How does ageing affect our audiences?

There are multiple factors besides disabilities that can get in the way of efficient and inclusive communication, and ageing is definitely one of them.

If you’ve read some of our previous posts, you’re already aware that seniors respectively account for roughly 16,5 to 19% of the American and Canadian populations. Many of us are also painfully familiar with the fact that as we get older and grayer, life naturally chips away at our cognitive abilities, affecting our senses, such as hearing, sight, and mobility.

As a matter of fact, this is not just an opinion, this is a fact supported by data. A Nielsen Norman Group research has demonstrated that when it comes to consuming content online, we experience, on average, a cumulative 0.8% cognitive loss for every year that we have over the age of 25. And although that research was initially published in 2008, more recent updates from 2019 still confirmed the data right before the COVID-19 pandemic.

So what does a 0.8% of cognitive decline per year mean for our ageing audience members? Well, according to that research, our collective ability to use the web efficiently diminishes with each passing year. In other words, for every 10 years that we add to our lives over the age of 25, we lose an average of 8% of our ability to consume online content efficiently. If you do the math, it looks like this:

• By the time you’re 35 years old: 8% cognitive loss,
• By the time you’re 45 years old: 16% cognitive loss,
• By the time you’re 55 years old: 24% cognitive loss,
• By the time you’re 65 years old: 32% cognitive loss.

What this means is that by the time we reach the age of 65, our collective ability to use the web in general, as well as online content in particular, has dropped by about a third of its potential, compared to what it would have been 40 years earlier. Vanished. Irremediably gone.

Audiences are not getting any younger

And while we can acknowledge that retired seniors are unlikely to find themselves in our audiences, those who are still professionally active are very likely to be! After all, why wouldn’t they? To remain relevant in today’s economy, keeping your skills sharp is a must! Whether you’re 35, 45, 55, or more…

Think about the folks around you for a minute. Think about your colleagues, clients, and all the other people you casually meet and interact with in the workplace. Think about the people sitting in your work meetings, in your meetups, in your professional associations, or at the conferences you attend. How many of them tend to actually be a bit older? Are you noticing a trend with the ageing workforce? Are you contributing to that trend yourself?

It’s a known fact that people tend to remain professionally active much longer than they used to. How many of the seniors who are still working would have been retired by now, if we only went back twenty or thirty years? After all, why wouldn’t they keep working, if they’re still healthy, still driven, still passionate, and still willing to keep busy and put in the work?

Are we at the point yet, where 65 is the new 50?

The workforce getting older is not just a feeling in our gut. According to a 2017 study conducted by Statistics Canada, about 20% of Canadians aged 65 and older, or nearly 1,1 million seniors, reported actively working in 2015. We’re talking about people still very much involved in the day-to-day activities of the workplace. And of all seniors who still worked in 2015, about 30% of them did so full time. That’s three out of every ten.

The research showed steady increases in work activity for both senior men and women alike, a vast majority of which were in positions of authority, such as professionals and managers in various industries like retail, finance, healthcare, and education. The reality of the workplace is rapidly changing, and as the population keeps getting older, the very definition of what a working-age adult is evolves with it. It has to.

An ever-changing landscape

We just talked about how older people influence the landscape of the workplace. Have you noticed similar trends in your own audiences? Have you started giving some thought as to what that might mean, for some of the people sitting in that audience of yours?

As of 2019 in the United States, about 19% of people aged 65 and older were still active professionally. Think about it; that’s almost one out of every five seniors! And with over 10,000 American baby boomers reaching the age of 65 every passing day, that percentage is expected to reach well over 22% by 2026, with those 75 and older experiencing the fastest growth rate. That puts American seniors right on par with Canadian seniors when it comes to postponing retirement. These folks will be more and more likely to find themselves in your audience in the future.

What have you done for the seniors in your audience lately? Have you revisited any of your delivery mechanisms from the platform, whether it’s live in-person or virtual, to make sure you’re not leaving any of them behind?

The same research also shows that seniors with a bachelor’s degree or higher are more likely to keep working than other, less-educated seniors. This also feeds into the idea that part of your audience can, and will be, made of older people in positions of authority and influence. People who run their own firms and hold positions of power in organizations are undoubtedly people you would love to do business with in the future. Those people are likely the ones who like to keep their finger on the pulse of anything relevant to keep their businesses thriving. Doesn’t that sound like great clients to attract?

Don’t you think this is something worth thinking about, if you really want to truly connect with all of your audience, and create the absolute most impact in their lives?