What a longer life does to society
Conventionally, living for longer is seen as being older for longer.
There is evidence that this convention will be reversed and people will be younger for longer.
This is playing out in three ways.
First, as we have seen, some people aged 18–30 are behaving differently from past generations and are following more flexible and less committed lives by not closing down options.
Secondly, as people progress through more transitions they will retain greater flexibility.
Evolutionary biologists refer to this as neoteny – the retention into adulthood of adolescent features that help promote flexibility and adaptability and avoid being pinned down by habits.
Finally, because age is no longer stage, there will be more cross-age friendships as people from different age groups pursue similar life stages.
When lockstep ends, this mingling of ages will bring greater understanding across the ages and help those who are older to retain more youthful characteristics.
from 'The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity' by Lynda Gratton https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472930150
Once you've considered it for a moment, it's telling what sort of person you are if you would still agree that neoteny is good and desirable. That is if you aren't already a biologist and having learned what the advantages and disadvantages are, realize what they really mean for human beings, for the society of human beings is unique in nature.
The neotenic prospect before us is longer lives lived in extended adolescence (and paradoxically shortened prepubescence despite all the efforts to prolong childhood). Isn't there obvious problems with this? And shouldn't the ideal rather be longer life lived in adulthood? I realize popular opinion has shifted in the last seventy or so years. But I believe the life most worth living is a life of responsibility and in adulthood that is at its peak.