Ageism has been found to exist throughout a wide variety of societal institutions. Whether it also exists in social networking sites has not been previously considered. To explore this possibility, we conducted a content analysis of each publicly accessible Facebook group that concentrated on older individuals. The site "Descriptions" of the 84 groups, with a total of 25,489 members, were analyzed. The mean age category of the group creators was 20-29; all were younger than 60 years. Consistent with our hypothesis, the Descriptions of all but one of these groups focused on negative age stereotypes. Among these Descriptions, 74% excoriated older individuals, 27% infantilized them, and 37% advocated banning them from public activities, such as shopping. Facebook has the potential to break down barriers between generations; in practice, it may have erected new ones.

Negative age stereotypes that older individuals assimilate from their culture are associated with detrimental outcomes, including worse physical function. We examined for the first time whether positive age stereotypes, presented subliminally across multiple sessions in the community, would reverse this process. One hundred older individuals (aged 61-99, SD=10 years, M=81) were randomly assigned to an implicit-positive-age-stereotype intervention, explicit-positive-age-stereotype intervention, both, or neither. Interventions occurred at four one week intervals. As expected, the implicit intervention, in sequence, strengthened positive age stereotypes, strengthened positive self-perceptions of aging, and improved physical function. The improvement of physical function continued for three weeks following the last intervention session. Further, negative age stereotypes and negative self-perceptions of aging were weakened. For all outcomes, the implicit intervention's impact was greater than, and independent of, the explicit intervention's impact. The implicit physical-function effect surpassed a previous study's six-month-exercise intervention with similar-aged participants. These findings suggest the intervention served, in effect, as an implicit fitness center.

The robustness of negative age stereotypes was expressed in their capacity to resist change as well as generate it.

Rationale: Psychiatric conditions are often falsely considered inherent to aging. We examined whether negative age stereotypes, which older individuals tend to assimilate from the environment across their lifespan, contributed to an increased risk of developing four psychiatric conditions, and, if so, whether this risk was reduced through active coping. Method: The sample consisted of participants aged 55 years and older, free of the psychiatric conditions at baseline, drawn from the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study, a nationally representative sample. New cases of posttraumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder were assessed during three waves spanning a four-year period. Results: As predicted, participants holding more-negative age stereotypes were more likely to develop the psychiatric conditions, and their engagement in active coping reduced the risk of their developing these conditions. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that prevention and treatment efforts designed to reduce psychiatric conditions in later life may benefit from bolstering active coping as well as positive age stereotypes.

We aim to determine the extent to which variables commonly used to describe health, wellbeing, and disability in old-age vary primarily as a function of years lived (chronological age), years left (thanatological age), or as a function of both. We analyze data from the US Health and Retirement Study to estimate chronological age and time-to-death patterns in 78 such variables. We describe results from the birth cohort born 1915-1919 in the final 12 years of life. Our results show that most markers used to study well-being in old-age vary along both the age and time-to-death dimensions, but some markers are exclusively a function of either time to death or chronological age, and others display different patterns between the sexes. * riffe@demogr.mpg.de We would like to thank the editors of this issue, who also organized the 2014 conference that inspired us to undertake this project. We also thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments improved the manuscript greatly.