It would seem that elderly people, having lived a longer time than younger people, would have seen a lot more - in fact, probably have “seen and heard it all,” - and yet they seem to be much more easily jarred by tragic or violent content in news media or movies/entertainment than youngsters…why is this?
Provide support for what “seems” to you.
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Firsthand observation. Granted, the plural of anecdotes isn’t ‘data,’ but the elderly have far less stomach for violent or brutal content than the young.
You haven’t even provided anecdotes.
Totally my opinion:
I have noticed this as well. After 9/11 and other terrorist events, people aged 40+ seemed much more shaken up (over long term) than your average teenager or 20 something.
Older people have a harder baseline of what is considered “normal.” I think these type of events jar that baseline more.
Young people are still building what they consider to be normal. They just absorbed that news and added to the baseline. Terrorist event approximately once a year? Check. Go about business.
ETA: Also, younger people have that feeling of invincibility. No 17 year old wakes up and thinks I might die of a terrorist attack. Older people seem to fear death more and dramatic violence and terrorism are a very visible (although unlikely) death mechanism.
Assuming your assertion is correct to begin with, the reason might be psychological conditioning.
In the old days, children simply didn’t grow up watching graphic violence. Heck, the Lone Ranger shot the guns out of the hands of bad guys as opposed to slaughtering them and creating a bloody mess. The closest thing to a video game they had was a pinball machine, not graphic stuff like “Left for Dead” or “Half Life”. They watched stuff like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, not “Resident Evil”.
If you’re exposed to anything long enough, you become desensitized to it.
Agreed. If the OP’s anecdotal observations are, in fact, indicative of a broader “truth,” it wouldn’t at all surprise me if this is a big factor as to why.
In other words, if older people are, in fact, less comfortable with graphic violence, I suspect that it’s less a function of “we, as humans, become less comfortable with violence as we age,” so much as “older people today grew up in an era in which graphic depictions of violene were uncommon, if not completely non-existent, in popular entertainment and news.”
I’ve noticed it too.
My theory is that they have become frail and defenseless and instinct makes them react strongly to perceived danger, whether it makes sense to react or not, to get the immediate protection of the tribe.
I’m 69 so perhaps a little sensitive to this type of characterization. And OP didn’t say how old he thought “elderly” was, but someone else suggested 40+ as a cutoff for the difference in reaction. But I’m going to say bullshit anyway.
My strength is that I and my loved ones (I don’t have any children and don’t care much about anyone else’s) will be dead before any real dystopia happens, which I believe will be caused by climate change at least as much as anything else. And when I die I will be laughing at all you young people who still have to endure seeing your friends and family hurt and dying because so many people were so stupid for so long.
I hope that doesn’t sound harsh.
Some older people become more sensitised to violence due to having been exposed to violence themselves.
Obviously, many acts of violence are perpetrated on children or young people. But the longer you live, the greater your chances of having had *something *happen to you.
To take a trivial example - after your first nasty car accident you’ll become a lot more twitchy about appropriate seatbelt use and keeping the speed limit
Far more life experience that included loss and challenge, they’ve seen a lot more, up close personal pain and suffering.
When you’ve been a party to the real thing, it looses its appeal as entertainment like in games and movies.
Life has given them empathy with age. Watching violent content will trigger a lot of people, I think.
It would be just as easy to anecdotally conclude that elderly people are more prone to “meh” reactions to news with “violent content” since they’ve seen/heard a ton of it and know that 1) it doesn’t represent every day common experience in their lives/neighborhoods and 2) it’s hyped and exaggerated endlessly by news media for ratings purposes.
*I do remember my sweet old grandma stopping to comment on the pro football game I (at about the age of 8) was watching on TV, “Oh! They knock each other down!”. :eek:
One of the brain regions most affected by age is the prefrontal cortex. The PFC is involved in emotional regulation like inhibiting fear signals from the amygdala. It’s also why old people are more likely to be ornery and have difficult concentrating.
The older you get, the more people you lose. Young people are aware of death, but few have repeatedly lived through the emotional aftermath of losing loved ones, friends, classmates, coworkers. Death and loss are over there. Maybe you lose your grandmother, well she’s always been old in your perception. As you get older though, you begin to lose those only slightly older than you, the same age as you, and even those younger than you. It’s no longer ‘over there’ once you lose someone you’ve known for all 50, 60, or 70 years of your life. So graphic depictions of violence are a reminder an extensive list of very real experiences for those long in the tooth.
No, it doesn’t sound harsh.
It sounds positively sociopathic.
It sounds depressed.
I’d agree with
1 exposure to the real thing
2 the PFC
3 the tribal explanation makes sense
4 some other factors like having been in a protective role but no longer able to actually perform it so they talk about it much more, warning and warning and warning
I suggest quite the opposite.
We “older” people have seen it all, to be sure, and we have seen how horrible and senseless violence can be, and how damaging to both individuals and society, yet we don’t see a reduction in it or a cessation. It appears to us that those who haven’t learned from the past will be condemned to repeat it, and that is a sad, sad thing. We cringe at seeing it all again when we thought the world had learned its lesson many times over.
My anecdote is that I’m not even 40 yet and I’m already much more sensitive to violence than I was when I was younger. I’ve been watching the X-Files and I just sit there and cringe sometimes, knowing that the woman’s hair will get caught in the blender and ripped out while she screams and flails. It’s the knowledge of what will happen that causes an enhanced reaction in me. My experience tells me to expect what will happen, so I brace for it and react more to it. I have a greater knowledge of what pain and violence is and means now than I used to, and therefore have a greater gut reaction to it.
I think there’s only two paths to those who have seen and/or experienced pain and suffering. Either you become more sensitized or more desensitized to it. I don’t think it’s possible to stay the same. And it only accrues over time.
I’m 73, and this isn’t the world we thought we’d inherit.
In my parents’ generation, violent evil was an ocean away, and Americans thought, once they wiped it out, it couldn’t happen here. Sure, there was racism and sexism and all other evils, but steps were taken to remedy these. Kids in my generation had every reason to believe that the future would be better.
We never thought there would be massacres in schoolrooms and skyscrapers and nightclubs and other public places. We never thought little kids would be gunned down in their school rooms, and the nation doesn’t do a damn thing about it. We never thought we’d have a president who’d deny the increase in white supremacy or call Nazis “good people”.
This isn’t the world we thought we’d inherit and grow old in.