Does age matter? The implications of significant divisions in age – From South Florida through Silicon Valley
Bottom Line: A natural byproduct of rising life expectancies is a greater divide between people based on age in our society. In some ways the age divisions can be positive for our society generally. Especially if younger people are willing to listen and learn from those who've had more life experience. There have always been challenges naturally presented based on age but those are wider than ever before and we're starting to see some of the implications of it specifically in technology. From Apple to Fitbit some of the biggest advancements in consumer technology in recent years have been health related. Who stands to benefit the most? Those who're most in need of healthy lifestyles and monitoring their health actively – IE – older adults. While health technology has rapidly grown, it's been overwhelmingly used by younger adults missing the mark from those who're positioned to most benefit. The answer might be inside these numbers.
Here's the average age of Americans in each of these categories:
* All Americans: 38
* Workforce: 42
* Broward County: 38
* Miami-Dade County: 40
* Palm Beach County 44
And then the average age of those developing technology and creating products...
* Silcon Valley: 32
And that's the average. There are plenty of top tech companies that have average ages below 30, including Facebook where the average employee is 29. We've talked a lot about the generation divides of Boomers, X'ers and Millennials. The adaptation of beneficial technology might be an inflection point. The average age of Americans generally, the workforce and South Floridians falls in the Gen X category. The average person creating consumer technology is a Millennial. People are far more inclined to create products and services that make the most sense to them. That can create a bit of a generational divide with the average American but especially by the time we're talking about Boomers. Ironically enough, the best opportunity in technology would appear to be to hire older and create technology that's geared for older adults by older adults.