Older peoples’ attitudes toward technology (TechPH), digital ageism and assistive technology devices

Abstract

Purpose Europe has called attention to the importance of e-inclusion of older adults (McLean, 2011). Society is indicating that the developers, websites and devices are causing age bias in technology. This affects living independently, the values of ethical principles associated with an older person, and digital ageism: which is age-related bias in artificial intelligence systems (AI) (Chu et al., 2022).

AI is promising with regards to healthcare, robots becoming an emotional friend to the older adult, especially in people with mild dementia (Abdollahi et al., 2022); however when ageist attitudes are underlying the technology, the effects of the advancement need to be reconsidered. If older adults are not able to follow because of a negative view on the process of aging, it becomes a problem for sustainable and successful aging (Lythreatis et al., 2022).

Older adults use internet services and assistive technology devices differently depending on the regions they live in. Compared to Italy, Swedish older adults display a positive attitude toward information communication technology ICT devices (Zambianchi et al., 2019). A Dutch study indicated in 2019 that there was a significant difference in older adults who started using the Internet (11.6%) compared to those who stopped (3.1%) (Berner et al., 2019).

This research attempts to investigate the association between digital ageism (measured by age, cognitive function, gender, health), technology anxiety and enthusiasm, and assistive technology devices during the period 2019- 2021. The assistive technology device that we will investigate in this study is the adoption of a service that is designed for online health consultations. Method The participants are part of the longitudinal Swedish National Study on Aging and Care (SNAC). More details on this study can be found elsewhere (Lagergren et al., 2004).

Technology anxiety and technology enthusiasm are two factors that comprise the instrument techPH, which aims at measuring technophilia (vs technophobia) in older adults (Anderberg et al., 2021). This instrument was developed and validated and it is currently used in (SNAC) to investigate and evaluate the older people’s attitude toward and usage of the technology.The age range is 63 -99 years of age in 2019 T1 and 66 -101 in 2021 T2. 

Wilcoxon rank test was conducted to investigate technology enthusiasm, technology anxiety and how they changed with time. Mann Whitney U test was then used to investigate the variables sex and health status with technology anxiety & technology enthusiasm in T1 & T2. Age, Cognitive function MMSE, digital social participation were investigated through a Kruskall-Wallis test. A multivariate analysis was conducted with the significant variables. Results and Discussion There is an overall decrease in technology enthusiasm, and an increase in technology anxiety from 2019-2021. The variables influencing these are higher in age and lower cognitive function. Positive attitude does decline with time, however not the want to have online consultations with healthcare professionals.