Millennials Are Not Prepared For This Question In Retirement

A young woman pleads with her aging mother, “Mom, I think you should do it. Please do it for me.” 

Looking down her mother quietly replies, “I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right, I don’t want to lose my privacy.” Her daughter responds swiftly and sternly, “Mom! It’s for your own safety and my piece of mind! Get chipped!”

Is this a fictional conversation? For now, yes, but not for long. Future elderly Gen X’ers and Millennials are likely to be confronted by their Gen Z adult children asking them to have microchips inserted into their bodies.

Sounds like a tech noir science fiction scenario right out of Blade Runner – but soon in the post-pandemic world your boss may really get under your skin. A recent Korn Ferry

KFY
article reports that 11 state legislatures have already passed legislation to prohibit the ‘chipping of workers.’ That is, the insertion of a microchip, or other tracking device, into the bodies of employees who want to work somewhere other than the workplace. Employers could theoretically use the data transmitted by the chips to monitor worker productivity. Although this application has not happened yet, the very possibility has compelled policymakers to prohibit the practice even before it has been implemented. Or, should we say, even before it has been ‘implanted.’

While many of you may now sigh with relief, don’t relax for too long.

Korn Ferry’s Vice President of global human resources, Linda Hyman, offers the possibility that employers might reframe the idea of getting chipped to employees not as a creepy way to hold workers accountable, but as a means to monitor their health and wellbeing. After all, getting chipped might enable the early detection of depression, heart disease, poor diet, lackluster exercise patterns, etc.

There are other applications too. Chip data reporting your healthy behaviors to health or life insurers might reduce your premium costs. All things considered, an argument could be fashioned persuading many that an implantable might actually be good for you.

A personal, even cultural, tension is exacerbated by technology that enables 24/7 visibility of almost everything. Such technology forces us to prioritize the value we assign to personal independence and freedom versus the promise of safety and wellbeing. Individuals, families, and policymakers have great difficulty prioritizing often equally compelling values — especially when the perceived risks are ever changing and ambiguous.

So how does this relate to life in retirement? 

Many decisions in retirement are a conflict between independence and safety. Boomers know these decisions well from their experiences with their parents and even from their own challenges being faced today. Think about the third rail conversations that occur routinely between adult children and aging parents — conversations that are effectively a negotiated trade-off between independence and safety.

Dad, don’t you think it is time to stop driving?

Mom, all of us have been talking, we think it’s time for you to consider moving into a care community.

If you are sick, who should make health decisions for you?

Back to microchips. Millennials may be the first generation, in significant numbers, to face a new third rail conversation posed by their more tech savvy Gen Z adult children — to be chipped or not to be chipped?

Like WWII, Silent, and Boomer parents before them, Millennials in retirement will be confronted with what appears to be a choice between their freedom and independence versus what their adult kids see as a question of safety and wellbeing. 

Microchips implanted under the skin sound extreme but most assuredly they are coming. Forget microchips in pets, or for people with medical conditions, nearly 20 years ago an entire family in Florida chose to get chipped. Only four years ago the firm Three Square Market chipped their employees making it possible for them to access computers, vending machines, or open doors simply with the wave of a chipped hand.

Today older adults are the lead users (some might argue guinea pigs) of a dizzying array of technologies that monitor, manage, and motivate their every behavior. A review of wearables and other devices conducted by HIMSS, the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society, identifies a wide range of available technologies that use video and sensors to monitor function, daily activities, mental acuity, social interaction, and more. While the technologies provide an unprecedented means to provide care, even at a distance, the applications oblige every family to discuss and to prioritize values such as independence, freedom, privacy, safety, security, wellbeing, and even dignity.

Technology defined Millennials as the cool kids. In the not too distant future rapidly advancing technology may make these aging digerati the most monitored older adult population in history. 

Quite possibly being chipped will not be an issue for many. Millennials were the first to adopt an app to track their location, to flaunt a wearable to record almost every possible biometric, or to share a photo of nearly every activity.  So a chip that is neither seen, nor heard, under the skin may be quickly forgotten.  

Many older adults from previous generations have ignored their adult children’s pleas to hang up the keys in the name of safety; many elderly parents have unplugged nosy devices to protect privacy, or left emergency pendants in a drawer out of a sense of personal dignity. But, older Millennials may find that the itch they can’t quite scratch is simply their adult children checking in on them.