Generations unite to address loneliness, climate change, other global challenges

In the summer of 2022, 17-year-old Jaan Rothschild jumped at an opportunity to partner with a retiree to mentor a preschooler. He recognized that most of his daily interactions were with teenagers, and “I wanted to get outside of my shell and gain some new perspectives,” said Rothschild, who lived in New York City at the time. He joined a new program, Sesame 3G Mentoring, founded by a former Sesame Workshop executive who wanted to spark empathy and joy by creating three-generational trios. Rothschild would lead a Zoom discussion with a preschooler about a Sesame Street segment, and his older mentor would debrief with him after each session.

Rothschild and his mentor, Melvin Ming, 79, a former CEO of Sesame Workshop, talked for two and a half hours at their first meeting. “We were both interested in each other’s stories,” said Rothschild, who learned about Ming’s history immigrating from Bermuda and navigating a career in the United States. Ming said he rarely interacted with teenagers and enjoyed seeing Rothschild build confidence in drawing out a preschooler who was initially shy and quiet.

The Sesame Workshop Alumni Network launched the three-generational program in response to the crisis of loneliness and depression in the United States, particularly among older adults and teenagers. Researchers at Stanford University are studying the Sesame 3G program to test the effects on emotional well-being, confidence, development of a growth mindset, and feelings of intergenerational connectedness.

Interactions between the older and younger generations are far less common today than in previous periods of history, but increasing those connections has the potential to impact some of society’s most intractable problems, said Marc Freedman, founder of CoGenerate, an organization dedicated to bridging generational divides. “In the early part of the 20th century, we reorganized society to make it more efficient by creating laws and institutions that moved young people into educational institutions, middle-age people into workplaces, and older people into retirement communities and nursing homes,” said Freedman. “But the end result was that the generational twains stopped meeting and we created a nation that has largely lost a sense of the wholeness of life.”

For some, the feeling of threat created by the Covid-19 pandemic further inflamed intergenerational tensions (Drury, L., Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 78, No. 4, 2022opens in new window). “Younger people were vilified as reckless, while protecting older people from infection was viewed as unnecessarily curtailing others’ freedoms and damaging to the economy,” said Dominic Abrams, PhD, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies age-based stereotypes.

This era of age segregation coincides with unprecedented age diversity in the United States because of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy. In 1900, when people lived to an average age of 47 in the United States, about 40% of Americans were under the age of 20 and 6% were over age 60. Today, there are relatively equal numbers of people in every age group. “It’s important not to sleepwalk through this opportunity to put teams of people together that combine the skills of young people who are ambitious and energetic with older people who are experienced and motivated to address societal needs to solve today’s pressing problems,” said Laura Carstensen, PhD, a psychology professor at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. “Rather than seeing older adults as a burden on society, we should be really excited about the possibilities that age diversity creates.”

She and other psychologists are among those pioneering a multigenerational movement that connects age groups in work, communities, and schools. These efforts have the potential not only to improve the nation’s mental and physical health but also to tackle societal issues such as climate change.

Data from a recent CoGenerate surveyopens in new window revealed the pent-up demand for intergenerational action, with more than 96% of respondents agreeing that they want to work with other generations to help America better solve its problems.

The environment was the highest priority issue for older generations, while mental health topped the list for Gen Zers, millennials, and Gen Xers. Education was the only issue that all generations included in their top five. “We live in a society with so much polarization and division,” Freedman said. “Problems like climate change are not something that any one generation can solve.”

In May 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory announcing the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation (PDF, 8.4MB)opens in new window—an epidemic that can increase the risk of mortality as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Given these consequences, the Surgeon General said the nation has an obligation to make investments in addressing social connection. Multigenerational relationships are an important aspect of “social fitness,” or the ability to make healthy, lasting connections, said Marc Schulz, PhD, a psychology professor at Bryn Mawr College and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Data from the study, which has followed participants for 85 years, has shown that satisfaction with relationships is the best predictor of a happy and healthy life—even more than cholesterol level (Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M., The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, 2023opens in new window). These relationships can include intimate partners, friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers across generations. Although it can be uncomfortable to cross the generational divide amid ageist stereotypes, overcoming these barriers “makes the connection that much more energizing,” said Schulz.

To help people from different stages of life connect and learn from one another, in 2020 he and Robert Waldinger, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, launched Road Maps for Lifeopens in new window. In the program, participants meet for five 90-minute sessions on Zoom or in person at community centers, classrooms, senior facilities, or other locations and respond to prompts that facilitate discussions. During one session, they share photos of themselves from earlier in their lives and talk about how their perspectives have changed since then. In a later session, they fill out a diagram that maps key relationships in their lives and describe the importance and frequency of these connections.

“Young people benefit from hearing how older people navigated challenges, and older participants learn about the issues younger people are facing,” Schulz said. For example, younger people have shared the difficulty of finding a meaningful job and their anxiety about committing to one path. Older participants often describe how they have had many jobs, most of which were not what they envisioned when they were in their 20s, said Schulz.

[Related: Gen Z adults and younger millennials are “completely overwhelmed” by stress]

Researchers are finding evidence that every age group benefits when people participate in intergenerational programs, such as mentoring, community service, or workforce development. Elementary school children who are partnered with an older adult, for example, experience improvements in reading and socioemotional learning. Middle school students experience benefits in academic performance, peer relationships, and family dynamics in addition to decreased depressive symptoms, reduced bullying, and higher levels of empathy. Older volunteers in these programs also reap benefits, including decreased social isolation and depression, greater life satisfaction and cognitive functioning, and reductions in falls and frailty (Making the Case for Intergenerational Programs, Generations United, 2021opens in new window).

Creating spaces for multigenerational connection is particularly important in marginalized communities because the transmission of wisdom can help with navigating life at the edges of society, said Nic Weststrate, PhD, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago. In 2019, Weststrate and his colleagues launched The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Projectopens in new window, a group that includes 15 elders and 15 college students, all from the LGBTQ+ community, who meet biweekly in Chicago during the school year. In the meetings, several members share stories from their lives related to topics such as HIV/AIDS, ageism, or media representation, and others are invited to respond. “Many of the young people have never connected with an elder because many elders have only recently felt comfortable coming out,” Weststrate said. “Elders are sometimes afraid to interact with youth because they have falsely been characterized as groomers, recruiters, or predators.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, group members were concerned because queer people were disproportionately affected by the virus. “The youth were not used to living in fear, and the elders reminded them that they were part of a resilient community that had survived the AIDS crisis,” said Weststrate. He also teaches participants that conflict is essential for learning from one another, and this truth surfaced when younger members described themselves as “queer.” This term felt shameful for several older members, and the group took the opportunity to ask questions and understand different perspectives. Weststrate’s studies have shown that valuing intergenerational storytelling is associated with positive psychosocial identity (Weststrate, N. M., et al., Journal of Homosexuality, 2023opens in new window). “Psychologists need to get out into the community and create these intergenerational experiences,” Weststrate said. “It has been healing to both talk about difficult things and laugh together.”

The workplace is one setting where the generations are less segregated in modern American society because 20-somethings may regularly interact and collaborate with Gen Xers and boomers. Megan Gerhardt, PhD, a professor of management at Miami University in Ohio, noticed early in her career that colleagues were often irritated by generational differences. “I knew we needed to be smarter about how workers thought about these differences,” she said. “Rather than seeing them as a hindrance, they could be an asset.”

She discovered that most of the generational resources available to companies played into tired tropes: The Silent Generation (born 1925–45) was loyal but traditional; baby boomers (1946–64) were collaborative but averse to change; Generation X (1965–80) was independent but bleak; millennials (1981–96) were driven but entitled; and Generation Z (1997–2012) was progressive but disloyal.

To help leaders foster productive intergenerational conversations, Gerhardt now teaches workers how to cultivate generational intelligence, or “Gentelligence” as she calls it. During keynote addresses at organizations such as Chubb and the National Conflict Resolution Center, she helps people learn to identify assumptions about younger or older colleagues and take time to be curious rather than judgmental (Gerhardt, M., et al., Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce, 2021opens in new window). For example, a recent college graduate who was hired during the pandemic may assume a flexible workplace includes the freedom to work anywhere most or all of the time, while someone who has commuted to the office for 30 years may consider just one day a week at home to be “flexible,” Gerhardt said.

Taking time to understand different age groups will help workers accept one another and generate creative solutions to problems. Gerhardt also teaches the value of “reverse mentoring,” or fostering a company culture in which older workers are encouraged to learn from younger ones, and vice versa (Stockkamp, M., & Godshalk, V. M., Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2022opens in new window). Since the publication of her book in 2021, the demand for keynote addresses has tripled, and she’s spoken to media, technology, restaurant, sports, financial, and other types of organizations throughout the country.

Lisbeth Drury, PhD, an associate professor at Birkbeck, University of London, who studies stereotypes in the workplace, urges organizational leaders to design assignments and projects that showcase the attributes of different age groups to help workers develop appreciation for the skills of different generations. In a recent study currently under review, Drury found that good-quality, age-diverse contact at work was related to both reduced relationship conflict and reduced task conflict, or disagreements about how to tackle a project.

College campuses are also creating new opportunities for older generations to mix with undergraduate and graduate students. In 2020, Arizona State University opened a new intergenerational complex called Mirabella that houses residents 62 or older who can take classes and access campus activities. Younger students who are studying music, art, nursing, and computer science provide support in their areas of expertise to the residents, and four students studying music or dance live in Mirabella each year.

At Stanford University, the Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI) invites retired leaders—the majority of whom are not alums of the university—to return to a college campus to explore options for the next stage of life. The DCI fellows, who are an average age of 60, participate in classes, partner with students on class projects, and join clubs and organizations related to their interests. Though the fellows typically have extensive work and leadership experience, they are encouraged to learn from the younger students.

“We coach them not to be the first person to raise their hand in class and to let the students be leaders on the group projects,” said Katherine Connor, MS, MBA, executive director of Stanford’s DCI. The experience has led many fellows to launch programs that address local, national, or global problems, such as the need for more leadership training for girls and women in Africa, and the challenges involved in establishing a new life after incarceration. One DCI fellow founded a company that produces a natural seaweed supplement for cattle that reduces methane, a greenhouse gas emission. Carstensen and Claire Growney, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center on Longevity, are launching a study to explore whether learning outcomes and attitudes toward people from other generations improve when DCI fellows are in the classroom.

Advocates of cogenerational innovation agree that different age groups will more likely enjoy the connection if they share a purpose. Aware of the fact that climate change is a common concern for the young and old, Mick Smyer, PhD, an emeritus professor of psychology at Bucknell University, started leading multigenerational groups in discussions about how they could take action to combat this problem. “There is a belief that older people don’t care about this issue, but this is a myth,” said Smyer. He also knew research showed that roughly half of young people feel ignored or dismissed when they try to talk about climate change. “I wanted to create an opportunity for intergenerational connection about this issue,” said Smyer, who founded a nonprofit called Growing Greeneropens in new window that helps individuals and organizations develop clear next steps to take action to reduce climate change.

[Related: How does climate change affect mental health?]

Drawing on principles of psychology and human-centered design, Smyer started leading 40-minute sessions that included participants of multiple generations, who began to view themselves as potential leaders in climate action. He invites participants to imagine a place they care about, picture it in 50 years, and decide on a positive step they could take to protect this place. “People quickly realize that they can make a bigger impact by doing something together,” Smyer said. Groups have organized projects such as a recycled clothing drive and solar panel installations. Smyer also trains people to lead sessions in their communities, schools, workplaces, and other settings, and several thousand have participated.

Although the multigenerational movement has started to gain traction, pioneers in these efforts agree more innovators and funding are needed. Data from the CoGenerate survey suggest that recruiting leaders in Black and Hispanic communities could be an important step forward: About 33% of Black and Hispanic respondents reported that the opportunity to work across generations makes them “much more likely” to get involved, compared with 16% of White respondents. Though the researchers did not study the reason for the discrepancy, one cause could be the higher rates of multigenerational households in Black and Hispanic families in the United States, said Cal Halvorsen, PhD, MSW, an assistant professor at the Boston College School of Social Work who studies intergenerational initiatives. “People living in multigenerational households have likely experienced social and financial benefits from that arrangement and felt a sense of intergenerational cohesion, which could lead them to see the potential benefits of intergenerational programs,” he said.

Although the CoGenerate survey revealed that many people share an interest in working with other generations to solve America’s problems, most reported at least one obstacle to doing so, such as difficulty finding opportunities to undertake this type of work. Research shows that intergenerational programs can be highly effective in improving mental and behavioral health even when they are low-cost and relatively small in scale (Canedo-Garcia, A., et al., Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 8, 2017opens in new window). Adapting existing modalities or interventions to include different generations can be one low-budget strategy to accelerate the pace of social change, said Halvorsen. One of his students demonstrated the power of valuing age diversity when she started leading group support sessions that included students and retirees. Participants talked about challenges they were facing with dating, stress, jobs, depression, and other topics. “At first the college students were leery to talk about topics like dating with retirees, but everyone ended up loving the experience,” Halvorsen said. “The students reported that they enjoyed the group explicitly because older adults were part of it.”