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The reality of age segregation becomes blatant if you spend any time in a nursing home and see the residents living in an eternal present punctuated by episodes of The Price is Right, feuds with other residents, and rounds of meds. Those residents with families who visited them regularly had something to look forward to and experiences with people who weren't just acquaintances who lived on the same floor. I volunteered in one for a while in my 30s and the residents would often go out of their way to get my attention, chatting and having the attention of someone younger made them happier. The perspectives that the young and the old can give each other are invigorating to both cohorts. Keeping the old away from the young makes aging an unknown to the young, and thence something to be feared.
I will note that I truly felt sad for those in the home without any family to visit them. Volunteers would be assigned to specific patients, but many people had no one and it just looked to be a lonely existence.
A recent interaction I had with an 80-something woman had me thinking about this very thing. I've been trying to come up with some sort of non-profit model that could work toward solving this problem.
In France there are intergenerational homesharing agencies which offer young people cheap rent in return for living with an elderly person.
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I was a hospice volunteer and they tend to do a good job at connecting volunteers with people who have no kin or are estranged from their kin. The problem is, those people need to be on hospice to receive the benefit of the volunteers, and there could certainly be benefits for those not just on death's door.
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