Who are the real experts when it comes to the over-60s?

While on Facebook recently it came to my attention that so many sites are out there claiming to know what is best for more than 3 million of our population, the over-60s.

There are people telling us what to do, how to do it, when to do it. There are those telling us the best way to do it, what’s best for us and why we should do it the way they suggest. While they are doing this I would like to know what makes them experts? Are they over-60?

Why are these sites popping up? Why do they think they know what is best for us? I don’t know, but if I was to hazard a guess, I’d say the experts are experts on one thing in particular — making money.

Now I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Everyone is entitled to try and make a living, but why do we — the over-60s — help them do it when we are struggling to make ends meet ourselves? Why do we believe them?

One thing seems to be common with these sites is that they say they are standing behind the baby boomers, the older generation. Yet, what I want to know is how many of their employees are not over-60. Most of them have no idea what it is like to be you or me. Some are feeding off the experience of perhaps their parents or grandparents. Some are actually researching and some don’t really seem to have much idea. Some seem to be only interested in what the government is doing and that gives them a topic daily, but as we all know the government is not doing much at all for the older population of this country.

That is a very safe topic for these sites.

I went on to several sites this morning and I won’t name them, because I would probably open myself up to social media bashing, but you only have to spend a few minutes on the internet to see how many of these sites are around.

I would like to ask these sites to tell me how they became experts on me, on you, on the average over-60? I would like them to tell me how many of us they employ and although they give us information that we could probably find out ourselves, exactly what is it that they are doing?

When they say things like they are ‘for the over-60s’, what do they mean? Will they stand up for us, will they actually listen to all of us or just the chosen few? Will they employ us or will they use excuses like we can’t handle the technical side of computers well enough? That one really gets to me — I know lots of over-60s very adept on computers and quite capable of learning quickly.

I ask you. Who really are the experts on our lives? While I am willing to listen, to learn, to teach, to work together, who is really listening or learning or working together for our good? Or is it just another money making spin?

How many websites are you aware of catering to the needs of the over-60s? What feedback do you have? What issues are important to you?

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