Old is the new not-so-old. That’s what it sounds like, at least, according to Swedish researchers who found that old people are having more sex, are better educated and might not want you to get off their lawn after all.
The Times of India reports that, in an extensive study by Sweden’s Gothenburg University of the elderly now compared with the those in the 1970s, researchers concluded that today’s seniors have more schooling than their predecessors. Education above secondary level has risen from 14 percent to 40 percent. They’re also having more sex and fewer sexual problems, like impotence and, interestingly, more are married -- and more are divorced.
There is another contradictory result: that the elderly are more outgoing, but they’re also more lonely. “They talk more to their neighbors, for example -- yet the percentage of elderly who feel lonely has increased significantly,” said the wonderfully-named Ingmar Skoog, the professor who led the study.
Actually, we get it. If you are more outgoing wouldn’t you be bound to feel lonesome a little more easily than a generation of people who were better at being loners? And if you were used to having all that hot elder sex, wouldn’t you feel the absence of it more keenly and thus report more loneliness? You miss it less if you haven’t been having it lately, after all.
We’re available to help any time, Professor Skoog. All we ask is a ticket to Sweden.