So I was thinking recently, what if someone who had no idea ageism or adult privilege was a problem or even a thing that existed read through one of those tags, took what they saw seriously instead of responding with the world’s worst straw man arguments as is sadly the norm, and realized how badly the average young person is treated by adult-dominated society? What would they get out of it? At the moment, like most social justice tags on tumblr, the adult privilege and ageism tags are mostly full of complaints - there’s a dearth of constructive material on what the average person can do. Frankly, I’ve been part of that, so I thought I’d try to do something about it.
So, here’s tip #1 for not being part of the age discrimination problem:
Try to remember that older does not mean wiser. (And even when it does, being wiser doesn’t mean you get to be a jackass.)
Being several decades older than a young person does, theoretically, give you more life experience, yes. Some of that life experience may be quite valuable in offering that young person advice. You may even have gone through some of the same things they’re going through - there’s no denying that the teenage years are a time of searching for identity for most people, for example - and you may be in a wonderful position to offer guidance and support. All of that is true.
However:
The fact that you’ve been around for more years than someone else does not mean you have more experience, or any experience at all, that’s relevant to their life or context. A 40-year-old who’s been healthy all their life does not have the experience of the healthcare system that a chronically ill 7-year-old has. A 70-year-old who’s never been outside their home state does not have the travel experience to offer advice to a 17-year-old leaving on a backpacking trip.
Experience is individually contextual. You may have more experience of “the world” in general than a person a third of your age, but you do not have more experience of their world - in fact, by definition (ie, their world is not your world), you have less. Experience is also culturally and socially situated. How much life experience does a 40-year-old who was born into an old money family have to offer a 14-year-old who’s working a minimum wage job to support their family? How relevant to a girl born in Tibet or Haiti is the life experience of a man born in middle America?
You also - especially with the world changing as rapidly as it is these days - have not spent any more time in today’s world than that young person has. Face it: a lot of your experience is completely out of date. Hell, I’m 27, and a lot of my experience is completely out of date. That doesn’t mean your experiences of a pre-digital, pre-always-connected, pre-crushing-student-loans, pre-stranger-danger-paranoia world are valueless, but it does mean they don’t offer you a whole lot of wisdom to impart to anyone, young or old, living in the here and now. The America of 1972 and the America of 2014 are at least as different from each other as are the aforementioned America, Tibet, and Haiti.
Then we come to the matter of what it means even if you do have significantly greater contextually, socially, culturally, and temporally relevant experience than a young person. Let’s assume for the moment that you are, in fact, “wiser” - whatever that means - than the young person you’re speaking to. Does that give you a resource with which to give advice? Of course it does. Does it give them a reason to listen to you? Probably. Does it give you the right to expect them to make the decision you would make in their place, or to force your point of view on them? Hell no it doesn’t.
The important thing to remember is that just because their life experience is different from yours (as any person’s is from any other’s), or even if their life experience is, in fact, lesser than yours in some objective, meaningful way, that doesn’t mean you have the right to treat them as if their experience has no merit, or as if they do not have the same right to respect and self-determination you have. You don’t have the right to speak over them, silence them, or treat their thoughts, feelings, opinions, or decisions as if they’re any less valid than your own. Let’s say you’re 40 years old, and you meet an 80-year-old whose life experience and wisdom astound you and whose advice you hold in very high regard. Chances are, you still expect that person to treat you as though you, not they, are the ultimate agent of your own life. Extend that same courtesy to young people, even if you think your experience and wisdom put you in a position to advise and guide them.
Society has spent your entire life teaching you that age=experience, experience=wisdom, and wisdom (if the person you’re speaking to is young enough)=the right to treat someone like they’re ignorant, stupid, or in dire need of not just advice, but control. But when you really think about it, this chain breaks down at every single step.