SIGHTLINES SPECIAL REPORT ON SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
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Social engagement and connectedness have profound implications for well-being, including a sense of security, self-esteem, physical, mental, and cognitive health, and overall life satisfaction. Research has shown that feeling socially isolated is as great a risk factor for premature death as smoking half a pack of cigarettes every day. In this report, we review social relationship patterns over the lifespan, discuss how interrupters like social media have influenced the way we connect and highlight the importance of social connectedness on physical and mental health. For researchers interested in this topic, we provide a toolbox of various analytical techniques that have been newly developed in modeling and testing social engagement. In later chapters, we zoom in to examine how important life events such as retirement and widowhood affect people’s social relationships and connecting behaviors.
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2020 DESIGN CHALLENGE UPDATE
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The first phase of the 2020 Design Challenge is complete, and an unprecedented number of students participated this year: 160 designs were submitted from 35 countries around the globe. Of this number, 93 have been chosen to move forward. Over the coming weeks, a panel of 25 judges representing a range of expertise including design, business, academia and healthcare will evaluate the designs and choose 6-8 finalists to move to the second phase. In phase two, finalists will be asked to further develop their idea and to prepare a presentation to be given at the Finals Competition at Stanford University on April 7, 2020. Mentors from industry partners will be available to teams during this period. At the Finals, teams will present their idea to judges who will then pick the First, Second and Third place winners.
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December 16, 2019
| Forbes
How To Create a Retirement Income Plan
When you’re closing in on retirement, the big financial question shifts from “How much should I be saving?” to “How can I make my money last?” Steve Vernon,
research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity and author of
Retirement Game-Changers, offers a few smart answers in a new
Friends Talk Money podcast episode.
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November 29, 2019
| The Washington Post
We Need a Major Redesign of Life
It’s time to get serious about a major redesign of life. Thirty years were added to average life expectancy in the 20th century, and rather than imagine the scores of ways we could use these years to improve quality of life, we tacked them all on at the end. Only old age got longer.
As a result, most people are anxious about the prospect of living for a century.
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November 19, 2019 |
Cision PR Newswire
Longevity Project Explores the Nuanced Implications of Longer Life
As longer life expectancy brings about substantial changes in the make-up of American society, Americans are still grappling with the implications of longer life on how we work, live and learn, according to a poll fielded by the Longevity Project, a new initiative developed in collaboration with the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL). The mission of the Longevity Project is to generate research and foster public dialogue on the far-reaching impact of increased longevity.
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November 16, 2019 |
Axios
Retirement Becomes More Myth Than Reality
The number of Americans in the workforce who are over 64 years old has tripled over the past 30 years. Delayed retirement is a sign of health and affluence for some and a continued life of hardship for others. As society ages and people live longer, a 21st century idea of retirement is needed, Steve Vernon of the Stanford Center on Longevity tells Axios. The big picture: Americans are working longer — out of choice or necessity. And the trend has broad implications for people of all ages, from younger workers mapping out their futures to older people planning their legacies.
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OLD MAN COUNTRY: MY SEARCH FOR MEANING AMONG THE ELDERS
By Thomas Cole
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Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders, by Thomas Cole, offers candid and compelling insights from a dozen men in their 80s and 90s, some famous and some not, about their later years. The author traveled throughout the U.S. to ask these elders what worries them, what gives them pleasure and what challenges they face. Cole calls the later years he explores the Fourth Age and says that while this has often only been described as a frightening time marked by decline and illness, it includes periods of sheer fun, powerful spiritual experiences and continued work and artistic growth. Among those interviewed: Hugh Downs, veteran TV broadcaster and creator of
The Today Show; Dr. Denton Cooley, the first surgeon to implant an artificial heart into a human and Ram Das, the teacher of Eastern spirituality in the U.S. Cole argues that while the traditional script for masculinity stops at midlife, new models of manhood must extend beyond that to reflect longer life expectancies.
Recommended by
Carol Hymowitz
, author, journalist and visiting fellow at the Stanford Center on Longevity.
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Looking for something great to read over the holidays? See our favorite staff picks below.
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Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life
By
Louise Aronson
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As revelatory as Atul Gawande's
Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's
Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life.
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Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers
By
Jo Boaler
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Limitless Mind is a readable, informative and entertaining synthesis of recent research in the fields of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Education. The book argues for a new path to appreciating the beauty of math, and to teaching math based on visualization, collaboration and rethinking social and gender stereotypes.
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Olive Kitteridge
By
Elizabeth Strout
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At the edge of the continent, Crosby, Maine, may seem like nowhere, but seen through this brilliant writer’s eyes, it’s in essence the whole world, and the lives that are lived there are filled with all of the grand human drama—desire, despair, jealousy, hope, and love. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
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Waiting on Retirement: Aging and Economic Insecurity in Low-Wage Work
By
Mary Gatta
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America is witnessing a retirement crisis. As the labor market shifts to the gig economy and new strains restrict social security, the American Dream of secure retirement becomes further out of reach for up to half of the population. In
Waiting on Retirement, Mary Gatta takes the case of restaurant workers to examine the experiences of low-wage workers who are middle-aged, aging, and past retirement age.
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Scale is a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in, and is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways.
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No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History
By
Gail Collins
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In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed
New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries.
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Prospective Longevity: A New Vision for Population Aging
By
Warren C. Sanderson & Sergei Scherbov
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Aging is a complex phenomenon. We usually think of chronological age as a benchmark, but it is actually a backward way of defining lifespan. It tells us how long we’ve lived so far, but what about the rest of our lives? In this pathbreaking book, Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov provide a new way to measure individual and population aging. Instead of counting how many years we’ve lived, we should think about the number of years we have left, our “prospective age.”
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The Body: A Guide for Occupants
By
Bill Bryson
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Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body--how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Bryson-esque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular.
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Longevity Insurance for a Biological Age: Why Your Retirement Plan Shouldn’t Be Based on the Number of Times You Circled the Sun
By
Moshe A. Milevsky
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Scientific advances now enable us to measure your true age with much greater precision than ever before. The backward-looking metric of chronological age is passé and has been superseded by the forward-looking measure of remaining lifetime. In the not-too distant future your phone, watch or even your clothes will measure and report how old you really are and how long you will likely be spending in retirement. This brief book examines the personal financial implications of this “new age” development and focuses on how to guarantee a sustainable income stream for the remainder of your biological life.
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LONGEVITY BRIEFINGS
ARCHIVE
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The
Century Lives podcast provides a platform for informed discussion on a wide range of topics, between leading experts in academia, business and public policy. These conversations foster a better understanding of the state of current research, and provide fresh perspectives on how best to optimize longer lives.
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