Chapter 18 – Older adults in the Digital Age

Chapter Summary

Technology Adoption

• The adoption of technology varies in speed depending on how useful the technology is perceived to be by the user to improve their quality of life.
• One of the main challenges in an older adult’s use of technology is their own attitudes and beliefs towards technology and their use of it.
• Older adults may hold negative stereotypes about their own capabilities to use technology which may contribute towards opposition to technology adoption. These negative stereotypes can be reduced, by promoting ease of use and through training.
• Several barriers have been identified to the adoption of technology including self-perception of their own aging, technophobia, ease of use, and newness of technology
• Technology adoption opposition may be mitigated through the use of education and training programs to reduce the impact of perceptions of aging due to a lack of knowledge and skills around technology use.

Technology for Communication

• In contrast to research on adults and adolescents’ problematic device use, research on older adults doesn’t provide support for problematic use.
• Loneliness, social influence, and habits have been found to be associated with emotional gains with device use. Loneliness is the strongest predictor of emotional gain in older adults’ device use.
• Social media use was the most frequent communication method on devices (23% of daily usage) to combat feelings of loneliness.
• Younger device users often use emojis to facilitate semantics in conversation, older adults, by comparison, have increased difficulty to interpret emoji semantics.

Digital Inclusion

• Research on the use of technology by older adults is diverse, ranging from how technology may support them to age in place by improving their ability to live and age independently.
• Digital inclusion through increased technology use for communication has been found to increase the well-being of older adults in addition to their technology use and attitudes.
• The rationale for digital inclusion not only focuses on promoting older adults well-being but ensuring they are not socially excluded as society increases its reliance on digital spaces.
• Increasing digital inclusion can reduce isolation through digital skills training by providing autonomy and increasing the digital self-efficacy of older adults.
• Providing training to bridge the gap provides older adults with empowerment to reduce digital inequality reducing further digital challenges as technology reliance increases.

Positive Impacts of Technology on Older Adults

• Positive impacts may include a reduction in social isolation, increased autonomy, empowerment, increased social capital, increased social inclusion, improving executive function, and increased resilience.
• Communication applications were found to increase positive strong personal connections for older adults.
• Communication, gaming, and social media applications were found to also reduce older adults’ feelings of social isolation.
• Telepresence robots, virtual and voice assistants, and other assisted living technologies can increase older adults’ feelings of self-determination, autonomy, competence, social participation, independence, and feelings of safety in their homes.

Negative Impacts of Technology on Older Adults

• While there are many positive impacts of technology for older adults, digital environments may pose an increased risk for users who have less digital literacy and experience online. These older adults may be more likely to experience cybersecurity risks such as misinformation, and online scams such as phishing.
• Fake news, disinformation, and misinformation continue to increase among older adults, however, there is still a lack of research focusing on the impact of misinformation on older adults and their long-term impacts.
• Older adults have been identified as at risk when presented with increased amounts of contrasting information, misinformation training and guidance on fact-checking would counteract some of these issues.
• Older adults while aware of cybersecurity threats, are uncertain in how to combat risks such as phishing and malware but continue to use technology where risks may occur such as online transactions and social networking due to limited options.
• Older adults chose to prioritise social resources in their own network they identified as having cybersecurity knowledge rather than seeking out a cybersecurity expert for support resulting in poor quality information and potentially increased vulnerability to cyberattacks