“We are witnessing the first generation with over 5 decades of life experience who may very well live another 50 years. Using the knowledge they’ve gained, they are able to decide what works and what doesn’t, edit out the unwanted, and double down on what they really want out of their second lives.”
The world is getting older. Increasing longevity is allowing people to work well past the official age of retirement. It is well documented, that people over 50 are living in radically different ways than their parents did. The over-50s are a critically important demographic. Their political, social and economic standing makes them the most powerful generation to have ever lived. However, as a society, we have locked ourselves into a culture of anti-age that is evident throughout media, organizations, even the words we use. Our attitude towards later life needs a reboot at every level.
Founder of media and research company AGEIST, David Harry Stewart, suggests that this is best achieved through design and modern media tactics rather than legislation, and until this is embraced we will fail to see the real economic, humanitarian and cultural benefits of increasing longevity. David Harry Stewart is the founder and face of the AGEIST, a media company whose purpose is to reinvent how life after 50 is lived, experienced and understood. He is an expert on the new life phase that is emerging in people in this financial empowered yet underserved demographic.
For 35 years he has been a highly successful award-winning photographer (David Harry Stewart Photographer). His photographs have appeared in GQ, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, WIRED, Forbes, Interview Magazine, TIME and on multiple covers for The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine.