Are Photos of Seniors Skewed To Show No Activity?

In launching AbilityAction, we wanted to have a custom header that shows people who are active.  Afterall, the AARP showed through a study that people 50 and over WANT to be active.  Sometimes they don’t know where to start, which is pretty typical for all of us!  So you’d think that photos and images of people 50 and older exercising or being active would be easy. But it wasn’t…Photos of Seniors Are Biased Against Activity?

To create our customer header we spent hours trying to find photos of active men and women over 50.   Did we find many?  Yes, some.  And enough to create our customer web site header graphic.  But by and large most of the photos seemed to show a sedentary vs. an active life.

Clearly this is just our impression but still it is worth pondering.  What kind of message is our society sending now and what kind of message do we want to send in the future?