Youths’ Perception of the Older People and Implications in Ekiti State (Nigeria)

This study explored how young people perceive the older people and its implications on the lives of the older people in selected cities in Nigeria. Questionnaire were distributed amount 200 youths purposively selected in Oye and Ado Ekiti southwest Nigeria. In-depth interview sessions were equally conducted among 12 participants. Findings about youths’ engagements with the older people revealed that about 45 percent of the respondents felt the older people were difficult to please and too demanding; notwithstanding, a larger part of the respondents expressed a positive disposition about the older people. In-depth interview however revealed that many of the youths were not willing to have a close interaction with the older people as they considered them scary, old fashioned and too demanding. Many of the respondents attributed factors influencing their perception to family, personal experience and the media. From the older people perspective, in-depth interview revealed that the older people has not been receiving the needed supports from the youths and some of the implications include labelling; isolation, minimal support and stress. Youths’ negative perceptions about the older people are based on assumptions and media influences and not from direct experiences.

n African culture and elsewhere, the important place the older people occupy in its social structure cannot be overemphasized.They provide social, emotional and cultural support to the entire population; they constitute a force.Globally, the population of the older people is increasing and currently, evidence suggests that like other nations of the world, Nigeria is experiencing the rise of older people's age group as they constitute 5.3 percent of the country's total population and numbering over 9 million (National Population Commission, 2010).It is also projected that this age group will reach 16 million by year 2025.While this age group is increasing, their rate of survival in terms of support is becoming challenging.In lower middle income countries like Nigeria, the social support of the older people is yet to receive the expected attention especially from the government; policies aimed at addressing the welfare of the older people have not received attention (Aboderin, 2015).
Traditionally, in Nigeria, and many low income countries, the care of the older people rests with the extended and immediate family members (Horowitz 1985;Pinquart & Sorensen 2005, Robinson et al., 2009).They are expected to rely primarily on their families for economic and emotional support; at times if family support mechanism fails, community help may be available.However, studies in recent times have showed a considerable decline in the social, economic and emotional support among families (Nortey et al., 2017;Gesinde, et al., 2011).Empirical evidences have attributed economic factors and changing norms as partly responsible for the decline (Nortey et al., 2017;Aboderin, 2004).Going by the narratives regarding the continued neglect and decline of the care of the older people, these factors in themselves may not adequately explain the declining support for the older people within the family structure.Understanding the roles attitudes and perceptions of the key actors within the family network of the older people therefore becomes necessary as one of the means to address this issue.Consequently, this study intends to explore how young people who constitute active players in the family structure perceive the older people.
Youths within the family structure play critical role; they appear as the next commanders after the parents within the family commands.Their opinions matters.The roles of young people are however less visible regarding the realities surrounding older adults in spite of their roles within the family structure.Reports in recent times have called for the inclusion of young people regarding later life (WHO, 2020;2021;Marques et al., 2020).Young people play crucial role in the barriers and challenges the older people encounter and aside this, they constitute a strong workforce needed in the care of the older people (Jakovljevic et al., 2020).The effect of COVID 19 pandemic has also added to the concerns of young people into the health care and special protection in old age (Clark et al., 2020;Jakovljevic et al., 2020).In recent times, the attention of stakeholders is being drawn to the need to be innovative in providing solutions to the social support and care of the older adults.The inclusion of young people in this discourse is believed to be a step in the right direction.More so as including them in the solution does not becloud the attention on the older people, but rather amplifies it (Wong et al., 2021).Equally, literature regarding youth-older people relationships are lacking in emerging economies.Apart from lending voice on the decline of support for the older people, this paper further contributes to the existing literature regarding the relationship between young people and the older people.Consequently, an investigation of how the young adults perceive

Youths and Sereotypes Against Older Adults
Youths are always developing and refining their expectations regarding what aging looks like through communication (Gasiorek et al., 2016;Anderson & Gettings, 2019).They often go through the aging process but regard aging as far away and irrelevant (Carr, 2016;Anderson & Gettings, 2022).The implication is that such attitudes make envisioning themselves as members of this population in the nearest future a challenge (Anderson & Gettings, 2022;Nelson-Becker & Victor, 2020).Within the literature, this form of attitude exhibited by young people is referred to as age-based stereotypes, a situation in which young people have exaggerated views about older people based on overly generalized characteristics of the group (Ory et al., 2003;Anderson & Gettings, 2022) and they are lifelong activities passed across through communication (Hummert et al., 1998).Hummert, Garstka, Shaner, and Strahm (1994) further explain stereotypes along positive and negative lines.They however added that understanding these age-based stereotypes are challenging because they are not stagnant; they are developed and refined over a life long process, thus they are bound to change and be modified along the life course (Anderson & Gettings, 2022).While young people form stereotypes, bringing themselves into the reality of aging becomes challenging.They rarely see themselves within the reality of aging in the distant or nearest future.Studies have pointed out that age-based stereotypes and youths envisioning themselves as older adult are as a result of low connectedness with older adults (Nelson, 2005;Pronin & Ross, 2006).
The negative perception, popularly called ageism among young people is not a new phenomenon.Consequently, national policies across major developed countries have focused on creating a suitable environment for healthy and active ageing (Verhage et al., 2021).In spite of these, studies have documented that ageism still persists even within these climes (Verhage et al., 2021;Alcock et al., 2014).In a bid to understand and address ageism considering its implication on the older people and the society, empirical works have identified history of ageism (Palmore, 1977); contact and personal relationships (Marques et al., 2020); gender and ageism (Kalavar, 2001) and among others.However, limited studies exist regarding the dimension of perception of the older people by the youths especially in emerging economies.The complexity of the subject matter further makes an investigation of the dimension of the relationships and perception of the older people by the youth further becomes important in this study.A clearer picture of how youths feel about the older adults will go a long way in addressing age-based stereotypes and the future of young ones as adults.This study thus becomes necessary to understand how young perceive the older adults.

Ageism and Social Construction of Reality
In explaining young people's perception of older people, this work hinges on social construction of reality as developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their book (1967) The Social Construction of Reality.The theory argues that humans create their own understanding of reality based on the interactions they have with others.To these scholars, actions, behaviours and events in the social world is not an objective quality of those issues rather they are products of social interactions which they referred to as habitualisation.To them, habitualisations capture how "any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort" (Berger &Luckmann, 1966).Berger and Luckmann further explained that the production of social reality is further reinforced through Externalization, Objectivation, and Internalization.To them, as individuals go through the process of externalization (putting a situation outside of oneself through different mean) and objectivation (seeing the society as existing independently of them), such an individual is being created as a social product (Berger & Luckmann, 1967).Consequently, they submitted that humans do not only construct their society, they also accept it because others have created it before their existence, thus society can be regarded as 'habit'.The relevance of this approach in this discourse lies in its ability to explain to us how humans come to perceive an issue based on interactions and how others have come to term it as such.Young people in contemporary times come to see the older people based on the habitualisation of their interactions, and what they have come to meet on ground.Many of the opinions formed are of course a product of interactions that have been cast into a pattern over the years and which will still be performed later in years.The theory further noted that meaning is socially defined and ordered and consequently subject to social change.

Hypotheses
Three hypotheses were formulated for the study.They are: • There is no significant relationship between young adults perception of the older people and their care and support of the older people.• There is a significant relationship between young adults' age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, marital status and their perception of the older people as evil.• There is a relationship between young adults' age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, and their care and support of the older people.

Study Design
Both quantitative and qualitative methods involving questionnaire and in-depth interviews were used to elicit information from 200 respondents (questionnaires) that were purposively selected in the study area.As regards the interviews, twelve (12) participants were included purposively for the in depth interviews.Before the commencement of the interviews and distribution of the copies of questionnaire, all the participants were informed of the study and their informed consent was sought and the participants gave their consent.

Instrument of Data Collection
For the primary data, both quantitative and qualitative data was generated using questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews to elicit information from young adults (18 to 35) and the older adults, male and female (older people 60 years or older) in the study area (Ado Ekiti and Oye Ekiti) in Ekiti state, southwest Nigeria.

Method of Data Analysis
In analysing the data collected, copies of questionnaire collected were ordered, coded, edited and entered into the computer and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software while the qualitative data was analysed using content analysis and quoted verbatim to complement the quantitative data where necessary.

Presentation of Results
This section presents the findings from the study Table 1 presents the demographic distribution of the respondents.The table shows that half of the respondents resided in Ado Ekiti while the other half were resident in Oye-Ekiti.Nigeria has a large youth population.Studies have affirmed that 60 percent of the country's population are youths.National Bureau of Statistics in 2022 affirmed that 70 percent of the population are under 30 and 42 percent are under 15.By implication, the opinions of youths in the country have a huge impact on the lifestyle and living conditions of the older people.The age group also shows that 49.5% of the respondents were between the age brackets of 15-20, while 46.5% of the respondents were between 21 and 25 years; in addition, 4% of the respondents were between 26 and 31 years.As regards the gender distribution, 54% of the respondents were males while 46% of the respondents were females; further, findings on the marital status of the respondents shows that 96.5% of the respondents were single.Also, as regards their occupation, majority of the participants were students constituting 74.5%. the location of the study is dominated by student; bout 5 tertiary institutions are located in the state; aside this, the 17% of the study that were self-employed reflects the unemployment situation in the country and the effort of the policy makers to encourage entrepreneurship.The table further shows that the majority of the participants were of the Yoruba ethnic group constituting 86.5%.The reason is attributed to the location of the survey.Southwest Nigeria is largely dominated by Yoruba speakers.The table also revealed the religion affiliation of the respondents; 89% were Christians, 8% of the respondents were of the Islamic religion (8%), and African Traditional Religion (2.5%) respectively.Table 2 presents the different perceptions of the respondents about the older people.The table gives a summary of different ways young people selected for the study see the older people.The table reveals that 28.5% of the respondents percieved the them as helpful; 13.5% saw them as demanding; 16% perceived them as cheerful; 13% percieved them as difficult to please; .5% percieved them as easy to get on with while 8.5% perceived them to be encouraging and supportive.Going further, 2.5 % of the respondents perceived the older people as rigidly conservative; 1.5% perceived them as boring, 1% perceived them as flexible while .5% saw them as adaptable.Further, 1.5% felt the older people were caring, 3.5% saw them as the sickly older people group, 2.5% perceived them as prayerful, 1.5 % of the respondnets regarded the older people as accomodating.In addition, 2.5% of the respondents percieved the older people as wise; 2.5% saw them as experienced while 1% percieve them as clean/neat.From the foregoing, the importance of social interaction cannot be undermined in the process of perception, however, misconception and generallisation often occurs in the process.Studies have affirmed that age-based stereotypes can either be positive or negative (Chan et al., 2020) or can be exgerated based on over generalised characteristics of the group (Ory et al., 2003).Table 3 above further presents the perceptions of the respondents about the older people as a follow up to Table 2.The table revealed that 44% and 26% of the respondents disagreed and strongly disagreed respectively that older people are liabilities and a burden to the society.The table also revealed that 32% and 6.5% of the respondents agreed and strongly agreed that older people are irritable and display unpleasant behavior.However, 13% of the respondents were undecided while 28% and 20% of the respondents disagreed and 20% strongly disagreed respectively.The table also reveals that 33% and 14.5% of the respondents agreed and strongly agreed respectively that many older people tend to look scary, un-kept and unattractive, while 12.5% of the respondents were undecided., 23.5% of the respondents disagreed and 19.5% of the respondents strongly disagreed as well.The table also revealed that 37% and 25.5% disagreed and strongly disagreed respectively that the older people lack sense of reason and physical vigour while, 11.5% of the respondents were undecided.The table also revealed that's 29.5% and 23% of the respondents agreed and strongly agreed respectively that most older people really are no different from anybody else as they are easy to understand; 23% of the respondents were however undecided while 10.5% and 14% of the respondents agreed and strongly agreed to this statement respectively.Young people are constantly defining, refining and questioning their expectation about older people and a simple description of the perception is challenging considering the fact that perception is a lifelong process spread across cultures (Anderson & Gettings, 2019;Anderson & Gettings, 2022).In the in-depth interview (IDI) session, the young adults had this to say concerning their perception of the older people, corroborating extant literature on young people's perception of the older people;

Table 2 Distribution table showing young people's perception about the older adults
The older people are usually kind of old fashioned, so to say; they don't have the idea of current events like the young ones.It is true the older people are wise and knowledgeable due to their experience, but I think they are no longer useful in the present dispensation as modernity has rendered their wisdom obsolete.Yet, they always claim to know better and this is really annoying.Aside this, older people can also be boring most times and you can't easily change their minds.My grandmother for example will never allow me to snap her picture for social media.I think some of them can be evil and demonic (IDI, MALE 20 OYE).
Another participant also gave this remark: They are experienced (older people), they have vast knowledge about almost every aspect of life but when compared to the youths, their experience cannot match modern day realities.They are also very nice and generous."(IDI,FEMALE, 22 years ADO).
In my view, the older people are both interesting and annoying, but mostly annoying.My grandmother lives with us and seriously, sometimes she tends to be so annoying, she complains about everything; there is no single thing she doesn't complain about which makes someone looks like a bad person, she just wants you to be perfect and that cannot be possible, she doesn't allow me to do stuff the way I like, if you offend her just know you are in trouble because she will practically forget all the good you've done for her, she will start nagging and listing all the bad things you have done, she doesn't quickly let go of things, once she sees something in a particular way nobody can change her view about it, and she is so difficult to please.But when she wants to be cool she would be cool but that only happens ones in a while that's why most times I don't stay at home, I even use to be happy when I'm coming to school because I know I am free from her trouble (IDI FEMALE, 19, OYE).
In the IDI session, the respondents were asked if they would love to stay with an older people in other to take care of them and support them, many of the participants expressed reservation regarding the idea.Some of the participants' comments are captured below: I can't stay with my grandma to care for her.Occasionally, my grandma comes to stay with us and I would be asking myself that when is this woman (my grandma) leaving?My grandma does not want you to do what you like doing, she is always on my case and this can be frustrating.She is too controlling.I cannot stay with her, no way!The older people people's lifestyle is different from ours, the way I would do things in their house would definitely tend to provoke them or annoy them and they might not like some of my actions and it tends to lead to nagging and altercations with her, I don't usually feel comfortable having them around me not to talk of living with them."(IDI,MALE (20), OYE).
Another participant felt they were not compatible; hence, they can't live together.Her remarks: I don't think I can live with my grandparents or any older people person.Like I said, even my grandmother that lives with us is always like a pain in the ass, we are not compatible."(IDI, FEMALE (22) ADO).
A participant however had a dissenting view about living with the older people to support them.According to her, older people are easy to live with due to their physiological make up.Her remarks are captured below: I love to live with older people, though if you want to live with them, you have to be very patient, you have to explain things to them, though there are some older people persons that are very annoying to live with according to what I have heard but in my own opinion the older people are really nice and I love staying with them, you will never be bored when you are around them especially those ones that are lively and I take care of my grandmother very well because I also want to grow old and if I don't take care of her, no one will take care of me too when I get old that's how life works."(IDI,FEMALE (19) OYE).
Another participant who also doesn't mind living with the older people however expressed her fears on why it is always difficult to assist them.
Yes, I assist my grandmother when I'm at home but you know it's really hard to help older people these days, me personally usually find it difficult to help older people I don't know because of what I have heard about some of them being witches and all so apart from my grandmother who I help in the little way I can there is no other older people person."(IDI, FEMALE (22) ADO).Table 4 above presents the perception of the respondents friends and peers about the older people.The essence is to deepen the conversation about how people around the youths with grandparents feel about the older people.The table revealed that 9.5% of the people think older people people are fetish, 5% think that older people people are occultic, 15.5% perceived older people people as prayerful, 12.5% perceived the older people as scary and dangerous.Furthermore, the table also revealed that 20.5% of the friends and people perceived older people people as friendly, 7% perceive older people people as wise while the majority of the respondent 29% perceived them as caring.This section explored the views of the respondents regarding how the media and entertainment spaces within their social environment portray the older people.Table 5 above reveals that 16.5% of the respondents opined that movies, songs and media portray older people as prayerful/religious, 23.5% as fetish, 12% as scary and dangerous, 10.5% as wicked, 1% as generous, 4.5 % as kind hearted, 7.0% as interesting, 5% as caring, 4.5% as difficult to please, 1% as dependent while 5% of the respondents does not have an opinion on how movies, songs and media portray older people.From, observation, many of the songs rarely potray the older people as wicked but some dramas on the sreen usually attribute the role of the wicked to the older people.The connection between age stereotype of older people and the media may not be strange as studies have supported the link between media and age-stereotyping especially the older people (Levy et al., 2013 ;Ehni & Wahl, 2020;Lichtenstein, 2020.The emergence of social media has however aggravated the stereotyping.Table 6 discusses different factors within the environment and the opinions of the respondents regarding how they influence their perception of the older people.From the table, 57% and 37.5% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by family respectively; 4.0% and 1.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by their family respectively as well.The table also revealed that 15.6% and 43.2% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by their friends, while 39.2% and 2% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by their friends respectively.

Table 5 Distribution on respondents opinion on how media and entertainment portray older people
Findings further revealed that 36.5% and 36.5% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by religion respectively, while, 23% and 4% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by religion respectively.The table also revealed that 35% and 48.5% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by personal experience respectively; while, 13% and 3.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by personal experience respectively.Further, the table reveals that 19.5% and 28.5% of the respondents were most often influenced by neighbours respectively while 41% and 10.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by neighbours respectively as well.The table also shows that 32.2% and 38.7% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by cultural beliefs respectively while 21.1% and 7.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by cultural beliefs respectively.The table also revealed that 31% and 45% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by the society, correspondingly, while 20.1% and 3.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by the society correspondingly.It also shows that 20.5% and 34% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by the social media respectively; in addition, 28% and 17.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by the social media respectively.The table also revealed that 27.5% and 35% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by movies/television respectively while 26.5% and 11% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by movies/television correspondingly.Ageism may not be restricted to these sample as studies in other climes also corroborate this; Olga's study in Belarus revealed how people strive to prolong youthful age and instil fear of aging in the society; through personal health care and surgery.Previous studies have also argued that perceptions of aging are multidimensional in nature which could either be positive or negative and represent a mix between accurate depictions of age-related changes and distorted views of older people.This was the assertion of Löckenhoff et al. (2010) when they opined that the issue aging has become systems of ideas, values, and customs that are treated by members of the society as if they were established reality.Further, multidimensional perception of older people can summarily be attributed to the influence of socioeconomic development and cultural values and beliefs Löckenhoff (2010).
The table also revealed that 24% and 30% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by radio respectively while 33.5% and 12.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by radio respectively.The table also shows that 21.5% and 28% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by music/songs respectively while 33.5% and 17% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by music/songs respectively.Finally, the table shows that 15% and 20% of the respondents were most often and often influenced by newspaper respectively while 37.5% and 27.5% of the respondents were rarely and never influenced by newspaper respectively.From the findings above, majority of the respondents' perceptions about the older people were influenced by the family Jobber (2004: 123) while explaining perception sees it as "the complex process by which people select, organize and interpret sensory stimulation into a meaningful picture of the world."He further argued that perception is influenced by internal and external factors and this was demonstrated by the respondents in the findings; however, the complex nature of perception cannot be ignored as perception is individualistic in the sense that it is formed by an individual based on what he or she chooses to expose himself or herself to and the way he/she chooses to interpret the information and how long he/she intends to retain such information.This of course is a function of factors like background, history and other social economic factors.In spite of the individualistic nature of perception, when it becomes a collective over a period of time and space, it tends to guide the line of thought and becomes the reality shared by a particular group of people even if there are errors in such perception.Koch (2011) submitted that there could be errors in perception.

Youths Perception and Implication on the Older People
This section examines the implications of lack of care and support from the youths on the older people.Some of the elders who participated in the study and who felt they were not enjoying the expected support from the young ones also had some remarks about how it affects them.Many of the participants related the implication to loneliness, running errands by themselves which in some instances have a toll on their wellness.Some of the comments of the participants are highlighted below: The way the older people are taken care of in the olden days is better, in the olden days, the older people were properly taken care of, they had children around them that were always helping them with their everyday task but nowadays, no child has the time to be taking care of the older people, children of nowadays do not want to be useful in any way, they are lazy, they prefer watching television and pressing their phones from morning to night.I have three of my grandchildren living with me but I still do a lot of things by myself in the house, I sweep, wash my clothes most times, the most amazing part is that they see you doing those chores and they would pretend as if they didn't see you, when you discipline them they will see you as wicked; this was not so during our own time; you dared not go out of the house without doing all the house chores and assisting your old person, whenever we saw our grandmother or father carrying heavy load or performing any task, we would collect it from them or help them out.Things have really changed… (Older people woman, 74 years) An older people participant had this remark to make: The care for the older people has changed, I will say that the experience of the olden days is better; in the olden days, there were a lot of privileges for the older people…elders received support from everyone but everything has changed, now rather than receiving support, we have become the support, supporting them and this is making life difficult for us, instead of sending us money and assisting us they make life difficult for some of us by putting their own problems and burdens on us.(IDI, FEMALE (74) OYE).
An older adult also had this to say: Many a times, we are left to take care of ourselves which sometimes lead to sickness.People even fear to become old become they are not sure of what we are going to face when we grow old" (IDI, MALE (69) ADO).
A participants submitted that she has to do all the chores by herself and which has brought untold suffering for her as an older people.Her remarks: Everything is fast changing and the future is bleak.There are a lot of changes in the care and support of the older people, most of us suffer a lot, at this age of our lives we are supposed to sit and enjoy life, some young people don't want to help the older people in anyway.In the olden days we took care of our older people people, there would always be someone charge of breakfast, lunch and dinner for the older people consistently but now things have changed (IDI, FEMALE (80) OYE).
The kind of suffering they go through was further explained by this participant in her submission: The attention young people give to the older people has declined in recent times, most of us fend for ourselves, we go through hard labor, some who does not have money even beg for food to make ends meet, a lot of older people here still go to farm, I know of an old man who still goes to farm everyday despite his old age, he sends some of his farm produce to his children, most children even take from us instead of giving to us, the economy of the country is now difficult, there is no money like it is supposed to be, and no jobs, is it somebody that has not eaten that will be sending money or take care of us, we pray God make our children successful, some children are actually trying their best, they help the little way they can, and some staying close to me help me in the house" (IDI, FEMALE (68) ADO).
Studies elsewhere have also explained the implications of ageism on the older people; on the employment ability of older adults (Hardy and Skirbekk, 2013) pointed out its implication on the employment ability of these groups; Chang et al. (2020) saw the implication from the perspective of their health while Bryant et al. (2012) attributed the implication to their mental health being particular.

Test of Hypotheses
In this section, three hypotheses formulated in this study are tested using chi-square statistical tool 5% level of significance.The hypotheses are stated below: • There is no significant relationship between young adults' perception of the older people and care and support of the older people • There is a significant relationship between young adults' age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, marital status and their perception of the older people as evil • There is a relationship between young adults' age, gender, ethnicity, level of education, and care and support of the older people From the table above, no signiifcant relationship exists between youths' perception and the care/support of the older people.By implication, perception may not affect how the young care for and care for the older people.This may not be strange considering the culture of care and support in African societies.Thus it is the responsibility of the child to take care of the parents irrespective of the attitude the child has to such parents.Also, many African counties still do not have a well-established social security for the older people; old people are children's responsibility.The second hypothesis also reveals that a significant relationship was found to exist between selected socio demographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnic affiliation and education level) and their perception of the older people as wicked and evil.While a deeper analysis regarding the dimensions of the relationship was not conducted in this study, previous studies have however established a connection between gender and negative attitude to the older people.Kalavar (2001) submitted that males on the average, exhibits more ageist tendencies to the older people than females.The third hypothesis also reveals that a significant relationship existed between selected socio demographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnic affiliation and education level) of youths and their care of the older people.While studies are lacking regarding these variables, available studies regarding care givers in formal settings revealed that male care more for the older people (Ebimgbo, Chukwu, Okoye, 2021). .However, women are more likely to provide care when it involves physical contact and time (Laditka, 2001)

Discussion
This study combined quantitative and qualitative data to explore how young people perceive the older people in two selected cities.The realities of these youths are different as both cities are cosmopolitan attracting young people from different parts of southwest Nigeria due to the existence of tertiary institutions in these cities.The findings of this study suggests that youths have varying opinions about the older people; many of such are product of generational gaps between the duos which are strengthened by the media and social norms.Some older people have been portrayed as wicked and occultic and this tend to have increased their negative perception.This finding corroborates evidence in the literature regarding age-based stereotypes and low connection (Hummert et al., 1998).When the connection between the older people and youths are minimal, it breeds different forms of negative perception about them.From the study, we found out that youths' perception about the older people are further strengthened by the family groups.Many of the opinions about the older people are further reinforced by the family members.Further, this study also revealed that youths are willing to support the older people if given the opportunity but some of them are of the opinion that they may not have the required patience to do so.Further, the study observed that there was a gender stereotypes as female older people were perceived to be wicked compared to their male counterparts.We opine that, apart from the stereotypes due to the influence of the media entertainment, this stereotype may be as a result of repeated contacts female older people have with the young ones compared to their male counterparts.On the side of the older people interviewed, a majority of them felt they were not receiving the required attention from the youths compared to what they did for their elders when they were youths for them, the cycle of attention young people gave to the older people has been discontinued.We conclude here that in spite of these dispositions, they are not fixed as they don't have strong bases; consequently, they are open to modifications as many of the youths in spite of their dispositions about the older people were willing to offer support and care.Consequently, we recommend that families, considering their influence on the opinions of the youths should make intentional moves that will positively influence their youths at tender age to appreciate and support the older people; also, entertainment industry should make effort to create programs that will portray the older people in a positive perspective.At the policy level, policy makers need to invest in sensitisation programmes aimed at bringing to the understanding of the youths the influence of ageism on the social and physical wellbeing of the older people and the need to put a stop to it.
, the factors that influence their perceptions, and the implications of such perceptions on the care and support of the older people thus become relevant in this study.

Table 1
Socio-demographic features of the respondents

Table 3
Distribution table showing young people perception about the older people

Table 6
Distribution on factors influencing the perception of the youths regarding the older people