UT researchers analyze internet usage of older adults during pandemic - Austin American-Statesman

Researchers from the University of Texas, Baylor University and the University of Missouri identified accrued usage of internet-enabled behaviors successful older adults during the pandemic, according to a survey published successful the diary Work, Aging and Retirement successful August.

An internet-enabled behavior, oregon IEB, is an enactment made imaginable by the internet, specified arsenic online shopping, video chatting and leisure activities, according to the study. The researchers partnered with the Georgetown Neuroscience Foundation to administer a survey to 298 older adults past outpouring regarding the technologies they utilized during the pandemic and which ones they expected to proceed to usage aft the pandemic. The mean property of participants was 73.

“Historically, older adults person been little engaged with technologies than their younger peers, truthful we were funny connected however the pandemic changed that,” main researcher Jared Benge said.

Benge, an subordinate prof of neurology astatine UT, said older adults who utilized video meetings reported little slump and little loneliness arsenic they emerged from the pandemic.

“Technologically based interventions tin person immoderate supportive effect connected temper and socialization successful older adults,” Benge said.

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Benge said the survey taught the researchers “about however resourceful older adults tin beryllium astatine utilizing these technologies.”

“Older adults were enactment into a concern wherever they had to exposure themselves to exertion and had a prolonged play of practice,” Benge said.

Out of each the IEBs, older adults accrued their online buying habits astir during the pandemic. Benge said wellness attraction providers should question “what (they) tin larn from online retailers successful bid to marque (their) ain services user-friendly and thing that radical support coming backmost for.”

Co-principal researcher Alyssa Aguirre said this probe illuminates important behavioral accusation astir a radical that is often overlooked successful societal sciences.

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“Any probe that highlights older adults tin further payment the tract successful wide due to the fact that older adults are importantly overlooked, not lone successful objective trials, but societal subject research,” Aguirre said. They “are often excluded conscionable based connected their property oregon their aesculapian conditions alone.”

Aguirre said the survey dispels communal myths regarding older adults’ exertion use.

“Not lone are older adults utilizing technology, but they’re utilizing it connected a regular ground to conscionable their basal needs,” Aguirre said. “The much we tin survey what’s going connected with older adults, the amended we tin recognize and make interventions that tin assistance enactment them.”

This story was primitively published by The Daily Texan, the autarkic paper produced by University of Texas students.