In today’s world, the number of interactions between youth and elderly is declining significantly, main reasons of which are busyness and misconceptions, which can be solved by promoting the family bond and changing the attitudes of children towards adults from an early age.
The first reason for a lack of social contact between young and old people is the busyness. The urbanizations and societal evolution have caused a demand for workforce, leading to a disappearance of people who don’t work or study, which means that old people are denied casual talks with their family members. For example, in the past, elderly always had a partner to have conversations, with the face of their grandchildren and daughters-in-law. However, now they are at school or at work and do not have time for their grandparents. Another reason for that is misconceptions about old people. Nowadays, due to little contact with elderly and tendency to think that they are rude and unpleasant, youth avoid showing care or kindness to them. As a result, while escaping a negative experience, young people choose not to talk and help the elderly, even though the proportion of nice old people is higher than unfriendly ones.
To improve this situation the first solution, which could be taken is culturizing family gatherings. In the technological era, the internet and social media play the greatest roles in everyone’s life, especially for young people. And if there are more trends with interactions of elderly and youth, others will want to follow them. Even if it is not a desire to spend time with old people itself, but rather a reluctance to lag behind the trends, the results are the same. As a result, a first step towards breaking a barrier between generations will lead to the desired and uncomplicated developments of their relationships. The second solution is changing the attitudes of children towards adults from an early age. The period of toddler and teenage years are the most important for personality formation, and if parents will teach and show their children that old people are mostly lonely, and will spark their interest in elderly from early ages, they will grow with empathy towards the older generation. As a result, both, youth and elderly will find a new interlocutor and a friend.
In conclusion, to increase levels of interactions between elderly and youth, some problems like busyness and misconceptions should be solved by normalizing intergenerational activities and changing attitudes.