The View of Adolescents and the Elderly on Ageism and the Stereotype of Frailty

Background: Along with ageism, frailty is a major problem due to the aging population, especially in northeastern Slovenia. Aim and Methods: By analyzing the answers in the questionnaire, we wanted to investigate the attitude of adolescents and the elderly towards ageism and age stereotypes, especially those about the frailty of the elderly. 188 adolescents aged 15-19 and 137 elderly aged 65-85 from Eastern Slovenia answered a questionnaire about knowledge of ageism and attitudes towards 31 age stereotypical statements on a three-point Likert scale, divided into six categories: (I) mood, (II) traditionalism, (III) frailty, (IV) attitude towards technology, (V) wisdom and (VI) sociability. Results: 18.6% of adolescents, only those with older relatives and 49.5% of the elderly knew ageism. 29.6 % of elderly have experienced it as interpersonal ageism by children and young people, slightly less (27.5 %) as interpersonal ageism from random passers. A minority (7.5 %) the elderly respondents experienced ageism from the side of the closest ones, and 7.5% as institutional ageism. Towards age stereotypes, adolescents and the elderly expressed a mixture of positive, neutral and negative attitudes. Compared to elderly, adolescents were more likely to agree that elderly have a negative mood (p=0.045), they are too traditional (p=0.002), they have prejudices about modern technology (p<0.001), and they are frailty (p=0.041). Support for negative age stereotypes decreased simultaneously with the older age of the respondents. Regarding the positive age stereotypes about the sociability of the elderly, the positive opinions of adolescents again stood out the most (p<0.001), which then decreased with the older age of the respondents. The differences between the generally positive view of the generations on the wisdom of the elders were insignificant. Conclusion: To combat ageism, negative age stereotypes should be changed into positive ones by regular participating in formal or informal intergenerational education about aging and age from adolescence onwards, since young people cannot respect the elderly without knowledge of aging processes. Aging with less frailty would be enabled by implementing a healthy lifestyle throughout the life cycle as recommended by healthy schools.