Age Discrimination—Hidden in Plain Sight
Age Discrimination—Hidden in Plain Sight
From the very first time I asked adolescents what they wanted adults to know about people their age, they said that some adults acted as if they weren’t smart, looked down on them, or treated them with less respect than they thought they deserved.
Those are classical indicators of discrimination!! That wasn’t something I expected to hear.
So, I added a standard measure of discrimination to the nationally representative study we planned to conduct for The Breakthrough Years, I also asked the parents I interviewed in the qualitative study if they thought their children had experienced discrimination because of their age.
“No!” almost all of the parents told me.
They did connect age discrimination with elderly people. Here’s Ethan, the father of two sons from New Jersey:
I’ve seen workplace discrimination with elders not able to get a job. But with kids? No.
When I asked young people themselves, most didn’t connect the term “age discrimination” with their experiences either—though they could readily talk about gender and racial discrimination.
Without seeing the links to “discrimination,” however, they told me stories about feeling as if they were treated unfairly because they’re teenagers. Jessica, age fifteen, recounted going to a makeup store for a girls’ day at the mall:
We walked in, and the lady asked us if there was anyone over eighteen with us. I told her, “No. It’s just us.” She told us we weren’t allowed to be in the store and kicked us out. We hadn’t done anything. We simply stepped foot in the store. It really angered me because I wanted to shop for makeup. I hadn’t done anything to make her think that I couldn’t be in the store.
When asked why she thinks this happened, Jessica says:
We’re teenagers. People think we are up to no good.
As I said above, we did ask adolescents about discrimination, using the Everyday Discrimination Scale developed by David Williams of Harvard University1 in the Breakthrough Years study. Here are three findings of importance:
Finding 1: Overall, nearly 73 percent of adolescents had experienced one or more types of discrimination in the last year.
People acted as if they were better than you (61 percent)
Being called names or insulted (41 percent)
People acted as if they thought you were not smart (37 percent)
Being treated with less respect than other people (37 percent)
People acted as if they thought you were dishonest (28 percent)
Being threatened or harassed (19 percent)
Receiving poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores (15 percent)
People acted as if they were afraid of you (12 percent)
Being followed around in stores (10 percent)
Finding 2: Of all the adolescents who’d experienced discrimination, age discrimination topped the reasons why they think it occurred.
We asked adolescents who’d experienced any of the nine types of discrimination at least a few times why they thought this had happened—what the main reasons were. They had eight reasons to choose from, including gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, and the kids they hang out with.
For six of the nine types of discrimination, adolescents selected age more than any of the other reasons!!!
Like the parents I interviewed, I didn’t expect this finding!
Finding 3: Discrimination is associated with lower well-being.
Based on the number of times adolescents reported being discriminated against, we divided the study participants into three groups: 1) those who experienced none of the nine types of discrimination in the past year (27 percent); 2) those who experienced one to three instances (39 percent); and 3) those who experienced four or more instances (34 percent).
We then compared the groups while controlling for demographics to allow for a better interpretation of possible differences among them, though as you know, correlation doesn’t mean causation. We found:
The adolescents who experienced one to three or four or more instances of discrimination reported lower school engagement, lower positive moods, more negative moods, more stress, and lower hopeful future expectations than those who didn’t experience any discrimination.
The adolescents who experienced four or more incidents of discrimination also reported lower grades than those who experienced no discrimination.
Our finding is not unique. In a 2016 study by Virginia Huynh of California State University, Northridge, Andrew Fuligni and their colleagues also used the Everyday Discrimination Scale with 292 tenth- and eleventh-grade students from four public high schools in the Los Angeles area and found that age discrimination scored high.2 Fuligini stated that “the students attributed unfair treatment to their age at very high rates—almost, if not just as high—as they attributed to their ethnic or racial background or their gender.” Like the parents and me, Fuligini found that finding striking, even surprising.3
The purpose of their study was to look at the links between discrimination and cortisol levels. They found that while everyday discrimination occurred relatively infrequently, those adolescents who had experienced higher rates did show evidence of elevated levels of cortisol across the day.4
As Fuligni told me, these findings indicate “that in many ways this experience is ‘getting under the skin of these youth,’ and, in turn, could potentially have some health consequences down the line.”5
That’s so true. Behavioral studies show that discrimination because of age (or any other reason) can negatively affect adolescents’ physical health, their sleep, and their psychological well-being.6
Although age discrimination for teens may seem surprising—hidden in plain sight, if you will—it is no joking matter. Treating young people as lesser can be harmful, while treating them with respect will always be beneficial.
David R. Williams et al., “Perceived Discrimination, Race and Health in South Africa,” Social Science and Medicine 67, no. 3 (2008): 441–452, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.03.021.
Virginia W. Huynh et al., “Everyday Discrimination and Diurnal Cortisol During Adolescence,” Hormones and Behavior 80 (April 2016): 76–81, https://doi.org/101016/j.yhbeh.2016.01.009.
Andrew J. Fuligni, interview by Ellen Galinsky, May 4, 2017.
Huynh et al., “Everyday Discrimination and Diurnal Cortisol During Adolescence,” 79.
Andrew J. Fuligni, interview by Ellen Galinsky, May 4, 2017.
Andrew Fuligni, interview by Ellen Galinsky, May 4, 2017; Angelina Majeno et al., “Discrimination and Sleep Difficulties During Adolescence: The Mediating Roles of Loneliness and Perceived Stress,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 47 (2018): 135–147, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0755-8; Virginia W. Huynh et al., “Everyday Discrimination and Diurnal Cortisol During Adolescence,” Hormones and Behavior 80 (April 2016): 76–81, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2016.01.009.