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Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

During the pandemic, technology-mediated communication was one of the few ways to maintain social and community connections. We explored how the pandemic impacted older adults’ use and appraisal of technology. In a random sample of 407 older adults (M age = 81.1 years; range 65-105 years) almost hal...

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Autores principales: O'Connell, Megan, Haase, Kristen, Cammer, Allison, Peacock, Shelley, Cosco, Theodore, Holtslander, Lorraine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8682372/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3628
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author O'Connell, Megan
Haase, Kristen
Cammer, Allison
Peacock, Shelley
Cosco, Theodore
Holtslander, Lorraine
author_facet O'Connell, Megan
Haase, Kristen
Cammer, Allison
Peacock, Shelley
Cosco, Theodore
Holtslander, Lorraine
author_sort O'Connell, Megan
collection PubMed
description During the pandemic, technology-mediated communication was one of the few ways to maintain social and community connections. We explored how the pandemic impacted older adults’ use and appraisal of technology. In a random sample of 407 older adults (M age = 81.1 years; range 65-105 years) almost half (n = 161) reported they changed how they used technology to virtually connect with others during the pandemic, and 78 of these reported that this was new technology for them. We adapted the technology acceptance model (TAM) for the pandemic, the COVID-TAM, and describe how physical distancing led to new acceptance of technology due to an increased perception of usefulness of technology for maintaining community and social connections. The 71 older adults who denied using technology were asked about the reasons underlying their reluctance to use technology to access social networks and community events during the pandemic. Thematic analysis revealed factors consistent with a double-digital divide; lack of physical exposure to technology creates an additional psychological barrier to adoption of new technology. Of the technology-reluctant subgroup of older adults, few reported lack of perceived usefulness of technology during the pandemic. Instead, most reported lack of self-efficacy or fear of technology underlying their lack of technology use for social and community connections during the pandemic, which we incorporate into the COVID-TAM. Findings indicate that technology training can help mitigate this fear and increase social and community connections that are technology-mediated in circumstances where physical distancing is necessary.
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spelling pubmed-86823722021-12-20 Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) O'Connell, Megan Haase, Kristen Cammer, Allison Peacock, Shelley Cosco, Theodore Holtslander, Lorraine Innov Aging Abstracts During the pandemic, technology-mediated communication was one of the few ways to maintain social and community connections. We explored how the pandemic impacted older adults’ use and appraisal of technology. In a random sample of 407 older adults (M age = 81.1 years; range 65-105 years) almost half (n = 161) reported they changed how they used technology to virtually connect with others during the pandemic, and 78 of these reported that this was new technology for them. We adapted the technology acceptance model (TAM) for the pandemic, the COVID-TAM, and describe how physical distancing led to new acceptance of technology due to an increased perception of usefulness of technology for maintaining community and social connections. The 71 older adults who denied using technology were asked about the reasons underlying their reluctance to use technology to access social networks and community events during the pandemic. Thematic analysis revealed factors consistent with a double-digital divide; lack of physical exposure to technology creates an additional psychological barrier to adoption of new technology. Of the technology-reluctant subgroup of older adults, few reported lack of perceived usefulness of technology during the pandemic. Instead, most reported lack of self-efficacy or fear of technology underlying their lack of technology use for social and community connections during the pandemic, which we incorporate into the COVID-TAM. Findings indicate that technology training can help mitigate this fear and increase social and community connections that are technology-mediated in circumstances where physical distancing is necessary. Oxford University Press 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8682372/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3628 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
O'Connell, Megan
Haase, Kristen
Cammer, Allison
Peacock, Shelley
Cosco, Theodore
Holtslander, Lorraine
Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
title Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
title_full Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
title_fullStr Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
title_full_unstemmed Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
title_short Older Adults’ Acceptance of Technology During the Pandemic: The COVID Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
title_sort older adults’ acceptance of technology during the pandemic: the covid technology acceptance model (tam)
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8682372/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.3628
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