As my baby boomer parents are getting older and approaching retirement age, it's made me think how weird things are going to be very soon. The Greatest Generation is quickly passing away, and soon the last generations of people who lived in Western societies with conservative morals will be gone. Already drug use among people older than 50 has gone up markedly, and this is attributed to the fact that the baby boomers are becoming older.
The generations passing away are also the last generations to have any memory of things were like before TV. That got me to thinking about what it's going to be like when the current 18 to 20-somethings become elderly. There isn't any indication that people are out-growing video games: the age of the average gamer is constantly going up, and is now at 35. Half of gamers are between 18 and 49, and a quarter are older than 50. (source: lulz, gamers are sad.)
So are we still going to be playing games as old men and women? Is one of the deciding factors for a retirement home going to be the quality of their network and internet connection? Hell, are we going to be old farts sticking to our keyboards and mice while the young whipper-snappers are using fangled new direct neural interfaces?
And what about IMing and social networking?
I can only imagine that a sedentary isolated lifestyle won't be so bad for some of us as it is for the current elderly generations as long as we have a warm PC and a stable Internet connection.
What do you guys think we will be like as senior citizens?
