Feeling old on Facebook: an autoethnographic analysis of ageism among younger people towards their peers

Abstract

Population aging and the proliferation of numerous social networking sites such as Facebook (FB) have necessitated different approaches to investigating age-based discrimination called ageism. Although the current evidence provided information on younger adults’ attitudes towards older adults, little is known about the younger individuals’ attitudes towards their peers in a digital sphere. This autoethnographic study, conducted in November 2020, aimed at understanding younger FB user’s (n = 37) attitudes towards their peers, and the manifestation of plausible digital facets of ageism. I posted a public status using a specific FB feature called feeling old on my FB Wall and analyzed the comments (both emoticons and textual) by others in relation to the post/status. The study is guided by the theoretical lens of symbolic and interpretive anthropology. Results showed (a) younger FB users have age stereotyped negative attitudes towards their peers considering the FB status, and (b) emoticons used in comments expressed more negative attitudes towards old age compared to the textual comments. Both findings indicated potential connection to an internalized sense of ‘young’ and ‘old’ that embedded in socially grounded age stereotypes. Future and more research on digital platforms can be carried out targeting younger adults’ attitudes towards their own age group in order to understand the risk of emergence of ‘digital ageism’.