Think You’re Too Old for That? Science Says You May Be Your Own Worst Enemy

There are all sorts of prejudices — based on class, gender, race and age. But ageism is unusual in one important way: It may eventually target the person who holds it. The stereotypes you absorb about older people when you’re young can shape how you view your own aging decades later — often without you realizing it.  So thoughts like “I’m too old for that” or “that’s just part of getting old” may reflect beliefs about aging you’ve been absorbing for much of your life.

(We here at Nifty 50+ believe you’re never too old to do what lights you up. Read our inspirational stories of people who said clearly: “I am NOT too old for this.”)

Read: Carla Hall proves you’re never too old to win big

Discover: Celebrating his 90th birthday at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, After the climb of a lifetime

What Is Ageism?

You learn a lot from the world around you — not only facts and practical skills, but also society’s unwritten rules about how people are expected to look, behave and live. Your ideas about aging develop in much the same way. The World Health Organization defines ageism as “stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel) and discrimination (how we act) towards others or oneself based on age.” Research also suggests that ageism doesn’t come from any one source. A 2020 systematic review examining 199 studies found that anxiety about aging and fear of death were linked to more ageist attitudes, while better-quality interactions with older adults were linked to less.

For self-directed ageism, poorer physical and mental health were associated with more-negative perceptions of aging. Of course, aging does involve real physiological changes. Disease risk and physical function can change with age. Recognizing those realities isn’t ageist. The problem comes when your chronological age becomes an automatic explanation, limitation or judgment. In other words, there’s a difference between adapting to what your body actually needs and assuming your birth year tells you what you can — or should — do.

How Internalized Ageism Can Affect You

Ageism doesn’t necessarily stop at the level of attitudes. Research suggests that the beliefs you hold about aging may also be linked to your health over time. One long-running study found that people who held more negative stereotypes about aging when they were younger — such as associating old age with helplessness — were more likely to experience a cardiovascular event over the next 38 years. The brain may be one pathway through which beliefs about aging become linked to health.

“We had found that the brain, which governs much of health, is susceptible to the influence of age beliefs,” Becca Levy, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health, told Nifty50+.

In Levy’s previous study, negative age beliefs have been associated with Alzheimer’s-related plaques and tangles and lower hippocampal volume. Another study found that people with more-negative views of aging earlier in life later showed greater shrinkage of the hippocampus, a brain region important for memory, as well as more Alzheimer’s-related brain pathology. These findings don’t mean your thoughts about aging directly cause—or prevent—health problems. But they suggest that the way you view aging may be connected to health in ways that go beyond attitude alone.

“We had found that the brain, which governs much of health, is susceptible to the influence of age beliefs.”

Becca Levy, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health

Operating Beyond Your Awareness

You don’t have to consciously believe negative stereotypes to internalize them. According to Becca Levy’s stereotype embodiment theory, ideas about aging are absorbed from culture over a lifetime and can become more personally relevant as you grow older. Levy’s landmark 1996 experiment showed that these stereotypes can operate outside awareness. Older adults briefly exposed to positive aging-related words performed better on memory tests and felt more confident about their memory while negative stereotypes had the opposite effect. This means that beliefs about aging can affect you even when you don’t realize they’re there.

Have You Internalized Ageism?

There’s no diagnostic checklist for internalized ageism, and doing any one of the following certainly doesn’t prove you’re ageist. Context matters. Adjusting your exercise because of arthritis, asking for help with technology or deciding that a particular activity no longer interests you can all be perfectly reasonable choices.

The question to ask is why you’re making the choice. Is it based on your actual health, abilities and preferences — or simply on what you think somebody “your age” should be able or allowed to do?  Here are a few habits worth noticing:

• Automatically saying, “I’m too old for that.” Age becomes the reason not to try something before you’ve even considered whether you’re actually able or interested.
• Calling every memory lapse a “senior moment.” An ordinary forgotten name or misplaced key automatically becomes evidence of age-related decline.
• Skipping exercise because “people my age should take it easy.” Your age alone — not your health, conditioning or medical advice — becomes the reason to avoid being active.
• Assuming a new symptom is “just old age.” Pain, fatigue or another change gets dismissed as inevitable rather than considered on its own merits.
• Thinking preventive care no longer matters. “What’s the point at my age?” replaces an individualized decision about what care still makes sense for you.
• Handing technology to a younger person before you even try. You assume you won’t be able to learn something simply because technology seems to belong to a younger generation.
• Age-policing your clothes, hair, hobbies or behavior. You ask whether someone “your age” is allowed to wear, enjoy or do something rather than whether you want to.
• Shrinking your future solely because of your age. Starting a business, going back to school, making new friends or trying something new begins to feel automatically “too late.”
• Complimenting yourself — or someone else — by making age the insult. Phrases like “You look great for your age” can imply that looking good, being capable or staying sharp is unexpected in an older person.

What You Can Do

The encouraging part is that views of aging are learned — and research suggests they can change.

“Ideally we will eliminate ageism in our society,” Levy said. “Until we do this it is important to develop skills that allow us to challenge negative age beliefs that we encounter in everyday life on an individual level.”

In her book Breaking the Age Code, Levy describes an ABC method for doing that:

• Awareness: Notice where positive and negative images of aging appear around you.
• Blame: Recognize that some beliefs about declining health or memory may come, at least in part, from ageist messages absorbed from society.
• Challenge: Push back against those messages rather than accepting them automatically.

In Levy’s 1996 experiment, activating positive age stereotypes improved older adults’ memory, confidence and views of aging. A later study found that repeated exposure to positive stereotypes strengthened self-perceptions of aging and was accompanied by better physical function.  That matters because beliefs can shape behavior. Long-term studies have also linked more-positive views of aging with better health outcomes, including longer life. That doesn’t mean positive thinking determines your health, but challenging age-based assumptions may influence choices that do matter.

You don’t need to deny your age or pretend aging comes without change. You can be exactly the age you are without treating it as a verdict on what comes next.