Half of popular TikTok videos about Boomers portray older adults negatively, risking reinforcing stereotypes and creating intergenerational conflict, according to a study from Singapore.

The authors analyzed 673 videos with the hashtags #Boomer and/or #OkBoomer and categorized them into nine topics. Five topics were extracted from previous studies on age stereotypes: Physical functioning, appearance, illness/death, warmth, competence. The other four topics were unique to the authors' dataset: wealth gap, values and beliefs of older adults, negative encounters with older adults, and older adults antagonizing the young. The outcome variable was “negative age stereotypes,” which was rated on a binary scale.

One in two videos about older adults featured negative content. Of these, 79% were  related to negative encounters with older adults; about 58% included criticisms of the values and beliefs of older adults; and about 40% featured older adults antagonizing the young.

Negative videos also contained more stereotypes of older adults as cold.

In over half of the videos, older adults were stereotyped by younger people as possessing. values and beliefs at odds with theirs. This echoes past literature which indicates that younger persons tend to view their older counterparts as impeding their more progressive goals related to gender, sexuality and race, according to the authors.

"Attempts to reframe aging, as well as to build intergenerational solidarity, should be premised on the understanding that ageism cuts both ways," the authors write. "Just as younger people should be mindful not to homogenize older adults as sharing the same values and beliefs, effort should be made to alert older individuals to their own cognitive biases and the effects of these biases on the way they treat younger people."

In addition, the authors suggest that the media refrain from ascribing societal problems such as climate change to any one age group or generation.

To download the article, published in PLOS ONE, click here