Boomers and Age-Defying Gadgets

Who Said Boomers Are Vain?

A few weeks ago, Shannon Proudfoot of the CanWest Newspapers chain contacted me for some thoughts about Boomers and their desire to address the problem of failing hearing in an inconspicuous manner. Gadgets and euphemisms are replacing traditional "hearing aids" for many aging Boomers. Her question was why is the Boomer generation responding to aging and deteriorating bodies in different ways from previous generations?

Newspaper editors came up with predictable headlines when they ran her piece, including "Growing old doesn't mean getting old" (Calgary Herald), "Device ups volume for under-60s who aren't ready to admit they're aging" (Victoria Times-Colonist), and "Vain boomers insist on growing old in style" (Edmonton Journal).

Charges that Boomers are simply fighting aging, want to be perpetually young, and are more vain than any generation to date simply miss the point of what is going on.

Woody Allen, the much-maligned borderline Boomer, once quipped, "I don't want to experience immortality through my work; I want to experience it by not dying." Boomers are often portrayed as wanting to deny death and aging - to be perpetually young and everlasting.

Our data suggest that Boomers don't have any illusions about getting older, or about their mortality. They are realistic, for example, about declining health. Some 40% of Boomer women and men say that their health is a concern for them, up from 30% twenty years ago. While 92% of Boomer males described their health as "excellent" or "good" in 1975, today that figure has dropped to 79%; the comparable figures for Boomer women are 85% and 74% (The Boomer Factor, p. 119).

Yet, most Boomers accept the fact that both aging and death are inevitable. Only 1 in 4 say that they worry all that much about aging - no higher a proportion than people who are younger. And just 13% say they are troubled about dying - again, no higher than their younger, Post-Boomer counterparts.

All that said, Canada's Boomers have little interest in spending their latter decades passively succumbing to declining vitality, looks or health. This is a generation that has given so much emphasis to life and its possibilities. They seized the opportunity to get good educations, pursue the occupations of their choices, and do it all and have it all re: careers, family, and a comfortable life.

Rather than being beleaguered by scientific and technological change, they are the very people who have brought in the information age. Contrary to popular stereotypes, they didn’t learn about cell phones and PDAs from their teenagers; they invented them and gave them to their teenagers. Boomers are a well-informed and technologically savvy generation.

Consequently Boomers want to draw on all that information and ever-emerging technologies to make their latter years as optimal as possible. Accustomed to input, aware of emerging options, and equipped with considerable buying power, they see no need to be fatalistic about aging and declining health. Accustomed also to good self-esteem, they are not about to give way to the stigma and degradation that many of their parents and grandparents knew in their "senior years."

The emergence of viagra was just the beginning of the Boomers' "latter years" fireworks display. As their eyes grow dim, their hearing starts to go, and their mobility is not what it used to be, Boomers know that solutions can be pursued that can readily be unobtrusively packaged. It's not that they are trying to defy age; it's just that there is no reason either to accept such limitations or to bear the unnecessary and unsubtle symbols that such challenges exist. Boomers have no interest in such "cow bells" of aging as visible hearing aids, thick special glasses, and blatant dentures and toupees. They also see themselves as life-long learners who are willing to stretch and upgrade when it comes to their houses, furnishings, clothes, cars, music - and even their partners.

The net result is that the large Boomer demographic represents a tremendous market for entrepreneurs who are in touch with such realities. The trick is finding out how to address their growing health-related needs, but using imagination and the best available technologies to ensure that those needs are addressed in ways that are cognizant that this is a well-educated, affluent, and proud generation.

Anyone who can find that magical ability to combine need with unobtrusiveness stands to win very big with Boomers.

By the way, such successful entrepreneurs will not use terms like "seniors" or "golden agers" on Boomers, nor will they prematurely put them into the residual "55 and over" category in providing special restaurant prices, organizing church groups, or offering discount banking fees. One would be wise to call Boomers "Boomers" pretty much until they die!

And, oh yes, "that recent book of mine" helps to clarify the story:

Reginald W. Bibby. The Boomer Factor: What Canada's Most Famous Generation is Leaving Behind. Toronto: Bastian Books, 2006.

Now how's that for uninhibited vanity!