., & Grigorovich, A. (2022). Algorithmic harms and digital ageism in the use of surveillance technologies in nursing homes. Frontiers in Sociology, 7, 957246. doi:10.3389/fsoc.2022.957246↩