Each of these first two chapters of boomers’ lives (while allowing for other ethnic, gender, and socio-economic determinants) forms a relatively straightforward narrative that, in many ways, was quite representative of previous generations of Americans. Declaring independence from one’s parents and their respective values in an attempt to create something different actually goes back a couple of centuries in this country, as does the subsequent settling into the domesticity and maturity of midlife.

This is, however, where it gets interesting. Rather than embrace their parents’ model of seniority defined by retirement, baby boomers are now considering or pursuing many different options, a version of life I call Boomers 3.0. Instead of heading en masse to retirement communities much like “Del Boca Vista” (the fictional condominium complex in Florida of Seinfeld fame), 60-somethings are going back to school, starting new relationships, exploring their creativity, taking new spiritual paths, embarking on “encore” careers, forming new communities, fighting for causes in which they believe, giving their time and money away, and yes, bucket listing. For financial and other reasons, a good number are working and staying in their current homes as long as possible, seeing no compelling reason to do otherwise.

Much is being made about how many baby boomers are financially unprepared for retirement, something all too true for a sizable segment of their generation. But boomers are collectively the richest generation in history and, even though a good number have already scaled back their careers, they are getting still richer. The (currently) strong stock market is making affluent boomers wealthier, with those additional financial resources being used to pursue alternative, sometimes very costly third acts.

Sixty-five million (of the original 76 million) in the boomer population are still alive and kicking. They range in age from 53 to 71, and each one is approaching or already engaged in his or her third act. Some baby boomers, unwilling or unable to accept that their bodies and minds have gotten older, are clinging desperately to their remaining youth by investing in the wide array of “anti-aging” therapies to be found in the marketplace. But even most of these folks don’t take these alleged fountains of youth too seriously.

Still other boomers are admittedly lost when it comes to planning for their third act; they are not interested in the traditional model of retirement, but not at all clear on which path they should take. Interestingly, in my research I’ve found that it is the financially secure who are most likely to be directionless, a result perhaps of having too many options available.

What happened to the very pleasant idea of spending one’s third and final act of life enjoying what one had worked so hard and long for during the first and second acts? Why is there no longer a central narrative to Americans’ last quarter-century or so of life (roughly age 55 to 80, on average)—replaced by a postmodern jumble of stories going in all sorts of directions? Are baby boomers, as some observers have claimed, the first “ageless” generation in history, rejecting the rules of society as they famously did in their idealistic younger days? Is creating a new paradigm of aging their final hurrah, something perhaps greater in scope and longer-lasting than their countercultural dream of universal peace and love?

In retrospect, the baby boomers’ impulse to toss out the Greatest Generation’s interpretation of older age makes perfect sense and was entirely predictable. Boomers (the “Me Generation,” remember) were and remain resistant to social norms and expectations, their individualism and anti-authoritarian ways perhaps being their most enduring legacy. It would be easy to suggest that as boomers plunge headfirst into their 70s they are suffering from an acute case of Peter Pan syndrome, refusing to grow up even as their physical selves experience decline and as they more often forget exactly why they came into a room. The looming threat of becoming a victim of Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia is incentive enough to pretend that older age is something that only happens to other people.

Overall, however, I believe that baby boomers’ inclination to take on new challenges and “act young” later in life is a very good thing. Studies show that there is much truth to the cliché, however trite, that one’s age is “just a number” or a “state of mind,” and that one is “only as old as one feels.” (Don’t even get me started on the “70 is the new 50” adage, or other such silly twistings of chronology, not to mention basic biology.) But sitting down to dinner at an “early bird special” to save a couple bucks, or whiling away afternoons playing mahjong, are simply not boomers’ style. (To be fair, retirement communities are a lot more active than they used to be.) Boomers’ third acts of life may indeed be scattered, disjointed, and personally defined, but as a whole they offer an attractive alternative to the going-off-into-the-sunset model that was so popular in the latter half of the 20th century.

Finally, given the widespread ageism in our youth-obsessed society, it’s no surprise that baby boomers will do pretty much anything to avoid being branded as irrelevant and over the hill. It’s also important to note that boomers’ insistence on trying to keep their jobs despite lucrative early retirement offers is actually in the best interests of the country. Millennials may wish boomers would get out of the way so they could take over their prestigious jobs and fat salaries, but millions of 60-somethings delaying Social Security and Medicare payouts is, for the moment at least, averting the economic and healthcare apocalypse (and “generational war” over resources) that many experts are predicting.

Continuing to find meaning and purpose in life is the real goal of Boomers 3.0—a less coherent story than version 1.0 or 2.0, but certainly an intriguing one that will have major social, economic, and political consequences over the next few decades.

The post Why Boomers Need a New Script for Life’s Third Act appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

That mystery, however, can be dangerous.

Younger Americans are more likely to use the Internet, but seniors are joining at faster rates than their younger counterparts. As of 2015, 81 percent of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 use the Internet at least occasionally, as do 58 percent of those who are 65 and older. The Internet has proven to be an amazing resource for seniors, particularly those with physical limitations. It opens doors to keeping in better touch with family, pursuing new hobbies, and discovering new communities of people with similar interests.

But it also unlocks a whole new world of vulnerability. According to the FBI, seniors are specifically targeted online because they “are most likely to have a ‘nest egg,’ to own their home, and/or to have excellent credit—all of which make them attractive to con artists.” Furthermore, the FBI says,

“People who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were generally raised to be polite and trusting. Con artists exploit these traits, knowing that it is difficult or impossible for these individuals to say ‘no’ or just hang up the telephone.” Con artists view the senior population as uniquely vulnerable, and they have come up with creative ways to try and exploit those vulnerabilities.”

Some of the new swindles resemble old door-to-door, mail, and phone scams, except that they now take advantage of massively efficient Internet communication. Think of the myriad of messages containing sob stories ending in pleas for large sums of money, solicitations for charities that don’t exist, offers of free prizes and gifts, or attempts to scare out personal information with threats of cutting off Social Security payments, health care coverage, or banking account access. There are also popular schemes in which a pop-up window informs a person their computer has been compromised and will be shut down unless the outside party is granted access to the machine. Or a message appears from what seems to be a friend or relative telling the user to “check out this awesome website!” Although these aren’t age-specific ploys, many scammers specifically target seniors, assuming that they are unfamiliar with the ways of the web and are easier to con.

So what can we realistically do about it? The success of these hacks and scams have led many software developers and security professionals to gripe about the so-called “stupid users” who simply cannot be saved from themselves and their terrible passwords. While it’s true, in a tautological sense, that removing all humans from the network would make it exceptionally secure, being “stupid” and being “poorly educated” are two very different things. There are a lot of smart people out there that simply don’t have the right information to keep themselves safe online, including seniors. As Slate columnist Josephine Wolff wrote in her beautifully titled piece “Calling Humans the ‘Weakest Link’ in Computer Security Is Dangerous and Unhelpful,” these mistakes show that technology is failing the human users, not the other way around. “The whole point of computers,” she writes, “is that they’re supposed to improve the lives of people, and yet, strangely, it’s the people who end up being painted as the problem.”

Yanking grandma and grandpa (or anyone else who doesn’t know how to respond to technogeek phrased pop-ups about ActiveX controls) offline is clearly not the answer. But given the rate at which seniors are being targeted, we could be doing a better job of getting basic information to this particularly vulnerable group. There are lots of places that offer excellent educational resources about online security and privacy, particularly from AARP, yet they don’t seem to be reaching their target audience. To understand why this information isn’t flowing, I had to reach out to people who don’t work in cybersecurity, who aren’t Internet natives like myself. I needed to talk to people who are much, much different than myself. So I called my parents.

My mom is a paralegal at a huge law firm, and she’s really good at it. She navigates complex tax and real estate regulations like Misty Copeland navigates the stage. My dad is retired now, but he spent years in banking, working his way up from teller to vice president. They’re very smart people. But they didn’t grow up with the Internet.

“So,” I asked my parents, kicking back on the couch in the home where I grew up, “Where do you get most of your information on online safety?”

“You,” they said in unison, without hesitation.

“Well, okay,” I said. “But other than me. Like if I’d gone into, I don’t know, forestry instead of tech. Where would you be getting that information?”

“There’s no really good place,” my dad said after thinking a moment. “The TV frightens me, because they just focus on fear, not what to actually do.”

“Do you think they should put something educational on TV about cybersecurity instead?” I asked. “At a level anyone could access?”

My mom frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think so. If they put something informational on TV, people would probably flip the channel to watch Star Trek instead.” I couldn’t disagree.

“I do learn a lot from work,” my mom said. “We have a good IT department. I guess there are classes at the college. But if you’re not involved with computers in some way, you don’t think about that stuff.”

“And what you learn from the experts at work doesn’t always translate to home,” my dad added. “I have a lot more to worry about here at home than I did in the office.”

My dad is right—workplace training covers only certain topics. But that training has really stuck with them. For example, my parents are pros when it comes to understanding spearphishing attacks. They know that an email isn’t always what it seems—that it might be a deliberate fraud by someone who knows about their personal habits, likes, or dislikes, and is using that information to entice a target to click on malicious links, or reply with personal information. “I’m paranoid about opening emails,” my dad said. “You have to know first who they’re really from.” Solid advice. At my mom’s work, the security team even sends fake spearphishing emails that redirect to an online training course if the links are clicked. It’s a great idea—although it requires a savvy educator.

“It has to be at a level that people understand,” my mom emphasized. “I like learning, but I like to learn quickly. What are the clues that something’s wrong? If it looks like junk in the email address, for example. Or how you should never click a link that’s sent to you if you don’t know what it is. Those are a few things that everyone could do that would help some.”

We talked a lot more about Internet safety. My parents agreed that without a smart and communicative security department at work (in the alternate universe where I am a park ranger), they wouldn’t have any source of good information. Since 13 percent of the U.S. population is 65 and over, and that percentage is growing, we can’t depend on workplace training to keep the older generations safe online.

I left my parents’ house feeling pretty happy with their level of knowledge. I also left with the understanding that they were lucky. They learned a lot from their corporate security departments and they have a daughter in cybersecurity who’s willing to personally engage with them after they retire to ensure they stay safe as vulnerabilities and and attack methods continue to evolve. It’s hard to create new pathways for knowledge—especially pathways that can reach everyone. As my mother reminded me, most aren’t the caricature of the hopeless senior completely incapable of learning anything new. The problem isn’t that seniors can’t learn. It’s that no one is there to teach them in the first place.

Some workplaces can and have filled this role, but it’s certainly not a guarantee. Even when they have, as people leave the workforce, they will need some other source of help continuing to stay safe online. As I mentioned earlier, AARP has some excellent resources for seniors, including tips on avoiding identify theft, spotting spearphishing scams on social media, and explaining ransomware, but you have to be motivated to seek them out. Some senior centers have stepped up to provide classes on computer safety, which is great, but not everyone who needs them can or will take them. Television depictions of cyber are grossly misleading. Mainstream media coverage of these issues is sporadic and can’t be relied upon to reach everyone at the right time.

But if you’re concerned about your parents, there is one last line of defense: you. So let’s all bake our parents a pan of brownies, sit down with them, and have a talk about the Internet. It might get a little awkward, just like the talk they once gave you. But protection, not abstinence, is the way to go when it comes to Internet safety. And who knows, maybe you’ll also learn a few things when you do.

The post It’s Not Your Grandparents’ Fault They Keep Getting Scammed Online appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It’s hardly news that staying active is one of the best things anyone—and especially seniors—can do for their health and overall well-being. Writing about the findings of a Journal of Physiology study published earlier this year, The New York Times put it this way: “… how we age is, to a large degree, up to us.”

The attitude that people shouldn’t let advanced age deter them from an active life is certainly reflected in recent headlines. The Rolling Stones, a band with members whose average age is 70.5, just kicked off a new tour at the Fonda Theater. In March, the L.A. Marathon had 521 runners or walkers who were 65 or over, including an 87-year-old man from Burbank who finished in just over seven hours.

You need not look far to find seniors at play in Los Angeles County. I took most of these photos, in fact, as I went about my daily business. The people, activities, and sports pictured here are just a sampling of the variety of ways seniors in our region get their exercise.

Every senior I talked to cited the health benefits of exercise as a reason for getting out and about. “It keeps my muscles moving,” Carol Cunningham, 70, said after her horseback riding lesson at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank.

But they also zeroed in on another motivation in play when it comes to staying active. As one of the guys at the Pasadena Lawn Bowling Club told me: It’s important to fill the vast time provided by retirement with activities that keep you looking forward, that give you a reason to get out of bed, off the couch, and out the house every day.

A couple of people I photographed noted that we happen to live in a pretty good part of the country for recreation, given our abundantly good weather, public lands, and things to do.

An interesting note on demographics: It’s expected that by 2033 there will be more seniors in the U.S. than people under 18, according to the Census Bureau. But in L.A. County, 11.9 percent of our population is 65 or older—as compared to 14.1 percent nationwide.

One reason for the lower numbers of older people here is that many retirees leave California for cheaper taxes and real estate in Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon, among other places. That’s understandable. It’s also a bit of a shame that many people flee after failing to achieve the California dream that may have lured them here in the first place.

Luckily, some manage to tough it out. And they are duly rewarded. “I worked my entire life inside,” said Cunningham, who was a legal secretary for 40 years, while tending to Frenchy, the horse she leases. “It’s nice to finally be outside.”

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