WebProNews

Tag: Age

  • Google Sued over Alleged Age Discrimination

    Google, once again, finds itself the target of an age discrimination lawsuit.

    This time the claim comes from a 64-year-old engineer, who says Google never even considered hiring him due to his age.

    From the Wall Street Journal:

    Robert Heath says in his complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., that Google unfairly dismissed his application for a software engineering job in 2011 when he was 60 years old, despite his work experience at IBM, Compaq, and General Dynamics. The lawsuit says Google based its decision not to hire Heath on a brief phone interview, despite telling him in an email that the company was “embarking on its largest recruiting / hiring campaign in its history,” and “you would be a great candidate to come work at Google.”

    “Google intentionally did not allow Mr. Heath to communicate or demonstrate his full technical abilities, and did not have a sincere interest in hiring Mr. Heath,” says the lawsuit. “Google failed to hire Mr. Heath and other members of the putative class in favor of younger applicants under the age of 40.”

    The lawsuit cites a study that says the median age of computer engineers at Google is 29, compared to 43 for the population at large.

    If this sounds familiar, that’s because Google’s been sued over this very issue before. In 2004, a computer scientist named Brian Reid sued his former employer, Google, after he was fired and replaced by someone 15 years is junior. According to Reid, Larry Page fired him (Reid held a lofty title – director of operations) after he was told he wasn’t a “cultural fit” and was “too old to matter”. After years of legal battles, the case was settled out of court.

    Google’s not the only tech company facing recent lawsuits over this issue.

    “We believe that the facts will show that this case is without merit and we intend to defend ourselves vigorously,” said Google in a statement.

    You hear a lot about discrimination in the tech world – from gender to racial. Ageism doesn’t get as much play, but it certainly exists.

  • Twitter Makes You Enter Your Age to Follow Booze Brands

    I’d be willing to bet that almost every single internet user is familiar with the ol’ age verification roadblock. You know, that whole “enter you age” to proceed prompt that’s likely to exist on sites containing violent content, porn, or adult libations.

    Starting today, that age check is coming to Twitter. Well, at least for the latter category. Now, in order to follow alcohol brands, you’ll be forced to enter in your date of birth so that Twitter can make sure you’re 21 or older.

    According to Twitter, the new age-screening will be useful in upcoming ad campaigns from big-name producers.

    “To begin, we’ve partnered with brands like Bud Light, Jim Beam, Knob Creek, Heineken, and Bacardi, who are integrating the tool into their overall Twitter ad strategy. For example, Bud Light is using age-screened Promoted Accounts to reach people who are 21 and older and interested in the NFL during their #whatsyoursuperstition campaign, while Knob Creek is using it to launch their small batch bourbon brand on Twitter,” says Twitter Product Manager Tarun Jain.

    Note, Twitter does not require and will not store your date of birth. According to them “once you have successfully passed the age-screen…Twitter will remember that your account met the age requirement without keeping your DOB.” So if you were to tell a little white lie, kiddos, Twitter probably won’t catch you on it.

    Still, it’s simply one extra step between underage users and content about alcoholic beverages. And it’s a quick and easy safeguard for Twitter and Jim Beam to say that they’re not trying to market bourbon to teens.

    “Our hope is that this approach to age-screening will enable alcohol brands to responsibly and safely connect with the right audience on Twitter,” says Twitter.

  • Actress Who Lied About Her Age on IMDb Loses Lawsuit

    If you’re an actor/actress hoping to perpetuate age misinformation, IMDb is not your friend.

    A 41-year-old actress has lost her bid to sue the Internet Movie Database for publishing her true age on the popular site.

    Junie Hoang, an actress with 99 IMDb credits to her name (mostly B-movies and TV shows), claimed that the Amazon-owned IMDb breached subscriber privacy agreements when they used information obtained through her IMDb PRo account to unearth her true age and report it on her page. A federal jury in Seattle has denied her claim.

    Hoang singed up for IMDb in 2001, leaving her age blank at the time (not an uncommon practice among aspiring actors). Three years later, she updated her account, providing a 1978 date of birth.

    Hoang was actually born in 1971.

    Three years after that, she contacted IMDb and asked them to remove the untrue DOB. But IMDb did not comply. Finally, a year later, in 2008, she got IMDb to “go back to [their] files and see if [they] have any documentation, verification or identification” that her birthdate was, in fact, 1978.

    It was then that she alleged someone at IMDb found her true DOB info in public records, based on information obtained from her IMDb pro account submission.

    In their defense, IMDb said that it was their First Amendment right to publish the truth on their website, and that all of the information was obtained from public records. They also claimed that Hoang failed to adequately prove that she was actually harmed, monetarily, from her true age being published on the site.

    Though Hoang failed to prove harm in this case, the Screen Actors Guild says that age discrimination continues to be a big problem in casting. In 2011, when Hoang first filed her lawsuit, the SAG said that they were “disappointed with IMDb.”

    “Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strongly believe that businesses like IMDb have a moral and legal obligation not to facilitate age discrimination in employment. Entertainment industry employers who would never directly ask a potential employee’s age routinely access that information through IMDb and its professional subscription site IMDbPro. IMDb has the power to remove the temptation for employers to engage in age discrimination by accessing this information,” said SAG.

    [Variety]

  • How the Brain Ages and How to Stop It [Infographic]

    The most important thing to take from this infographic is that there are ways that you can maintain a healthy brain. The ways to do this are pretty simple and self-explanitory: Eat right, exercise (your mind and your body), get plenty of rest, and find ways to release stress.

    Some interesting factoids you may not have known: The brain produces twice the amount of neurons it needs during childhood. By age 6, grey matter is almost fully developed.

    Feeling like you can’t remember anything as you get older? There is scientific backing for that. Your brain may begin to degenerate as early as puberty. It peaks at around age 22 and only lasts to about 27. It’s all downhill from there.

    By the time your are 65, you will have lost about 10% of your brain cells, but hopefully you won’t care by then.

  • Minimum Age To Be Allowed On Facebook?

    Minimum Age To Be Allowed On Facebook?

    To sign up for an account on Facebook you must be at least thirteen years of age. That obviously hasn’t been a real deterrent for kids under that age from faking out Facebook or talking their parents into allowing them to do so or even into doing it for them. According to a November 2011 survey of over a thousand parents, the results were that many children under the age of thirteen have Facebook accounts regardless of the minimum age requirement. Since teenagers make up nearly twenty percent of Facebook users, it really isn’t likely that Facebook is going to do anything to lose that large a group of users. Interestingly, a twelve year old (under the age requirement) is currently suing her school for interfering with her privacy rights on Facebook.

    @asoga
    asoga    12-year-old sues school district over Facebook profile search. But, wait, minimum age on Facebook is 13 http://t.co/BWpV6Ni2 via @CNET 6 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @srpeatling
    Stephanie Peatling    @CroweDM @paulwfletcher Doesn’t Facebook require a minimum age of 13 to create an account? 5 days ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    According to opinion-based Web community, SodaHead.com, the answer varied when users were asked what the minimum age should be for someone to have their own page on Facebook. Results from the poll taken by SodaHead.com are that nearly half or forty-eight percent of the users asked think the minimum age should be thirteen-years-old or older. Thirty-four percent agree with Facebook and believe thirteen is a good and appropriate age and twenty-nine percent believe users should be between the ages of fourteen and seventeen to be able to officially join Facebook. Nineteen percent of those polled think the minimum age for Facebook users should be at least eighteen years or older.

    Not surprisingly, seventy-five percent of people thirteen to seventeen years old that were asked agreed with the minimum age Facebook currently requires of thirteen. Interestingly, one-third of parents polled think the minimum age for kids to sign-up should be eighteen years or older.

  • Study Breaks Down The Demographic Of Bloggers

    Social Media monitoring company, Sysomos has just released a study in which they analyzed over a 100 million blogs and reported data on age, gender and location of bloggers. Below is a summary of their findings:
    • Most bloggers are 21-35 years old
    • 51% of all blog posts are written by females
    • USA contributes to a third of all blog posts, followed by the UK
    • Japan accounts for the third-most bloggers (4.9%), followed by Brazil (4.2%), Canada (3.9%), Germany (3.3%), Italy (3.2%), Spain (3.1%), France (2.9%) and Russia (2.3%).
    • California had the highest share of bloggers in the US
    • Ontario was the top province in Canada

  • Age Differences Between MySpace and Facebook Users

    comScore’s recent digital year in review reveals that the MySpace demographic has gotten younger over the last year whereas Facebook’s 24 & under crowd decreased and its 25-34 year segment increased.
     
    An analysis of demographic composition of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users revealed important differences that reflect their appeal to various audiences. MySpace saw its user composition shift toward younger audience segments in 2009, with people age 24 and younger now comprising 44.4 percent of the site’s audience, up more than 7 percentage points from the previous year. Facebook’s audience, by contrast, was evenly split between those younger and older than 35 years of age. The most noticeable demographic shift on Facebook during the year occurred with 25-34 year olds, who now account for 23 percent of the audience, up from 18.8 percent last year.