Old age is influenced by earlier stages of human life. Helena Radlińska believes that the course of old age is affected by the profession, including education, and self-employment. “In occupations that require education and work on oneself – old age is delayed” (Radlińska, 1947).
According to Anna Zawadzka, the early period of a person’s life determines his quality and type of activity in later life, creating the possibility of taking conscious self-education and self-education. Another type of activity in old age is also influenced by psychosocial factors – personality traits of individuals or the general consent of the working part of society for recreational, autocreative and entertainment activities conducted by elderly people. (Zawadzka, 1995)
The basic classification divides this generation into working people and retired people. Traditionally, “men of working age” in public statistics are men aged 18-64 and women aged between 18 and 59 (it should be expected that these periods will be systematically extended). In this perspective, at least some people from the 50+ generation concentrate their daily activity on the labor market, while employment is the basic source of income. In order to underline the difference between younger and older employees, the economy sometimes uses a distinction between mobile (between 25 and 44) people whose activity and employment are usually the largest, and those who are professionally immobile (from 45 to 64), which gradually they limit changes in employment and leave the labor market for natural reasons (for example, accidents, disability, death) or non-natural (eg retirement, dismissal and no possibility of finding a new job).(Klimczuk, Tarkowski,…, 2015)
The above means that the more difficult it is to precisely define old age and the elderly as a social category. Georges Minos asked in the introduction to the History of old age: “When […] does man start to be old? When is fifty-five years old? Sixty-five years? Seventy years? […] There is nothing more fluid than the limits of old age, a set of physiological, psychological and social factors. […] The only ritual connected with crossing the border is a contemporary created and artificial ritual: it is a retirement, the moment of which is defined by socio-economic conditions rather than the actual age ” (Minos, 1995). In the culture of Western societies, old age is considered a natural phase of life, an inevitable stage, third after youth and maturity. However, there are various periodizations of the old age. Stefan Krzymiński notes that “the elderly are much more diverse than the attitude towards them” (Krzymiński, 1993)
Paul B. Baltes, one of the most influential developmental psychologists of the twentieth century, stated on the basis of research into old age, wisdom and learning processes that older people “differ in at least the same degree as young people”, especially in the first few, and even a dozen or so years of old age. Therefore, the division of old age into two phases should be introduced: “third age” and “fourth century”. The “third age” refers to the early phase of old age, in which every person is aging at his own pace. Meanwhile, “the fourth century”, means the years following 75.-80. age they equate all with each other because of genetic factors and until they die they increasingly de-individualize old people. Wojciech Pędzich is distinguished by two periods – early old age (up to 75 years of age) and late old age (over 75 years of age). In the early age, health and psychological problems predominate, while in the late old age, sight and hearing impairments, reduced mobility, reduced exercise tolerance, especially adaptive disorders. Edward Rosset also used such a division, distinguishing the older age (from 60 to 74) and old age (75 years and more). Daniel Klonowicz also supported the bipodal typology, proposing old age (from 65 to 80 years) and old age (over 80 years).
In international comparative studies it was pointed out, that defining the age limits of a group of seniors, also for research purposes, is contractual. Some of the health problems (for example, weakness of eyesight) occur in significantly younger people, while in the group of respondents from 25 to 60 years the ability to use the Internet is decreasing by 0.8% per year. On the other hand, sixty-five-year-olds are not always traditional seniors, in some highly developed countries they are “too young” to retire, many of whom do not want to give up their jobs, enjoy relatively good health and are active.
It is worth noting that researchers more and more often, determining the developmental age, look not only at the chronological and biological age, but also at such factors as lifestyle, the level of activity (including professional) or the psychophisical condition. This justifies delaying the threshold of old age, although in the dimension of using ICT justifies the adoption of an earlier age as such a threshold – due to the high degree of digital exclusion of older people. (Klimczuk, Tarkowski, …., 2015)