Older Adults Talk Technology: Technology Usage and Attitudes

By T. Mitzner, J. B. Boron, C. Fausset, A. E. Adams, Neil Charness, Sara J. Czaja, K. Dijkstra, Arthur D. Fisk, Wendy A. Rogers, Joseph Sharit. Computers in Human Behavior, 2010

1,097 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Older adults (n = 113) participated in focus groups discussing their use of and attitudes about technology in the context of their home, work, and healthcare. Participants reported using a wide variety of technology items, particularly in their homes. Positive attitudes (i.e., likes) outnumbered negative attitudes (i.e., dislikes), suggesting that older adults perceive the benefits of technology use to outweigh the costs of such use. Positive attitudes were most frequently related to how the technology supported activities, enhanced convenience, and contained useful features. Negative attitudes were most frequently associated with technology creating inconveniences, unhelpful features, as well as security and reliability concerns. Given that older adults reported more positive than negative attitudes about the technologies they use, these results contradict stereotypes that older adults are afraid or unwilling to use technology. These findings also highlight the importance of perceived benefits of use and ease of use for models of technology acceptance. Emphasizing the benefits of technology in education and training programs may increase future technology adoption.

Subfields: Demography, Information Systems and Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/859e2d12d2c058f3d9ec92b7f1b6f275e6989156

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Citations in the corpus

From internet access to internet skills: digital inequality among older adults (2019, background): “[54] argue that the difference between older and younger users is not about differences in actual computer knowledge, but instead concerns older adults’ confidence and tendency to underestimate their computer-related abilities.”
Older Adults Perceptions of Technology and Barriers to Interacting with Tablet Computers: A Focus Group Study (2017, background): “This ﬁnding is consistent with previous studies suggesting the perception of potential beneﬁts was more indicative of technology acceptance than perception of cost (Melenhorst et al., 2001; Mitzner et al., 2010).”
Dividing the Grey Divide: Deconstructing Myths About Older Adults’ Online Activities, Skills, and Attitudes (2018, background): “Having confidence in one’s computer use and comfort with the use of basic features (Neves, Amaro, & Fonseca, 2013) can help older adults maintain an active lifestyle (Mitzner et al., 2010) and provide social support (Quan-Haase, Mo, & Wellman, 2017).”
PERSPECTIVE: Older Adults' Adoption of Technology: An Integrated Approach to Identifying Determinants and Barriers (2015, background): “Also, older adults tend to dislike technology that requires too much effort in learning or using (Mitzner et al., 2010).”
Predicting the acceptance and use of information and communication technology by older adults: An empirical examination of the revised UTAUT2 (2017, background): “…the context of the potential for services targeting the enhancement of social participation, social inclusion which ultimately may impinge on the quality of life of older people (Barnard et al., 2013; Hakkarainen, 2012; Hill, Betts & Gardner, 2015; Mitzner et al., 2010; Peacock & Kunemund, 2007).”
The Benefits of Social Technology Use Among Older Adults Are Mediated by Reduced Loneliness (2016, background): “In short, older adults think the benefits of technology greatly outweigh the costs and challenges of technology.(13) Despite the attention that the digital divide has garnered in recent years, a large proportion of older adults use technology to maintain their social networks and make their lives ea”
Population Ageing and Socially Assistive Robots for Elderly Persons: The Importance of Sociodemographic Factors for User Acceptance (2012, background): “The results of large-scale usage studies highlight the fact that older adults do not use technologies to the same extent as younger persons [32].”
"Who over 65 is online?" Older adults' dispositions toward information communication technology (2015, background): “Interestingly, Mitzner et al. (2010) found that the difference between older and younger users was not in their actual knowledge about computer use but rather in the confidence and the tendency of older adults to underestimate their knowledge and abilities.”