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All societies use gender and age to classify their members. American people have developed "a set of prejudices and discriminations against our elders that may be unequaled by any other society” (Palmore 1999 p. 4). The modern society has acquired a negative attitude towards older individuals. This negative attitude towards older generation is reflected in such spheres of modern life as media, language and humor. For instance, such a phrase as "don’t be an old fuddy-duddy” denotes that old people are treated as physically defective and "incompetent” (Woolf 1998). Or, for example, the whole industry of the greeting cards business is "built around "over the hill” theme” (Nelson 2002 p. ix). The message of those cards portrayed as humorous is rather simple. The essence of it is an intention and undesirability to get older. Older people are usually given unflattering characteristics. They are considered to be of little value, even a burden of society; they are slow to accept changes and are often politically conservative. Besides, the majority of older people are interpersonally and economically dependent. And in addition to these features of older generation, many people consider them to be "slow, deaf or stupid, non-sexual and alienated” (SOA Watch 2010). Both men and women can feel prejudiced attitude, but women usually suffer it to a greater extent more than men (Lukas 2010). This negative attitude towards older people is called ageism. That is "a form of discrimination which is based on someone's chronological age” (Smith 2010). Ageism may concern a representative of any age group. However, it mainly refers to older people.

There are several reasons of that negative attitude towards older people. Thus, one of them is the fear of young people to become the same after several decades. This psychological base of the fear is rather justified. Being young, attractive and healthy, a person can do many things and therefore wants to live. But being not that healthy and physically attractive, a person may find himself or herself unnecessary, useless and even a nuisance for the other people. As a result, people fear to become a burden to someone and thus consciously or subconsciously reject senility.

Besides, prejudice and discrimination towards older people may appear because older people are more prejudiced themselves than young people. Modern researches prove that "older adults lose their inhibitory ability - the capacity to suppress unwanted or irrelevant information - they find it difficult to disregard their own stereotypical or prejudicial thoughts” (Melville 2000). Therefore, older people appear to be more likely to express prejudiced thoughts even if they do not want to.

Unfortunately the negative attitude of modern society towards older people cannot but reflect their physical and emotional health. Suffering from the negative attitude of young and adult people almost everywhere, older people get frustrated, lose their emotional balance and as a result their physical health also worsen. Scientists proved long ago that mental state is directly connected with the physical well-being of a person. So, feeling the negative attitude every day, older people may get new diseases.

Older people’s rights are almost "invisible under international law” (Strengthening older people’s rights 2010). However no one should forget that older men and women posses the same human rights as everyone else. The reason to this is that we were all born equal and the course of time and senility cannot change this fact.