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As part of privacy options, users should be allowed to control whether their age is displayed (or even has to be entered!). We don't want to potentially help age discrimination from potential employers. Most sites in today's networked world allow one of the following "privacy" settings:

  1. No requirement to have full birthday or age entered
  2. If age >= 18 attestation is needed for site legal reasons, allow user to prohibit the birthdate and age from appearing in a profile
  3. Allow birth day (month day only) to be public
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2 Answers 2

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You can delete your birthday and age setting and the age will disappear from your public profiles. The birthday’s placeholder text even mentions that it’s “only used for displaying age”.

I’ve seen enough profiles without a displayed age, that it’s definitely not a required field or something you can't change any time you wish.

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  • You are correct -- and I have left that field blank. Shouldn't we also remove all the incentive for providing age (e.g. badge that requires all profile fields to be entered). I would be much more interested in something like years of experience in some field that the raw age.
    – ErstwhileIII
    Feb 11, 2014 at 0:10
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    If you are really just after the badge, you could fill the profile with dummy data, wait for the badge to appear, and blank it again. And I would disagree about “years of experience”—that would be very subjective and also isn’t really specific as interest and fields often change; and it could be equally misused. And ultimately, the profile isn’t meant to make yourself look better for employers; you can use careers for that.
    – poke
    Feb 11, 2014 at 0:15
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As your main reason for requesting this was:

We don't want to potentially help age discrimination from potential employers.

It's debatable that it's discrimination at all, and not simply a specific requirement for the job.
In some cases a specific age, height, 'width', etc, may be a very valid requirement, or very much desired, for a specific task, and so employers should be able to choose who they want to employ.

Just as much as work experience (can do the job), distance from the office (will likely be on time/can get in quickly in emergencies - tech support etc), is married, etc etc, can all be relevant and viable requirements for a person to be desirable for a particular position, or perhaps due to the nature of the business.

As long as the choice is relevant to the task(s) and not just discrimination based on personal views (etc).

If someone wants to employ someone younger or older than me, and wouldn't employ me specifically because I'm X years old, I wouldn't want them to waste my (and their) valuable time and financial cost allowing me to come for a pointless interview just for them to be politically correct.

I also wouldn't want to work for someone who doesn't want me to work there, so I'd rather they knew my age and singled me out from the start.

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    In the United States there are particular discrimination laws .. and age discrimination is one of them. While there are some requirements to be of "legal" age for a job (18 ) employers are not even allowed to discuss age during a interview process. You have mentioned many factors that US employers are NOT allowed to discuss nor to use as criteria for employment. You might want to read EEOC descriptions here eeoc.gov/laws/types/index.cfm
    – ErstwhileIII
    Feb 11, 2014 at 2:15
  • FWIW in the UK you're on dubious ground if you write "must have X years experience" in a job ad because that's possible indirect age discrimination. That's besides the point though in terms of the question: it is optional and will remain so.
    – Flexo
    Feb 11, 2014 at 8:41
  • I understand what the governments say we should do (law), I was talking about the real world beyond the laws introduced to make us politically correct. In that vein, I want to be an astronaut.. I'm not skilled enough? Ok I want to be a fireman, I'm not fit enough/too overweight? Same logic is if a company wants specifically a young (early 20's), fit, vibrant, employee to meet and greet their VIP guests who they can train up to work in their way, not a 50+ year old potentially set in their ways and wanting to relax a bit in life.
    – James
    Feb 11, 2014 at 13:03
  • Call it wrong as much as you want, it's life. The 50+ is just as able as the 23 year old (I'm not far off being unofficially "past it" myself). But it's life, realistic, & to ignore such things means you could end up in a job you're not 100% welcome in and could struggle to impress people & climb higher (etc). Is that unfair? Yes sometimes. Is it real, however? Yes. Forcing employers to employ because "everyone is equal" is not for the best. At best you end up doing ok in a job where you're not 100% welcomed by some, or perhaps not getting past interview stage 1, having wasted time & money.
    – James
    Feb 11, 2014 at 13:20
  • It creates issues in society & has repercussions on us all. Someone not skilled enough to do a particular job, but employed because of "equality", might cause danger to others within their work environment - working with electricity, heavy items (crane etc). They may be rubbish on the phone - remember calling customer support & they couldn't understand you, nor you them, & your problem was unresolved? 30 mins wasted on hold & trying to futilely explain to someone who could in fact be good at something else. They'll never know as their true calling was missed because of "equality"! I digress..
    – James
    Feb 11, 2014 at 13:34

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