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seniors and aging policy

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seniors and aging policy

Challenging Innovators to Design for Older Adults: 2014 -2024

In the tech innovation world, a decade is both a long and short time.  In 2014, AARP’s Health Innovation @50+ sponsored a report, Challenging Innovators: Matching Offerings to the Needs of Older Adults.  It was published in June of 2014 in conjunction with a Venture Summit event run by Mary Furlong and Associates. This was exactly a decade prior to this year’s What’s Next Longevity Venture Summit. 

The user experience with Google: You are the product for better or worse

Consider Google and its tightly coupled products.  You launch the search engine on your phone and are surprised to see all of these ‘news’ items about local topics that have appeared in your Gmail inbox. How personalized. A few years ago, a $395 million settlement with 40 states was reached about Google’s lack of clarity about its location tracking, which users thought they had turned off in settings. An apology followed, along with many more lawsuits and fines, including some large ones in Europe. Did anything change? Not really.  In 2024, as a result of European pressure, Google announced how to disconnect some ‘Linked Services’ in Europe, a euphemism for passing your data (you) from one Google product to another, a feature that may appear in the US one day, though will it really change anything? Doubtful.

Who knows the current population and age distribution of older adults?

Publicly available up-to-date stats about the older adult population is weak or non-existent.  The most recent version of ChatGPT admits it cannot state the current population in the US that is aged 75+.  Nor can Google. This is somewhat surprising, given the angst in business and market predictions about the aging of the US population and the potential doom that it portends. But anyway, the answer is buried in Census tables. Would you be surprised to learn that there are 25.7 million people aged 75+ today?  That 14.8 million are women and 10.8 million are men?  Would it surprise that 42% of the 65+ population (60.5 million) is aged 75+?

Five trends that matter for older adults and caregivers in 2024 and beyond

The 2024 Technology and Aging Market Overview is online. It provides new information and insights about trends that drive technology change for the older adult marketplace. They represent the context for understanding new technologies discussed and featured in the report. This year is in many ways unusual -- the oldest baby boomer turns 78, AI investment and interest reached fever pitch, and the annual CES show had its highest turnout, with AI everywhere since 2020. These trends include the possible future role of AI, that can help address workforce issues and provide benefit over the coming months and years:

Spammers, scammers, and the presumption of older adult stupidity

For those few who still have landline phones, scammers make them ring. It has become a source of entertainment in our home to string scam callers past the bot to the frenetic-sounding call center. Or we just let the phone ring 3 times – bots have limited patience. But there is one benefit of having an actual conversation with a call center rep, as well as watching TV Medicare Advantage advertising. These unsolicited caller scripts (‘is anyone in the home between the ages of 65 and 85?’) and ads are built on stereotypes of older adults (mostly women) and the premise that they are just plain stupid. Apparently they can’t do their own research and are desperate for advice. By the way, if CMS is ‘restricting’ Medicare Advantage plan advertising, that is not yet visible to a TV viewer.  

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