What is Age?

RealAge is a hoot. And yet more authentic than calendar age. Human beings are biological, spiritual, intellectual, emotional beings, not mechanical ones. Does experience matter? Sure, but I've had more varied experiences than most people ever will, or at least compared to my ancestors, so does that make me 90? On the other hand, I like to stay on top of popular culture and new trends, so does that make me 18? When I behave like a child, does that make me 5?

As an academic, I think it is important to ask hard questions about social conventions. When I was younger I was called the "whiz kid" which I felt was demeaning.

The term "age-ist" or age-ism is the idea: stereotyping people based on age. No one likes to be stereotyped, especially over things we can't much control, like age, height, where we're from, racial/ethnic background, etc. I see it as a diversity issue and am beginning to think that it is inappropriate for social networking sites, matchmaking sites, and the like, to require age. If it matters to someone, they can ask.

Take dating for example. In a free society no one should tell another who you can date. In practice, most people I talk to have an idea of the "type" of person they are looking for with certain qualities and features, but are willing to be surprised as well. Kinda like software. Age is one thing but should hardly be the defining characteristic the way some matchmaking sites work.

In all, we might want to consider a more sophisticated approach to understanding others than the metric we label "age." The site RealAge has attempted to do just that.

A New Age of New Ages

I think about age a lot. It bothers me that I think about age a lot, but I cannot seem to help it. There are so many things wrong with using age as a metric and yet it is useful information for many reasons.

To expand our thinking of the concept of age, we should do two things: break it down (analysis) and then see what it is connected to (synthesis). What do we mean by age? What social conventions inform our understanding of age? In the following blog posts, I will share my thoughts and perhaps come to some conclusions. Please share yours as we are all on this journey.