The day of age

'At the village party, adults danced with children. Teenagers danced with adults. Young adults danced with elders -- all with an ease of interaction. In America, social activity has sadly become more age-segregated.

The idea of 60-somethings partying with 20-somethings on New Year's Eve has become rare.
In our society, people of different generations certainly don't ignore one another, but they seem to increasingly live in different universes. You could blame technology. Younger generations seem more at ease with the social use of technology. But that would be simplistic. A more likely explanation for increasing age-segregation in the U.S. and Europe may derive from our more individualistic tendencies. We are encouraged to be competitive and strive for individual success and tenaciously pursue our goals, which means that individual desire often shapes the texture of our lives. We move away from home, lose contact with our kin, and often focus our social time on our friends. Such a process leads to age-segregation in which like-minded people talk about like-minded things.

Witnessing how people of all ages are integrated into Vilcabamba social activities made me realize that age-segregation limits our experience and impoverishes our lives. I regret that as a young man I didn't really want to hear my 90 year-old grandfather talk about his escape from Belarus in 1916 or how he struggled to come to America and begin a family. I could have learned so much from him, but I chose to hang out with my friends instead. In a less age-segregated society, I might I have learned a great deal about our family -- about life. My New Year's wish is that more people might experience the wonders of age-integration so that their lives might be enriched by the knowledge of our elders and the wisdom of our ancestors.'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stoller/celebrating-the-old-and-n_b_803911.html