Senior living providers preparing for a “silver wave” of potential residents have had their sights set on the Baby Boom generation for quite some time.
At 78 years old, the oldest boomers have moved into the age range during which adults typically make the move to senior living, if they move — 75 to 84, with the average age of senior living residents being about 84, according to the American Seniors Housing Association’s consumer site, Where You Live Matters.
But there’s a younger group that providers need to pay attention to now, because its members have the potential to disrupt the industry even more than their elders, according to social commentator, entrepreneur and business and political adviser Jonathan Pontell.
Pontell was set to be the closing keynote speaker on Wednesday at Delivering Solutions 24, the annual conference of the American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living in Orlando, FL. Alas, Mother Nature had other plans: the meeting, other than NCAL Day on Oct. 6, was canceled due to dire weather forecasts associated with the looming Hurricane Milton.
But Pontell graciously spent time speaking with me about that younger group, which he calls Generation Jones, or Gen Jones. I’d first heard of Generation Jones in April, so I was glad to be able to go straight to the source and talk with the person who coined the term. Pontell calls the group “the next big thing in aging.”
Who is Generation Jones?
Some characterize Gen Jones as including the youngest baby boomers (demographers define the Baby Boom as 1946 to 1964) as well as the oldest members of Gen X (Gen X typically is defined as those born from 1965 to 1980). Pontell is OK with that characterization, but he thinks of Generation Jones as a completely separate generation.
“I think it’s the 1954 to 1965 birth years,” he told me, putting members at age 58 to 70 now. Pontell added, however, that an argument could be made to adjust the age range “a year or two either way.”
Pontell, a member of Generation Jones, said that a demographic boom in births did occur from 1946 to 1964, although he said he might adjust the start of the boom to 1942 and the end to 1953. But he argued that people born during those years were never meant to be thought of as one generation.
“It’s really unusual and unprecedented that a generation would be based on birth rates rather than the way generations are always determined otherwise, which is those formative experiences and attitudes and values,” he said, listing “lazy” members of the lay media as among those to blame for the thinking.
Gen Jones members, Pontell said, “are much more like Xers than they are like boomers,” and for that reason, they shouldn’t be grouped together with boomers.
His words are music to my ears, as someone who has written before that, contrary to assumptions that all people born during the Baby Boom were hippies, lovers of Beatles music, and war protesters:
- Many of the youngest in this group were not even born when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963; when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964; or when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964.
- The youngest in this group were in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten when Woodstock occurred Aug. 15 to 18, 1969, and when the National Guard opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, killing four of them.
- The youngest in this group were 8 or 9 years old when US combat units were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973.
Providers will need to change
Gen Jones “is really a huge chunk of the population” and will necessitate that senior living providers adjust their programming, marketing and community design, Pontell said, noting that many members of the generation are the adult children of current senior living residents or prospects.
In fact, he said, “while Jonesers may be too young for assisted living, I don’t think they’re too young for active adult, independent living. A lot of those facilities position themselves as 55 plus.”
When it comes to programming, Pontell said, providers will want to appeal to Gen Jones’ desire to continue to learn.
“This is not a generation that is going to be looking for shuffleboard and bingo as their activities,” he said. Rather, Pontell said, members will want to view a senior living community as a “place where you can learn and grow,” with “much more in the way of offerings or programming,” such as painting and history classes.
Members of Gen Jones also are “fiercely independent” due to the fact that many of them were “latchkey kids” who came home from school to an empty house and had to fend for themselves until their parents came home from work, he said, adding that some members of Gen Jones were children of divorced parents.
Even though members of every generation want to remain as independent as long as possible, serving Gen Jones “is going to be harder because we’re so independent,” Pontell said. For Gen Jones, he added, providers will need to seek residents’ input rather than dictate a schedule of activities or dining.
Regarding marketing, Pontell said, whereas “you earned it” was an effective approach for the hard-working members of the World War II or Greatest Generation, “a much better tagline with Generation Jones is ‘you deserve it.’”
“Deserve” is a powerful word for members of Gen Jones, he said, “because we have a deep sense of entitlement, sort of related to this idea of jonesing. …We feel like we deserve things now. We like it when we’re told that.”
Gen Jones members also will want references to nostalgia that are geared specifically to them, not older boomers, Pontell said.
“We’re supposed to get all misty-eyed when there’s some new anniversary related to Elvis Presley? We weren’t even born, most of us,” he said.
From a marketing standpoint, it’s also helpful for providers to understand Generation Jones because a percentage of employees are in the age group, Pontell added.
When it comes to community design, he said, marketing a “maintenance-free” lifestyle to members of Gen Jones will be a “mixed bag.” People may appreciate not having to cut their grass, but members of this generation will be seeking spaces that accommodate their desire to keep learning, experience a variety of activities and be as independent as possible, Pontell said.
Be it programming, marketing or design, he said, “The way some facilities position it is, it feels to me like what they’re saying is, ‘Come here. We’ll take care of you’ It sort of feels like they’re saying, ‘You’re old. You’re not really capable of taking care of yourself anymore.” That approach will repel Gen Jones members, Pontell said.
‘You’d better start thinking’
His advice for senior living providers?
“Boomers have already caused some changes in your industry, but I think the real revolution is Generation Jones,” Pontell said. “Revolution is a big word and a dramatic word, but I think it is going to be a kind of a revolution. I think it’s going to be such a dramatic change, and the time to be thinking about that is now. In terms of designing facilities and creating programming and marketing, you’d better start thinking about those things sooner rather than later.”
Why Jones?
By the way, if you’re wondering why Pontell chose the name Generation Jones, there were several reasons, he said.
First, the choice conjures up “the idea of a large anonymous generation,” Pontell said, as well as the longing suggested by the word jonesing — many members in Gen Jones put their dreams on hold and pursued practical careers, given the negative financial realities of the 1980s, which included a recession, so they still may be itching to pursue their dreams, he said.
“And there are a lot of songs specifically that use the name Jones back in the 70s and 80s when we were the biggest consumers of popular music,” Pontell said. “Also, I think one of the big exports, as it were, of our generation to the larger culture was our postmodern sense of irony, so the term Jones has that sort of modern ironic feel to it.”
Lois A. Bowers is the editor of McKnight’s Senior Living. Read her other columns here. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at Lois_Bowers.
