Five Ways TV Commercials Insult People Over 50
Women get hit hardest, but men take their lumps, too — and if you’re in your 40s, they’re coming for you
Americans lampoon the TV commercials of the Mad Men era that portrayed women as happy floor-waxers with a fixation on removing “ring around the collar” from men’s shirts. But have things really changed?
In one way, yes. TV commercials show a much broader cross section of the population than in the past, or people of varied ages, races, cultures, body sizes and sexual orientations. One study found that 38 percent of their actors were people of color, compared with 26 percent in 2006. Gay couples have become more common, though they remain relatively rare.
But the new diversity — if overdue — has had an unintended consequence: It’s enabled advertisers to insult a wider range of Americans. Here are five ways the commercials slight people over 50.
1. They treat people over 50 as clueless about technology
You’d never know from TV commercials that about 80 percent of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 own a smartphone. Older generations appear in only 15 percent of media images shown by popular brands, a 2019 AARP study found. Only five percent of those…
